Satellite internet has quietly become a strategic military asset, and SpaceX‘s dominance of that asset is forcing governments to confront an uncomfortable dependency.
The Starlink network operates nearly 10,000 satellites and serves more than 10 million paying civilian customers, according to the company. Its military utility is substantial: signals travel directly from ground receivers to orbit, making them harder to jam than conventional radio, while cheap receivers allow deployment at the unit level and on remotely operated drones. Modern warfare runs on continuous data — intelligence feeds, video, drone control — and Starlink has demonstrated it can carry that load reliably.
The conflict in Ukraine illustrated both the capability and the risk. Both Ukrainian and Russian forces used the service after the 2022 invasion, with reports indicating Russia guided attack drones through it. When SpaceX restricted access to registered users in February, Russian forces were effectively shut out — a move reported to have meaningfully degraded their coordination. No military planner in any other country wants to be subject to the same unilateral decision by a private operator.
The Gap Between Intent and Capability
The responses vary considerably in ambition and timeline. The European Union is building IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite), a constellation of around 300 satellites not due to begin operating until 2030. China is further along conceptually, with the Guowang network planned at 13,000 satellites but currently fielding fewer than 200, alongside the still-early Qianfan constellation. Russia‘s planned Sfera constellation has encountered delays. Individual European states are pursuing parallel tracks: Germany is in talks to develop its own network, and the UK holds a stake in Eutelsat OneWeb, having previously rescued its precursor from bankruptcy. A British start-up, OpenCosmos, is working on a comparable system with backing from the CIA.
Anthony King at the University of Exeter describes it as “striking” that a single private communications company holds the power to confer or deny a battlefield advantage. He says affluent superpowers will eventually close the gap — noting that China will secure its own satellite digital communications capability for any future conflict — but the current asymmetry is real.
The Cost Structure Favors the Incumbent
Barry Evans at the University of Surrey points out that Starlink, while privately run, was heavily funded by the US government for strategic purposes, and that a hardened military variant called Starshield already exists. The structural advantage SpaceX holds is significant: owning the rocket company means launching replacement satellites more cheaply and on its own schedule. Competing constellations face the same recurring costs — maintenance, and continuous launches to replace satellites as they degrade — without that vertical integration.
Evans is direct about the UK‘s position: “You’ve got governments relying on an individual, which is one of the things that worries Europe. There’s a lot happening and, for the UK, it’s quite worrying because we don’t have the funding, really, to launch our own system.” The concern is not hypothetical — Musk has restricted service in specific countries at specific times, according to the report, and that pattern has registered with defense planners across multiple continents.
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