WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF
Starlink is increasingly being used to provide communications services to remote and cut off regions, and China sees that as a threat.
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As we see satellite communications systems playing a greater role in warfare as well as helping protesters access to the internet when governments block it Chinese scientists are said to have built an insanely High Powered Microwave (HPM) weapon called the TPG1000Cs to disrupt them. It can reportedly send out 20-GW pulses for up to a minute, surpassing existing tech that can only manage bursts of a few seconds. One aspect that media outlets have so far focused on is its capability for low-orbit satellite interference. With recent news that Starlink satellites are set to orbit closer to the Earth to avoid collisions with space debris, this HPM device could theoretically target Elon Musk’s StarLink space communications network.
The weapon, engineered by a team led by Wang Gang at the High-Power Microwave Science and Technology Key Laboratory of the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology (NINT) in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, is said to be compact – about the size of a small truck – and represents a huge leap forward in directed-energy weaponry that could disrupt or destroy satellites and other electronics in low Earth orbit.
TPG1000Cs has been described as the world’s first compact HPM weapon. It’s reportedly about 4 m (13 ft) long and weighs around 5 tonnes (11,000 lb), making it much smaller than existing systems and compact enough to be mounted on trucks, ships, planes or even satellites.
Nonetheless, it’s important to note that reporting to date references details published in the journal High Power Laser and Particle Beams – but I’ve been unable to locate the exact paper.
However, the difficulty in finding the study is not unusual – it’s common when it comes to reporting on advanced military technology, where state-linked institutions don’t make it the easiest for Western journalists to track things down.
If accurate, though, the TPG1000Cs easily surpasses other Chinese HPM systems, such as the Hurricane-3000, and is more advanced than anything the US has built to date.
According to researchers, the system can deliver up to 3,000 high-energy pulses in a single session. They added that the TPG1000Cs has already performed more than 200,000 pulses throughout testing, and has proved to be stable and reliable.
The research was published in the journal High Power Laser and Particle Beams.
Source: Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology via Maeil Business Newspaper and South China Morning Post
