Starlink has already been used in Russian's war against Ukraine. Of course the satellites can take photos as a bonus.

It's a massive spy network, if weaponized.

Because Kessler syndrome means you don't need to hit all 10k yourself.

Lowering the orbits just means that we get back to normal faster, not that the it's impossible.

If it's WWIII, and you're using ballistic missiles against satellite constellations, then either:

- You are not targeting individual satellites; you're setting off nuclear warheads in space, and relying on the EMP to disable all satellites within a large radius of the blast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

or

- You're nuking the ground-based command & control centers for those satellites. Again, nothing like 10,000 missiles needed.

(Or both.)

To target 10,000 satellites directly, the "obvious" weapon would be a few satellite-launch rockets, lofting tons of BB's (or little steel bolts, or whatever) - which would become a sort of long-duration artillery barrage shrapnel in orbit.

You don’t need 10k missiles. You need just one to blow up all of starlink satellites.

This is like bowling, you hit one, it hits the other one etcétéras.

What was that game on old PC's? ... Minesweeper ...

There is huge increase of orbital launches in recent years [1] done mostly by SpaceX and China is also planning to double its numbers in the coming years. The risks will be even higher.

[1] https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/country

That's the Kessler Syndrome. But it's better if it happens in a lower orbit, irrespective of what assets are present there. Space will be free for exploration again in a few years since all the debris there would eventually decay and deorbit.

The article mentions a few months at 480 km. I'm a little skeptical about this figure though, because the last tracked piece from an NRO satellite that was shot down at ~250 km by SM-3 missile in operation burnt frost, lasted 20 months in space before reentry. SpaceX is probably using a statistical cutoff percentage of fragments to calculate the time. But all the pieces are dangerous uncontrolled hypervelocity projectiles. Spain lost a military communications satellite a few days ago from a collision with a tiny undetermined space debris.

There are tentative signs that this is happening right now. As in: each collision causes debris that on average causes more than one additional collision, causing collision rates to go up exponentially.

But so far it's not anything like in Hollywood movies, it's just a graph slowly going up. There are about 12000 satellites orbiting earth. That looks like a lot on a map, but 12000 objects spread over an area larger than the surface of the earth isn't all that much

Like all exponential processes it will become a major issue if we don't address it, but this is one that starts pretty slow and is well monitored