Could China and Russia really destroy Starlink? Only with a boomerang.

Three widely respected European news outlets published the results of an investigation into what they described as a “joint plan” by China and Russia to “defeat Elon Musk’s Starlink.” The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde reviewed a cache of documents detailing growing military cooperation between China and Russia. The documents covered discussions between the nuclear powers on integrated air and missile defense systems, autonomous “swarm” loitering munitions, next-generation armored vehicles, and military aviation. And the investigation found evidence of a partnership between China and Russia in the field of space weapons far deeper than either country has acknowledged. One particular focus for China and Russia has been developing strategies to counter SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband network. Starlink would not be easy to defeat. The network is proliferated, with thousands of satellites interconnected using laser communications links and numerous ground stations to connect the constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) with the terrestrial Internet. Destroying a handful of satellites or a single ground station wouldn’t put much of a dent in the network’s operational capacity.