SpaceX Starshield Gets First US Space Force Contract

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SpaceX Starshield has won a $70 million US Space Force contract.

Starshield will offer secure communications to the US Space Force like SpaceX is providing via Starlink for Ukraine.

Each secure SpaceX Starshield terminal will likely charge $1000 to $5000 per month. SpaceX has proven secure communications in Ukraine that Russia could not hack. SpaceX was able to update firmware faster than Russia could hack it.

The US has the need for 100,000 to 1 million secure terminals for government, military and intelligence services. This amount could double if US allies in NATO and developed world businesses (finance, banking) decide to adopt some version of Starlink-Starshield secure communications as a standard.

1 million secure terminals at $1000/month would $12 billion per year in revenue.
3 million secure terminals at $3000/month would $72 billion per year in revenue.

Nextbigfuture has covered the technical details of SpaceX Starshield.

SpaceX is providing 20,000 secure Starlink terminals in the Ukraine. Provided in months and require constant software updates to stay ahead of Russian hacking. Proven ability to stay secure in a wartime environment against primary geopolitical adversaries. SpaceX proved to the US military and government that they can provide secure communications. If the US government adopts Starlink for secure communications in a large way like is already being provided at scale in Ukraine, then how many businesses (particularly military contractors) will adopts Starlink for secure communications?

In April, 2022, an official with the US Office of the Secretary of Defense says he was impressed with how quickly SpaceX foiled a Russian jamming attempt on Starlink dishes in Ukraine March of 2022. “In kind of the way Starlink was able to upgrade when a threat showed up, we need to be able to have that agility,” Dave Tremper, director of electronic warfare at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said during the 2022 C4ISRNET military conference.

Starshield will upgrade for the US (and likely NATO allies soon enough) the secure communications prototypes in Ukraine. Starshield will give them custom modular satellites and upgraded dishes. This should also scale as line of business equal to residential Starlink. Companies and businesses will adopts this as a secure communications standard. This business adoption will start with primary government defense contractors.

Starshield will leverage SpaceX “inter-satellite laser communications” links and other secure communications. SpaceX currently uses lasers for direct satellite-to-satellite communication.

Starshield is a huge deal SpaceX to grow huge business for secure communications for the military, government and some other customers. However, they also talk about modular custom satellites with rapid development and deployment. SpaceX will get into the high volume custom satellite business.

SpaceX will also get into Earth Observation satellites.

In December 2022, SpaceX announced Starshield, a program to incorporate military or government entity payloads onboard a customized satellite bus (potentially based on Starlink Block v1.5 and v2.0 technology. The Starshield satellites are heavier than Starlink satellites. They have twice the area as a single Starlink v1.5 and have two pair of solar arrays as opposed to one on Starlink Block v1.5. Starshield is designed for US government use, with an initial focus on three areas, namely, earth observation, communications and hosting payloads.

Designed to meet diverse mission requirements, Starshield satellites are advertised as capable of integrating a wide variety of payloads, offering unique versatility to users. Starshield satellites will be compatible with and will connect to the existing commercial Starlink satellites via optical inter-satellite links.

In January 2022, SpaceX deployed four national security satellites for the US government on their Transporter-3 rideshare mission. In the same year they launched another group of four U.S. satellites with a single on-orbit spare Globalstar FM-15 satellite in June. Their purpose was not disclosed at the time of launch, but was considered likely either technical demonstration, communications, earth observation or signals intelligence.

It is suspected the four SpaceX-built Space Development Agency Tranche 0 Tracking Layer satellites due to launch in Q1 2023 are also based on the Starshield satellite bus.

There is a list of Starshield launches.

Starlink itself has multiple tiers of ground station, from ordinary consumer rooftop type to paired extra-tough nautical version. Starshield will have high-end systems with additional high-assurance cryptographic capability and higher prices.

SpaceX will build modular satellites for the military and others. This will enable SpaceX to mass-produce customized satellite constellations for other customers.

4 thoughts on “SpaceX Starshield Gets First US Space Force Contract”

  1. This seems like a serious error on Elon’s part. The debris fields from an enemy wiping out a constellation of this size, even if very low orbit, would halt SpaceX business for years. Militarization of Starlink technology must be very limited.

  2. I think you’re right that the StarShield standard will also be the service tier that sells to banking and financial firms. It will charge premium prices and sell a lot of hardware and service globally to every entity that can afford the best.

    There is still a major opportunity for SpaceX to sell priority traffic that’s significantly faster for moving data between distant points on earth – that would be a killer app between distant financial markets like Tokyo and New York, Hong Kong and London. Starlink/Starshield is inherently faster than fiber optic cable based on the physics.

    SpaceX could easily take over the market now occupied by services like Bloomberg terminals using this feature. This could bill at $20k/ month and sell to several hundred thousand accounts.

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