5-minute read | 700 words
Subscribe to the newsletter to receive this issue in your inbox every Sunday.
The shield in space.
Host Maria Varmazis sits down with Dave Bittner and Brandon Karpf to look at the recent report that Starshield’s connectivity was disrupted, impacting Ukraine's military capabilities. They explore the growing role of commercial satellite providers in warfare, the challenges for establishing accountability when operations rely on private infrastructure, and the future of US alliances.
Subscribe and listen to the conversation now.
The military’s dependency on private technology.
This week on T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing: we look deeper into the role that private space companies have in military operations and how this relationship may already impact national security.
Does this newsletter spark questions for you? Write to us at space@n2k.com to guide how we’ll continue to explore private infrastructure in space in future podcast episodes and newsletter issues.
Ukrainian connectivity.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the conflict has become a representation of how modern warfare increasingly depends on advanced communications technology. Within this effort, one of the most critical relationships is between Ukraine and SpaceX’s Starshield platform.
When the war began, Ukraine was initially working with Starlink to maintain battlefield connectivity. However, in September 2022, SpaceX restricted satellite coverage over parts of Ukraine as Ukrainian forces were conducting a counteroffensive. According to reports, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, ordered the shutdown, disrupting communications and drone operations causing the operation to stall.
This incident raised significant concerns about the consolidation of power in the space satellite industry and the impacts that it could have on geopolitics and national security. Since that incident, Ukraine has continued to rely on SpaceX’s infrastructure, including Starshield, a service that provides military-grade satellite communications exclusively to government, defense, and intelligence missions, using the same constellations as Starlink.
However, Ukraine faced another Starshield outage earlier this month. In this incident, reports found that SpaceX received orders to limit Starshield service to Ukraine. There are conflicting reports about who was responsible for issuing that order, and a senior official stated that President Trump did not request the restriction.
The development has renewed concerns about the risks of a single provider becoming so depended upon for critical military communications, especially when access can be suddenly restricted by a select few.
The single point of failure.
SpaceX has established a leading position in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications, with Starlink servicing many commercial sectors and Starshield supporting government and national security missions. The company’s infrastructure makes SpaceX an important partner for both the US government and governments across the globe.
This dependence also raises questions about resilience. Alternative satellite networks and communications systems may offer backup options, and indeed Europe is quickly working on the development of their own sovereign satellite communications constellation, the IRIS^2. But establishing comparable capabilities and interoperability will take both time and resources - for example, IRIS^2 is not expected to be ready for use before 2029. Until sufficient redundancy is established, disruption to a provider like Starlink leaves users with limited options at potentially critical moments.
The situation highlights a broader challenge for governments that increasingly rely on private companies to provide critical national security services. For the US and its allies, addressing these risks does not mean abandoning these partnerships. Rather, governments may need to institute contractual obligations and safeguards, establish clearer lines of accountability, and invest in redundancy. For US allies in particular, the uncertainty surrounding access could accelerate efforts to develop sovereign space capabilities and diversify suppliers.
Ultimately, the challenge is not who builds and operates the technology that modern militaries rely on, but who controls access to that technology when it becomes critical to defense. Resiliency will depend not only on the capabilities of these technologies, but also on the ability to maintain reliable access when it is most needed.
