The other consideration is that the kill switch is ultimately controlled by the US. The US government can easily commandeer Starlink or jail Musk, but other countries use starlink at the pleasure of both Musk and the US government.

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redgridtactical 6 hours ago | parent [-]

That's the part that makes allied nations nervous. If you're running military comms through Starlink and the US decides to play hardball in some trade dispute, your entire C2 network just became a bargaining chip. Ukraine showed how quickly access decisions become political. I think we'll see European and Asian allies start investing in their own LEO constellations specifically because of this - nobody wants their military dependent on another country's CEO.

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nradov 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

European and Asian allies would have to start by investing in low-cost launch capabilities. So far they're making approximately zero progress in that area.

The reality is that all US allies except for maybe France no longer have the capability to project power much outside their own territory without active US support. It's not only satellites. They're also missing just about everything else such as logistics, specialized aircraft, air defense, amphibious capabilities, intelligence, etc. With largely stagnant economies there's no way they can sustain the funding necessary to close those gaps unless they join together in closer alliances with each other.

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realityking 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most European countries (except France and the UK) are not interested in projecting power outside of a fairly narrow geographic area (mostly the European continent and adjacent seas).

These “military starlinks” will be much smaller systems than actual Starlink. The German one plans for 100 satellites.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-07/airbus-te...

	▲	inemesitaffia 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm betting on every single implementation costing $10B minimum

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redgridtactical 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're right that the launch cost gap is the real barrier. Europe's been talking about sovereign launch capability for years but Ariane 6 still can't compete on cost with SpaceX. I think the more likely path is that smaller nations lease capacity on someone else's constellation rather than building their own. The question is whether that actually solves the dependency problem or just moves it from one provider to another.

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parsimo2010 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most countries would not need to make their C2 infrastructure fully dependent on Starlink, because most countries are not big enough and cannot project enough power globally to make this an actual requirement, and the few countries who can project power globally can afford multiple communications layers. But your core idea is true.

This is explicitly one reason the US marketed the F-35 so hard to their allies. In addition to giving their allies a good capability, it made their air force dependent on continuing US support, so politicians wishing to go against US positions have to be willing to sacrifice their military power to do so. This gives the US a strong lever in negotiating.

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wmf 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

LEO is pretty expensive. Smaller countries might be better off with cheaper Astranis GEO satellites.

	▲	jasonwatkinspdx 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's other interesting middle ground options, like O3b's equatorial MEO ring, that has coverage similar to GEO as far as latitudes go, but better latency.