Problems with maneuvers by the US Navy show that the USA is also dependent on Starlink. It is widely known that the mobile data connections made possible by the satellite network play an important role in the Ukraine war. If the data connection fails, this can paralyze military systems. This is what happened off the coast of California.
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Both floating and flying drones were affected. Internal documents available to Reuters report multiple difficulties. In April 2025, Starlink proved to be not powerful enough. “Relying on Starlink has exposed limitations under the burden of multiple vehicles,” Reuters quoted a security report as saying. The Navy tested the simultaneous use of drones on water and in the air, but this overloaded the data connections. In the summer, the connection problems repeated themselves several times, and there were also difficulties with Silvus radio modules and a Viasat network.
Finally, on August 18, 2025, there was a total failure: Starlink was out of service in parts of North America. As a result, two dozen US Navy drones drifted at sea for almost an hour. The remote control no longer worked without a Starlink connection. A spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense did not comment on the details of the report to Reuters. She simply said that the military would deploy “multiple, robust systems across its wide network.”
Starlink’s importance in Ukraine
Starlink is owned by SpaceX, whose boss is the richest person in the world, Elon Musk. According to a previous statement from Musk, Starlink was not designed to facilitate drone warfare. The satellite network was announced at the beginning of 2015 – the year before, the Russian Federation occupied the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and opened war in Donbass. Starlink went into operation in 2021, and the following year Russia attempted a major attack with the aim of taking over the entire Ukraine within a few days. This was not successful, the war continues with high losses on both sides.
At the request of the Ukrainian government, SpaceX activated Starlink in the country. Both warring parties then used the service for military purposes. By the following year at the latest, Starlink was in use on all fronts. Also in 2023, the EU Parliament decided to build a European Starlink alternative called IRIS2. What is astonishing is that, according to the German federal government, the Bundeswehr does not need either IRIS2 or Starlink.
For about a year now, Russia has been said to have been able to extensively disrupt Starlink. It was only in February 2026 that SpaceX blocked the unauthorized Russian Starlink receivers in the war zone, with detrimental consequences for Russian attacks.
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At least once, Elon Musk is said to have sabotaged a Ukrainian attack by unexpectedly turning off Starlink. Ukraine is also dependent on the USA for intelligence, which has used it as a means of pressure and temporarily suspended the information.
Ukraine is planning its own satellites
No wonder that Ukraine is planning its own space force and its own satellites, although these will have to be purchased from abroad. The plan is to bring the satellites into orbit using Ukrainian rockets. In the middle of the war, two test launches are said to have been successful. Fedir Venislavskyj, chairman of the subcommittee on defense innovation in the Ukrainian parliament, revealed this to the local news agency RBC-Ukraïna.
Because classic rocket launchers are large, stationary objects and therefore relatively easy targets for the enemy, Ukraine relies on rocket launches from aircraft. A rocket was launched twice from a height of around 8,000 meters. One crossed the Kármán line, which is considered the border to space, at a height of 100 kilometers, the other even shot up to 240 kilometers, said Wenislavsky. That would be a world record, which the politician also claims for his country.
The technology is to be used on the one hand for satellite launches into low-Earth orbit and on the other hand for defense against Russian medium-range ballistic missiles. The trajectory of these missiles leads through space, where they are difficult to detect, which is why there is currently no effective defense.
Long road to Starlink replacement
Wenislavsky estimates that building the full Ukrainian Space Force will take three to five years. The first “practical results” should come sooner. The minimum equipment is eight to ten satellites: four to five radar satellites, two to three for optical reconnaissance and one or two more for telecommunications.
However, this cannot be a complete replacement for Starlink; To do this, “we need to start with several hundred satellites to cover the entire territory of Ukraine.” The budget for this does not currently exist. After the war, the Ukrainian Space Force could become an economic factor “because it has the most advanced technology.”
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