The question of whether Southeast Asia is about to replace China as the leading source of low-cost production is not new, and the "special trade corridor" between China, Southeast Asia and the U.S. There have been a flurry of reports recently in the Chinese media about the rise of Southeast Asian economies, particularly Vietnam's.
Now we need to develop our own infrastructure, the most efficient we can, with inter-satellite links to ensure our sovereignty.” “Starlink and its first generation of satellites are some sort of prototype. “Europe is already very late, everyday counts, we must hurry,” Schoellhorn says. The entry ticket was evaluated by the European Commission of at least six billion euros for a constellation of some 300 satellites dispatched on different orbits. No European country can afford such a space infrastructure by itself. "In the future, we will need satellites and men equipped with ammunition, but also with smartphones," an Army colonel says.Īt this stage, the war in Ukraine is more than enough to justify the project defended by the European Commissioner Thierry Breton to provide the EU with its own sovereign constellation. We need connectivity, but above all, we need the ability to process and prioritize information, which puts the emphasis on what the military calls “C4ISR” (Computerized Command, Control, Communications in Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance).īut the widespread use of satellites on the battlefield is allowing for increasingly connected combat on wider and deeper ground.
Will Elon Musk be Ukraine’s savior? Let’s not exaggerate, says the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. Another example is the facial recognition app Clearview, which is used to help war crimes investigators or to warn Russian mothers about the death of their sons. “Citizens have turned the app Diia, which stores official documents such as driving licenses or passports, into an intelligence tool through which they send information to their government about the state of the country's infrastructure and the arrival of Russian forces,” a French general notes. Ukrainians are very creative when it comes to diverting civilian apps for military purposes. The French Army stresses that connectivity and social networks have a huge impact not only in terms of operations but also with information and propaganda. In the future, there is no doubt that it will be possible to jam or destroy the constellation’s small satellites, with laser weapons for instance, but for the time being, their large number makes it “hard to flatten a network,” says General Thompson. Ukrainian units use Starlink for “blue force tracking,” which allows them to stay connected to their allies on the battlefield. China made no mistake when it announced it would conduct research to destroy a constellation like Elon Musk’s, which it now classifies as military.