Ukraine said on Wednesday that Elon Musk's SpaceX had restricted "military-grade" Starlink services, hampering Ukrainian drone strike missions and air defenses.

The complaint has drawn renewed attention to the distinction between Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite internet service, and Starshield, a military version developed for the Pentagon. ​While Musk has said the two systems are separate, in many cases they share the same underlying satellite technology.

"Starshield systems ‌are owned and controlled by the US government," Musk said on Wednesday in a post on X, adding that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military or the president. "Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot ​be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company."

Starlink, the main profit ​engine of SpaceX, is a satellite internet network of more than 11,000 satellites that beam broadband service directly ⁠to user terminals about the size of a folded newspaper. Its roughly 13 million subscribers range from households and hikers to shipping companies ​and major airlines.

Since launching its first Starlink satellites in 2019 aboard reusable SpaceX rockets, the company has built a vast low-Earth-orbit constellation that blankets ​much of the planet, delivering faster connections than traditional communications satellites, which typically operate much farther from Earth and in far smaller numbers.

Starlink gave Ukraine a critical communications advantage early in the war, reshaping how militaries operate on the battlefield.

Source link