A recent incident in the Ukrainian city of Kherson saw a local civilian volunteer his personal Starlink terminal to residents left disconnected after a Russian missile strike, a small but vivid illustration of how central Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite internet ecosystem has become to every layer of life and defence in war-torn Ukraine. Last week’s unexpected, temporary slowdown of Starlink service across the country exposed a devastating vulnerability: Kyiv’s entire national defence and battlefield operations infrastructure is overwhelmingly dependent on a single, U.S.-owned private network, with no immediately viable alternative to match its speed, portability, and coverage. For frontline Ukrainian troops, who spoke anonymously to reporters, the difference between a fully operational Starlink connection and a lagging or disconnected system is a matter of life and death. One service member warned that a full, permanent shutdown of the network would trigger an “absolute catastrophe”, noting that cost considerations are irrelevant when personnel survival and mission success hang in the balance. Currently, Starlink’s consumer-focused network and its military-grade counterpart Starshield underpin nearly all of Ukraine’s real-time battlefield communications, drone control operations, and air defence response capabilities, enabling forces to intercept incoming Russian strikes and relay critical command data in seconds. Analysts emphasize that modern drone warfare is functionally impossible without the low-latency, high-speed connectivity Starlink provides. The recent temporary service degradation, which has since been restored, has amplified widespread anxiety across European capitals about the risks of ceding full control of critical military space infrastructure to a foreign private company, particularly amid escalating diplomatic frictions between Kyiv and Washington, and unpredictable policy shifts from U.S. political leadership. French Member of the European Parliament Christophe Grudler publicly stated that Ukraine’s national defence should never be subject to the arbitrary whims of former U.S. President Donald Trump or SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while a tangled, ongoing blame game between the Pentagon, Trump, and Musk has yet to clarify who ordered the temporary service restrictions earlier this month. As Kari Bingen, Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained, Starlink has been one of Ukraine’s most decisive strategic assets throughout the conflict, but the crisis has laid bare the dangerous “flipside of dependence”: Kyiv relies on a non-national critical military capability that it has no authority to operate, modify, or guarantee long-term access to. While a handful of competing satellite internet platforms exist, none currently come close to matching Starlink’s scale: SpaceX operates more than 10,000 active low-earth orbit satellites, while the largest European rival, Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation, runs only roughly 600 operational units. Starlink’s user terminals also offer a unique tactical advantage: they are compact, lightweight, and can be mounted easily on small drones, military vehicles, and remote frontline outposts, whereas Eutelsat’s hardware is significantly bulkier, cannot be fitted to small unmanned aerial systems, and costs approximately five times as much per unit. Musk himself publicly dismissed the possibility of a viable alternative last year, tweeting at Poland’s foreign minister that “there is no substitute for Starlink” after the Polish official announced plans to seek backup connectivity suppliers if SpaceX’s service became unreliable. The EU has accelerated efforts to build its own sovereign satellite internet ecosystem in response to these mounting risks, launching the Iris² programme – a defence-focused constellation designed to serve EU governments, military forces, and emergency response teams – that is scheduled to enter full operational status in 2029. As part of the EU’s official space initiative, the 348-satellite Iris² network is being developed by a consortium of leading European space firms including Eutelsat, SES, and Hispasat, operating under the SpaceRISE partnership. While the constellation will have far fewer total satellites than Starlink, project designers note that its optimized orbit configuration will deliver broad global coverage without requiring the tens of thousands of units SpaceX has deployed. For the short term, the EU is working to bring Ukraine into its existing Govsatcom shared satellite network, launched earlier this year to pool existing European satellite resources across member states. While full membership for Kyiv is still under negotiation, EU officials confirm that Ukraine will be granted access to Iris² the day the network goes live. Even once Ukraine joins Govsatcom, however, the platform cannot currently be used for classified military operations such as controlling offensive drone fleets, a restriction that European regulators hope to lift by early 2026 by integrating commercial constellations like OneWeb into the programme. Eva Berneke, former CEO of Eutelsat, confirmed that her firm is positioned to meet a significant share of Ukraine’s non-offensive critical connectivity needs, but noted that full coverage of the country’s massive, diverse wartime communications requirements will take years to fully implement. Independent analysts warn that even the most ambitious European space projects cannot deliver a full Starlink equivalent in less than 7 to 8 years, even with unprecedented levels of public funding. Multiple additional European initiatives are in early development to expand regional sovereign satellite capacity, including a joint satellite defence project between Finnish firms Nokia and ICEYE, and Project Bromo, a collaborative venture between aerospace giants Airbus, Leonardo, and Thales. As Berneke points out, satellite connectivity offers a uniquely resilient alternative to terrestrial 5G, fibre optic networks, and undersea data cables, all of which are highly vulnerable to physical attack during conflict – a risk the UK government acknowledged this week when it announced new protective measures for its undersea cable infrastructure amid a surge in suspicious activity from Russian naval vessels. For the foreseeable future, Ukrainian and European defence planners are not aiming to fully replace Starlink, but rather to build a multi-layered, redundant ecosystem of backup satellite networks to ensure no single point of failure can paralyse Ukraine’s national defence operations.