[Starlink] Re: Starlink and Iran

Ulrich Speidel
2026-01-15T21:21:04Z

The only way to be above the target area on a more or less permanent
basis would be to be in geostationary orbit - and that's very far away,
hard to get to for a country like Iran (getting into low earth orbit is
easy, getting into geostationary orbit is a bit harder rocket-wise).
From up there, you'd need to project enough power to overcome a path
loss that's about 300 to 4000 times worse than what a LEO bird has to
contend with, into a much wider band, and over a much larger area. That
takes an awful lot of power & antenna gain to do.

The other way round, it's more of an issue: Starlink transmissions, when
hitting the high gain antenna of a geostationary receiver on the ground
that's close to your Dishy, can drown out the GEO sat. That's why
there's an ITU requirement to reduce or cease transmissions if you're a
non-GEO sat and you're on the line between your intended receiver and
the geostationary orbit.

On 16/01/2026 10:09 am, Hayden Simon wrote:
> Sorry, I was envisaging being above the terminals - above the leo birds (so, in orbit realistically) and then blasting the target area - wide band, high power, just noise, effectively drowning out the starlink birds from the dishy perspective.
>
>
> HAYDEN SIMON
> UBER GROUP LIMITED
> MANAGING DIRECTOR
> E: h@uber.nz
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
> Sent: Friday, 16 January 2026 10:07 am
> To: Hayden Simon <h@uber.nz>; starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Re: Starlink and Iran
>
> On 16/01/2026 9:30 am, Hayden Simon wrote:
>> That leaves the most likely alternative as the action occuring from reasonable altitude. Be that in orbit, weather balloon(s)....drones.
>>
> Not really. Think of a Starlink satellite's beam as a laser pointer pointing at Dishys on the ground that look at the satellite with a good old fashioned telescope (which is what the phased array effectively does). And vice versa (laser pointer at the Dishy, telescope at the satellite). To disrupt that signal, you have to get yourself in front of the telescope with your laser pointer so your interfering signal can even be seen. Getting in front of the telescopes on the ground is mission impossible because there are a few 10000 of them. Moreover, they suddenly switch direction to point at another satellite typically every
> 15 to 75 s (which shorter intervals dominating).
>
> Getting in front of the telescopes on the satellites is somewhat easier as there are fewer of them and - with a drone - you'd be further away and they'd already be pointing in your general direction if you're close to the Dishy you're trying to interfere with. But even so, you'd need one laser pointer per visible and usable satellite - in each cell you're wanting to take Starlink out on. Moreover, you wouldn't know whether the satellite is currently receiving from that cell on a red, blue, or green light frequency - so you'd have to pump power into all of them. Not trivial.
>
> GPS interference is much easier.
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
--
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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