Three European news outlets - The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde - dropped a report last week claiming China and Russia have a "joint plan" to defeat Elon Musk's Starlink. The investigation reviewed documents from a previously undisclosed China-Russia Military-Technical Cooperation Forum held in 2023, revealing a partnership deeper than either country has admitted. The duo is developing strategies to counter SpaceX's satellite broadband network, which has proven vital for Ukraine and is a key asset for the US military.

Ars spoke with former US defense officials and space security experts to gauge the seriousness of this threat. Unsurprisingly, China and Russia feel threatened by Starlink's 10,000-plus satellites. Russia's deputy foreign minister, Konstantin Vorontsov, already hinted in 2022 that commercial satellites used by Ukraine are "extremely dangerous" and valid military targets. Tara Brown, a Royal Air Force officer and space law professor at the US Naval War College, agreed in a 2022 paper that nations must be aware of the risk.

So how do they plan to wreck Starlink? The Chinese team from CASC proposed an "escalation ladder" with three steps: first, legal and diplomatic pressure citing collision risks; second, regulatory filings to block frequency bands and orbital slots, plus electromagnetic jamming; third, "physical destruction" via cyber war and anti-satellite weapons - possibly a cloud of high-density projectiles. Russia is reportedly working on jammers and a concept to eject small pellets into orbit. And there's the nuclear option: Russia might place a nuke in orbit, which would be the ultimate Starlink killer - but also fry everyone else's satellites for months.

China has more resources and tech, but Russia has battlefield experience (at a cost of 1.4 million casualties). So they're partnering: China provides training and hardware for Russian weapons, while Russia offers combat testing. The report suggests plans have advanced since the 2023 forum, with Chinese media claiming a ground-based microwave weapon and NATO monitoring Russia's pellet idea. The US Space Force even has its own ground-based satellite jammer, because escalation is a team sport.

Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel, said the collaboration is "more troubling than either one looking at it independently." The Pentagon's proposed Golden Dome missile shield and battlefield targeting satellites could all become at risk. So yes, China and Russia want to kill Starlink - but they might end up taking out their own constellations too. Classic boomerang.