Starlink outage hit drone tests, exposing Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX

Last August, US Navy officials carrying out a test of unmanned vessels realized they had hit a single point of failure: Starlink. A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost an hour.

The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster US military options in a conflict with China, was one of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.

As SpaceX rockets toward a USD2 trillion public offering this summer – expected to be the largest ever – the company has secured its position as the world’s most valuable space company in part by being indispensable to the US government with an array of technologies spanning satellite communications to space launches and military AI.

Starlink, in particular, has proved key to crucial programs - from drones to missile tracking - with a low-earth orbit constellation of close to 10,000 satellites, a scale that provides the military with a network resilient against potential adversary attacks.

But the Navy’s mishaps with Starlink for its autonomous drone program, which have not been previously reported, highlight the challenges of the US military’s growing reliance on SpaceX and the risks it brings to the Pentagon.

“If there was no Starlink, the US government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, a 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 test or SpaceX’s work with the Navy. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said the “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network.”

The Navy and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. Despite facing growing competition from Amazon.com, which announced an $11.6 billion agreement this week to acquire satellite maker Globalstar, SpaceX remains far ahead in low-earth orbit communications. Beyond drones, SpaceX has cemented a near-monopoly for space launches and provides satellite communications with Starlink and its national security-focused constellation, Starshield, generating billions of dollars for the company. Last month, US Space Force said it had reassigned its upcoming GPS launch to a SpaceX rocket for the fourth time, due to a glitch in the Vulcan rocket made by the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance.

WARNINGS ABOUT RELYING ON SPACEX Democratic lawmakers have warned the Pentagon about the risks of its reliance on a single company led by the world’s richest man to deliver crucial national security capabilities. More recently, the Defence Department’s disagreements and blacklisting of AI startup Anthropic quickly revealed how an overreliance on one AI vendor could create problems should that vendor be dropped. Reuters reported last year 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 it was withholding satellite communications to 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.