IN HIS FIRST few months, President Donald Trump has shredded the transatlantic alliance and damaged the trust of America’s allies. He has suspended arms shipments and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, and then restored both when Ukraine accepted a proposed 30-day ceasefire. All this has sparked doubts across Europe about the wisdom of relying on American arms for security.
Ukrainian troops rely heavily on Starlink, a satellite-internet service provided by SpaceX, an American firm founded by Elon Musk. Last week it emerged that the European Union (EU) had approached domestic satellite operators to discuss replacing Starlink if America pulls the plug. A €1.5bn ($1.6bn) deal for Starlink to provide Italy’s soldiers and diplomats with secure communications is looking shaky.
Mr Musk has hardly been calming things down. On March 9th he said that Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it [Starlink] off”, then told Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, to “be quiet, little man” when he said that would force Ukraine to find alternatives. Mr Musk later said he would never use Starlink “as a bargaining chip” in Ukraine.
In any case, Europe does have alternatives. Eutelsat is a French firm that runs OneWeb, a direct Starlink rival, that already operates in Ukraine. Eva Berneke, its boss, said it has been in talks with the Italian government, although the Italians later played down the claim. Eutelsat’s share price has risen five-fold since the beginning of March. Companies such as SES, based in Luxembourg, or Hispasat, a Spanish firm, also offer satellite services.
But none can match Starlink’s price, capacity or scale. Starlink has over 7,000 satellites in low orbit. OneWeb’s fleet is less than one-tenth the size. Lluc Palerm-Serra at Analysys Mason, a consultancy, reckons Starlink can offer dozens to hundreds of times more bandwidth to Ukraine’s soldiers than OneWeb could. SES and Hispasat’s fleets are smaller still, and many of their satellites fly much higher, which adds delays to connections that use them.
Mass production allows SpaceX to charge just $400 for Starlink’s satellite dishes. Terminals for OneWeb can cost over $10,000. Replacing the 40,000 Starlink antennae thought to be in Ukraine would be expensive. And even European firms have links with America. OneWeb’s satellites were built in Florida; many of SES’s are made by American firms such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Both companies have launched satellites through SpaceX.
In December the EU signed a €10.6bn contract to develop IRIS2, a Starlink-style system of 290 satellites designed for governmental and military use. (China, Russia and Taiwan are all pursuing similar systems.) But it is expensive, of modest size, and not due to be switched on until 2031 at the earliest. Starlink is not quite irreplaceable. But the threat of losing it makes Europe feel very uncomfortable indeed. ■