Bark bark bark
Yes, this is really like a tiny dog barking its head off, because it’s convinced it can’t be harmed.
Russia and Putin have been embarrassing themselves for a while now.
suuure, they couldn’t even take out ukraines communication systems
Cutting a couple undersea fiber cables and completely fucking the whole internet is very easy. Humanity has so far just kinda silently agreed to not fuck with that.
Sure, but welcome to 2024, where we have mirrors and cdns and the cloud with distributed everything.
Not saying disconnecting the americas from eurasia wouldn’t be a big deal, but the internet would keep working.
Elon would be very happy.
Im curious… how much undersea cable traffic could Starlink handle? I know the sat-sat laser links are just coming online now, what if every sat had them
Not sure, though most would go other existing high-speed satellite trunks.
And otherwise, you can’t eliminate the possibility of local sabotage as well. Most of the important networking information in Sweden was leaked due to our “open information” laws.
It’s not like Russia can make it some long-term problem, but being an annoyance and making chaos is their goal.
Maybe the local internet would keep working but the countries wouldnt. Lots of stuff stops working without central web authorities and all international trade and payment systems would collapse. It would be a massive catastrophe. But its probably quite hard to take out everything at once before the militaries of the world would start paying special attention to those cables.
Yeah last time I saw a map of the internet cables it looked like there was quite a lot of redundancy so I’m not convinced they could pull it off fully to be honest.
would Americans even consider that taking down the internet? It wouldn’t impact a US client talking to a US server.
Thats not how things on the internet work. It would mostly certainly cause many issues for everyone everywhere. Basic functionality might stay working but not everything has a local copy in the US. We depend on things and people from all over the world to keep things running.
Maybe they could get an compromised/friendly/useful idiot/individual installed in the hightest levels of government who, either intentionally or unintentionally, would funnel secrets to them which help facilitate mass disruption?
ohh wait…
I find the threat of GPS loss to be hard to believe. Theyd have to take out 38 GPS satelites and presumably any of the other navagation satellites American allies have in orbit, and presumably theyd have to not damage their own navigation satelites in the process. I also doubt they could do that all at the same time, or quick enough that no one could respond. Im sure they have the capability, and im sure they have an idea of what the operation would have to look like but in terms of a plan that’s actionable, I have big doubts.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss that threat.
They know exactly where in the sky they are. They know what frequencies their antennas are tuned to. I’m betting burning out those transceivers would not be an impossible feat.
I also don’t know how well they put up against really large lasers
They’ve also been fully capable of putting s*** into space for years. I would not put it past them to have some form of combination weather/spy satellite and weapons platform out there.
They must be aware of the concept of re-ta-lia-tion. You shoot down my satellites, I shoot down yours. Nobody wins and we are all back 40 years.
or they could jam the signal.
Where though? They just gonna fly enough jammers up into orbit to cover the entire path and all the satelites and pretend thats not going to also jam every navagation satelite including their own and China, their biggest allys? I don’t see it.
They just have to give them the raspberry.
I don’t get why this is so hard.
Blowing up the GPS satellites is certainly an option and there’s not much we could do to stop them. We know that China has succesfuly tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007. I would not be surprised if Russia was working on the technology at the same time. If they can’t or don’t want to blow up the satellites, then they could perhaps launch their own jamming satellites to orbit near the existing GPS satellites would work.
Edit: It just occurred to me that you don’t need to jam them. Just put up your own satellites that mimic the GPS satellites to throw off the calculations of anyone trying to use them. Your devices wouldn’t know which signals were legit.
The Soviet Union proved that it was able to shoot down satellites in the 60s. The technical difficulty of hitting a satellite with a missile is not really an obstacle here
Yeah, the Soviet union could also mass produce tanks and planes. Russia today…
Glances at Ukraine
Is using almost exclusively Soviet stock.
It may not be a problem technology wise, but do they really have the equipment today to blow up dozens of satellites?
I seriously doubt it, Russia isn’t the Soviet Union, they seem less capable, and corruption would probably have undermined the program even if it still existed.
And even if they can, can they also do it without harming their own and China’s geopositioning systems?And even if they can, can they also do it without harming their own and China’s geopositioning systems?
Nope, they can’t. And not only that, destroying that many satellites is almost assuredly going to trigger Kessler Syndrome and lock out space for the most part for a good long while.
Just put up your own satellites that mimic the GPS satellites to throw off the calculations of anyone trying to use them. Your devices wouldn’t know which signals were legit.
Do this, then get absolutely raw dog fucked by the US (and any other competent) military, who has absolutely no issue with ground nav or weapons guidance because they all use encrypted GPS signals.
There’s also back ups. so destroying the GPS isn’t a good solve either.
You don’t need satellites in space to shift GPS, they’ve been messing with it in war zones for years, and AWACS like planes could do it in real time anywhere they won’t get shot down.
China doing it in 2007 was big news because they joined the club. The West and Russia has had the capability for decades.
They can’t even reach the satellites
Jam some strategic locations, like air travel hubs or highly populated areas for the highest impact. No need to jam wide open low population areas without military targets.
Real curious how Russia plans to get jamming equipment the size of a truck into those areas
I also just don’t see anyone in Russia deciding that were going to trigger article 5 by using a jammer on US soil. The risk reward is non existent unless they can make the whole country GPS and internet dark at the same time. Imagine that many resources going on the ground in a country as large as America. It’s basically asking Ukraine to regain any territory they had a counter invasion plan ready for.