Starlink outage hit drone tests, exposing Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX

Last August, U.S. Navy officials carrying out ​a test of unmanned vessels realised they had hit a single point of failure: Starlink. A global outage across Elon Musk’s satellite network affecting millions of ‌Starlink users had left two dozen unmanned surface vessels bobbing off the California coast, disrupting communications and halting operations for almost ​an hour.

The incident, which involved drones intended to bolster U.S. military options in a conflict with China, was one ⁠of several Navy test disruptions linked to SpaceX’s Starlink that left operators unable to connect with autonomous boats, according to internal Navy documents reviewed by Reuters and a person familiar with the matter.