The US military’s growing reliance on Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly emerging as a potential operational risk. According to a Reuters report, these problems began attracting attention after US military officials faced a series of disruptions affecting their Starlink satellite network. In August 2025, the US Navy conducted a test off the coast of California. This test caused a global Starlink network outage, resulting in a loss of visibility for unmanned ships for almost an hour. This incident is just another in a series of failed tests tied to the rocket company’s services that have reportedly raised concerns at the Pentagon about the risk of relying on a single provider for critical services.According to the Reuters story, US Navy officials faced numerous communication problems during testing of unmanned surface vessels designed for possible confrontations with countries like China. Apart from this, the entire Starlink outage left millions of customers without a connection and stranded about 24 ships.The report also cited internal US Navy documents and a source familiar with the situation to claim that the operators temporarily lost contact with the ships due to reliance on Starlink. Testing in April 2025 also identified instability under substantial data loads.
How SpaceX’s role has been growing in US defence systems
SpaceX has become a critical partner of the U.S. government for satellite communications, launch services and emerging military technologies. Its constellation of Starlink satellites, which has nearly 10,000 in low Earth orbit, supports everything from drone operations to missile tracking.“If there was no Starlink, the US government wouldn’t have access to a global constellation of low earth orbit communications,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.The company’s role extends beyond communications. It has secured multiple launch contracts, including reassigned GPS missions by the US Space Force due to delays in competing systems.US lawmakers have expressed their concerns about using a single contractor run by Elon Musk for military infrastructure. Possible threats include service disruptions, strategic differences, or constraints on availability.Earlier, there had been other instances that led to such worries. According to Reuters, the Ukrainian military had limited access to Starlink during its combat against Russian aggression, hampering communication. There was another instance in Taiwan, where doubts emerged over the availability of services for US soldiers, but SpaceX denied allegations.Meanwhile, the Pentagon has maintained that it uses multiple systems. “Department leverages multiple, robust, resilient systems for its broad network,” said Kirsten Davies, the Department of Defense’s chief information officer.Despite these hurdles, experts say the military appears heavily dependent on Starlink because of its availability and reach compared with other options. Other initiatives by firms such as Amazon are still developing and have not yet caught up with Starlink. Nevertheless, these instances raise an important problem for the Pentagon: finding the right balance between utilising the benefits of commercial technology and becoming overly dependent on a few companies.“You accept those vulnerabilities because of the benefits you get from the ubiquity it provides,” said Bryan Clark, an autonomous warfare expert at the Hudson Institute.
