Europe: Get Satellites or Get Throttled

European powers must urgently break Elon Musk’s near-monopoly over military communications. It won’t be easy. It won’t be cheap. It won’t happen fast. But it’s necessary to ensure no one man can repeat the trillionaire’s treatment of Ukraine in early October, when he throttled Ukraine’s access to the Starlink and Starshield satellite systems now central to its military operations.

Starlink is a commercial satellite communications service, with Starshield a more capable military version. Both belong to Musk’s SpaceX. Ukraine — and many other Western powers, for that matter — relies on them for an array of vital military functions. They connect troops to their headquarters and drones to their operators.

Overnight and without warning in mid-October, thousands of satellite terminals failed in Ukraine. Operators discovered that SpaceX had imposed a speed limit of approximately 160 kmh (100 mph) or slower. Above that speed, a drone couldn’t connect to its operator. Many of the faster drones, including interceptor drones that Ukraine uses to defeat Russia’s own attack drones, couldn’t function.

Musk lifted the speed limit after around a week and eventually said he had ordered the restrictions because Ukraine had violated the satellite provider’s terms and conditions of service by using Starlink for offensive rather than defensive missions. Ukrainian officials denied that.

The problem isn’t going away. Starlink and Starshield are the world’s most flexible, affordable, and robust SATCOM services. For a small monthly fee, as low as $55 a month for private users in the United States, a subscriber gains access to a constellation of 11,000 signal-relaying satellites in low Earth orbit. Nearly 14 million people pay for Starlink.

No other SATCOM service can compare. But Europe had better build one, and fast, if it wants to preclude future disruptions. Fortunately for Europe, there are alternatives. Unfortunately for Europe, they don’t exist at nearly the scale the continent may require.

To ensure around-the-clock coverage everywhere, a SATCOM service needs thousands of satellites effectively blanketing Earth. SpaceX has already spent tens of billions of dollars developing, building, launching, operating, and replacing those 11,000 (and counting) satellites since 2015. The firm will continue spending big to expand the constellation.

Every rival service is playing catch-up. French SATCOM firm Eutelsat has fewer than 700 satellites in orbit, and plans to increase this to 1,300 by 2030. Luxembourg operator SES has slightly more than 100 satellites. Spanish operator Hisdesat has two satellites. The EU-backed $15.6bn IRIS2 program will begin launching satellites in 2029, and the German military plans its own network of “Fritzboxes”. But the ramp-up will take years, even if money were no issue.

But money is an issue. The war in Ukraine, and the United States’ increasing mercurialness as an ally, have served as a painful reminder of Europe’s military capability gaps. They are myriad. In particular, Europe lacks a deep stock of long-range land-attack munitions and also lacks long-range air-defense systems with anti-ballistic-missile capability. For land attack, Europe still mostly counts on the United States and its Tomahawk cruise missiles. For air defense, American-made Patriot, Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense  (THAAD) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries still provide the vast majority of coverage.

The Europeans are moving swiftly to address the deep strike gap but are moving much slower to develop a true alternative to Patriot, THAAD and SM-3. The Franco-Italian SAMP/T is the only available replacement, but the Eurosam consortium builds embarrassingly low numbers of batteries and Aster missiles for them to launch. Europe’s inability to solve its air defense problem bodes ill for any near-term solution to the SATCOM gap.

It could pivot away from SATCOM, of course. There are other ways to connect drones to their operators and infantry to their commanders, including mesh radio networks and fiber-optic hardlines. Some drones can even piggyback on commercial 5G networks. AI guidance means some drones can navigate entirely on their own without any operator input.

But the Ukrainians have learned the hard way to layer their communications. Every connection has a back-up, and a back-up for that back-up. SATCOM is a reliable backstop for other communications. If, in the current war or some future war, Musk decides to align against Europe and throttles or yanks Starlink and Starshield, countries will be left scrambling.

Unless they spend big, now.

David Axe is a journalist, author, and filmmaker in South Carolina. For 20 years, he has covered war for Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, The Village Voice, Voice of America, and others. He has reported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. His current focus is on covering Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. 

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.