SpaceX’s launch services have become a valuable resource for the U.S. government, but the company is now taking its global communications technology into deeper waters with Starshield, a new SpaceX vertical that claims to provide secure communications and custom satellite designs for “government entities. The new brand (possibly a subsidiary) appears as a new top category on SpaceX’s website alongside Dragon, Starlink and Starship, but otherwise receives no visible discussion in the company’s media literature.
Starshield’s tagline is “supporting national security,” but it’s unclear whether this will actually be in direct support of military intelligence or operations, or whether it will be limited to a role that is not purely civilian, and then less directly involved in combat.
Data from satellite sources – especially real-time imagery – is important to the military, which both uses spy satellites to produce its own data and pays companies such as Black Swan to purchase it. While some other countries may be able to take advantage of some of these capabilities, U.S. law limits the amount of satellite imagery that can be sold abroad.
While Starshield’s page uses the present tense to say it offers certain services, it doesn’t list any active missions or customer cases, so this may be rhetorical. That said, the company claims to be engaged in Earth observation and secure communications, as well as satellite bus design.
While SpaceX has plenty of experience putting satellites into orbit through Starlink, the network is consumer-oriented and generic, not a designated mission asset like space satellites. If SpaceX had any military-grade Earth observation satellites of its own, it would never be difficult to design and launch them, and the success of Starlink shows that there is no reason in principle why the company could not do so.
SpaceX says the government-focused service will require “Starshield user equipment” that may be similar to Starlink, but meets certain special criteria for reliability, access, documentation and compatibility with existing networks and assets. Since Starlink itself has multiple tiers of earth stations, ranging from a common consumer rooftop model to a paired super maritime model, the Starshield version will likely be one of the similar high-end versions, enhanced (e.g., with “additional high-assurance encryption capabilities”), and with an expensive price tag.
More importantly, the move will help separate government work from consumer work. The company has lamented that its deployment of thousands of terminals in Ukraine has led to legal and financial accusations of hardship. Ukraine can’t pay, its allies won’t agree to pay, and SpaceX can’t provide the expensive service for free indefinitely. Partly because the entire network was never actually intended to be used in this way, grafting a military/aid operation onto a consumer product has led to unforeseen consequences.
By being more careful about what services it provides to government entities and on what terms, SpaceX may hope to avoid becoming a blurred line between a global broadband providers and military intelligence providers. Both may be very profitable in their own ways, but rarely does one product adequately serve both purposes.
The company also claims to produce a modular satellite bus for different mission types, and while this too is unproven – not that it isn’t – this capability is simply stated, with nothing to show but a wireframe diagram.
Just how far SpaceX has come in realizing the capabilities it describes here is anyone’s guess – they may well have built some concept prototypes with some potential customers, or this may just be a statement of intent in consideration for those customers. Whichever was just the case, it seems clear that we’ll be hearing a lot more about this service as its role escapes attempts at secrecy – it’s hard enough now to launch an Earth observation satellite without anyone knowing about it, for example.
