What Is Starshield, SpaceX’s Military Version of Starlink, and Why Is It So Important to Ukraine?

According to SpaceX, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads. 

“Starlink is basic interconnectivity, it’s like the Internet. Starshield essentially grows out of the experience of Starlink,” Mark Hilborne, a senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College London, tells TIME.

But the military value of that connectivity extends far beyond access to the Internet, Hilborne adds.

“In and of itself, satellite communications are not military technology, but it enables the military to communicate and amass a real-time, multi-domain picture of the battlefield, which some argue nobody else actually has at this stage,” he says.

Both systems also offer high-speed connectivity because of the satellite technology underpinning them. 

“Starlink and Starshield are low on the Earth’s orbit, and they have a very high bandwidth, so lots of information can pass through those satellites, with virtually no delay on the signal,” Hilborne says.