WASHINGTON (Realist English). In August 2025, US Navy officials conducting tests of unmanned vessels discovered a critical vulnerability: a single point of failure named Starlink.
A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network, affecting millions of Starlink users, left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the coast of California. Communications were disrupted, and operations ground to a halt for nearly an hour.
The incident — involving drones intended to bolster US military options in a potential conflict with China — was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to Starlink, during which operators were unable to connect to autonomous boats. This is according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a source familiar with the matter.
SpaceX, which is preparing for a historic $2 trillion public offering this summer (the second half of 2026), has cemented its position as the world’s most valuable space company largely by making itself indispensable to the US government, providing a range of technologies from satellite communications and space launches to military artificial intelligence.
Starlink, in particular, has proven crucial to key programs — from drones to missile tracking — with a low‑Earth orbit constellation of nearly 10,000 satellites, offering the military a network resilient against potential adversary attacks.
However, the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program (previously unreported) highlight the risks of the Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX.
“If there was no Starlink, the US government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low‑Earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the drone tests or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said only that “the Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.” The Navy and SpaceX declined to comment.
Monopoly and warnings
Despite growing competition from Amazon, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement in mid‑April 2026 to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low‑Earth orbit communications. The company has also cemented a near‑monopoly in space launches and provides satellite communications via Starlink and its national‑security‑focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars in revenue.
In March 2026, the US Space Force reassigned an upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing‑Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.
Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of relying on a single company led by the world’s richest man for critical national security capabilities. Recent disagreements between the Defense Department and AI startup Anthropic, which led to the startup being blacklisted, quickly showed how over‑reliance on one AI vendor could create problems if that vendor is dropped.
In 2024, Reuters reported that Musk unexpectedly switched off Starlink access to Ukrainian troops as they sought to retake territory from Russia, denting allies’ trust in the billionaire. In Taiwan, SpaceX faced criticism over concerns that it was withholding satellite communications from US service members based there, “possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the US government,” according to a 2024 letter sent by then‑US Representative Mike Gallagher to Musk, reported by Forbes at the time.
SpaceX disputed the claim in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Reuters could not determine whether SpaceX has since provided Starlink service in Taiwan to US military personnel.
Starlink ‘exposed limitations’
SpaceX’s Starlink broadband has been crucial to the Pentagon’s drone program, providing connectivity to small unmanned maritime vessels that resemble seatless speedboats, including those made by Maryland‑based BlackSea and Austin, Texas‑based Saronic.
In April 2025, during a series of Navy tests in California involving unmanned boats and flying drones, officials reported that Starlink struggled to provide a solid network connection due to the high data usage needed to control multiple systems, according to a Navy safety report reviewed by Reuters.
“Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple‑vehicle load,” the report stated. It also cited issues linked to radios provided by Silvus and a network system from Viasat.
In the weeks leading up to the global Starlink outage in August 2025, another series of Navy tests was disrupted by intermittent connection problems with the Starlink network, Navy documents show. The causes of the network losses were not immediately clear.
Despite the setbacks, the upside of Starlink — a cheap and commercially available service — outweighs the risk of a potential outage disrupting future military operations, said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute.
“You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” he said.
Background: Starlink — global satellite network
Starlink is a global satellite communication system developed by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company. The project was announced in January 2015, and commercial operations began in 2021. The system uses low‑Earth orbit (LEO) satellites at an altitude of about 550 km — significantly lower than traditional geostationary satellites (35,000 km) — providing low signal latency (around 20–40 ms). As of the end of 2025, the Starlink constellation numbered more than 9,000 satellites, making it the largest commercial satellite constellation in the world. Each satellite has an expected service life of 4–6 years. Starlink satellites are equipped with phased array antennas and inter‑satellite laser links.
Mass deployment and military significance
Since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, thousands of Starlink terminals have been supplied to Ukraine. Some were paid for by the US government through USAID, as well as by the governments of France and Poland.
In March 2025, Musk publicly stated that Starlink is “the backbone of the Ukrainian army” and warned that “the entire front line would collapse” if the system were shut down. The Armed Forces of Ukraine use Starlink for battlefield communications, control of reconnaissance and strike drones, and artillery coordination.
In late September 2022, Musk ordered Starlink coverage to be cut off in the Kherson region at a moment when Ukrainian forces were conducting a counteroffensive. According to Reuters, the shutdown was carried out by SpaceX senior engineer Michael Nichols, and more than a hundred terminals were deactivated.
Due to the loss of communication, reconnaissance drones stopped functioning, artillery units lost their ability to conduct precision fire, and the operation to encircle Russian positions near the town of Beryslav failed. Ukrainian soldiers, not expecting the shutdown, panicked. Reuters sources said Musk feared a Russian nuclear response to the Ukrainian offensive. The decision “shocked” some Starlink employees.
A biography by journalist Walter Isaacson, published in late 2024, claimed that Musk also shut off Starlink coverage near Crimea to prevent Ukraine from attacking Russian ships in Sevastopol with naval drones.
In July 2025, a major Starlink outage occurred along the entire front line. The commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Robert Brovdi (call sign “Magyar”), reported a communication blackout lasting 2.5 hours.
