The U.S. Army has been working to integrate SpaceX Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications for the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone.
The latter has been a discussion topic in the last nearly two years among policy makers and lawmakers to provide to Ukraine for its defense against the Russian assault on the country on Feb. 24, 2022 (Defense Daily, Sept. 29, 2022). Ukrainian military forces have used Starlink extensively during the conflict.
Yet, supplying Ukraine with the MQ-1C has not gained traction within the administration.
The Army has put in relatively small delivery orders to General Atomics thus far for the Starlink demonstration–$550,000 in July, 2022 and nearly $5 million last May for Starlink Phase 2 integration.
General Atomics said that just days after receiving a $389 million contract from the Army in early December for the Gray Eagle 25M–the latest variant of the drone–the company flew the Gray Eagle 25M for the first time (Defense Daily, Jan. 25). The Gray Eagle 25M features an updated engine and advanced avionics, the company said.
GA-ASI said that it began upgrading the first two Extended Range Gray Eagle UAS to the new 25M variants in early 2022.
In September 2022, members of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus advised Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that Ukraine could benefit from the provision of Gray Eagles, as Ukraine could hold them far from the front lines to conduct long-range precision tracking and targeting against Russian rockets and missiles.
Adding Starlink communications for U.S. drones could have significant benefits.
The Pentagon and SpaceX have not responded to queries on whether DoD has a contract or other agreement with SpaceX to provide the Ukrainian military with Starlink communications and how much such a contract is worth. Defense Daily has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Defense Information Services Agency for any such records.
Starlink has been in demand among the U.S. military for overseas operations.
“With Ukraine’s operations emergent communication requirement, the communication requirements within and around Eastern European areas in support of Ukraine operations expands daily,” U.S. Air Forces Europe wrote in a sole source justification in June 2022 for a $1.9 million award to SpaceX for Starlink communications provision to the 86th Airlift Wing and its tenant units at Ramstein AFB, Germany for missions in Europe and Africa.
“Starlink LEO fulfills the requirement of reducing processing times and increases theater based operations on changing requirements and locations,” the sole source justification said. “It also builds in circuit resiliency through Software Defined Wide Area networking (SDWAN) for one of the units allowing for multiple transport sources. After extensive research it was found that SpaceX-Starlink is the only vendor able to provide this specialized communication service in the current areas of operation in the required time.”
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), through the Global Lightning exercises with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, “has discovered that in a contested environment, LEO constellations are much more resilient to signal jamming and also provide the low latency required to support tactical missions” than geosynchronous and medium Earth orbit satellite constellations, USAFE said in the sole source justification.
“Apart from the capabilities of the [Starlink] terminal, the fiscal advantages are immense.” Marine Corps Forces Europe (MARFOREUR) officials, attested on Sept. 13, 2022 in the approval of a $170,000 Starlink contract for three Starlink terminals and a year’s service. “The terminals cost $2,500 each and unlimited service with no data cap which can be moved anywhere in the world costs $4,500 a month. These price points are vastly lower than any of SpaceX’s competitors. Apart from the fiscal advantages, SpaceX is not vulnerable to supply chain issues due to its self-contained path from manufacturing, assembling, and launching its own satellites, and manufacturing, assembling, and shipping its own terminals.”
“All other competitors rely on third party satellite launches which went through Kazakhstan, Russia, France, China, and Spain,” MARFOREUR said. “While all the listed countries aren’t hostile to the United States, there are additional considerations and mitigations that need to take place due to the possible threat of infiltration to the networks. SpaceX Starlink does not have this issue. They also have embedded U.S. military fellowship groups which continually report back capability breakthroughs and possible uses for the terminals to fill the gaps which the DoD has.”
“Due to the urgent nature of the capabilities needed to continue the assure and deter mission in Eastern Europe, these terminals are needed more now than ever,” the document said. “The unpreparedness of the Marine Forces in Europe show a need to be proactive to any aggression by hostile entities instead of being reactive and falling behind.”
“Marine Corps units operating in Eastern Europe are consistently locked down to locations that have optical fiber access points due to the volume of information that they gather and transfer to higher echelon entities,” according to the statement from the officials, including Marine Lt. Col. Michael Gerson, the deputy G-6 for Marine Forces Europe. “Being locked to positions that can be targeted severely compromises the availability of real-time relevant data which the units are there to detect, report, and deter.”