“Being able to communicate with friends or family allows our Sailors the opportunity to decompress for a few minutes, and that in turn allows them to operate more efficiently,” said Richard Haninger, the FordResilience Educator Deployed, saying following the installation of the SEA2 system on board the aircraft carrier in February 2023. “It’s not just about communicating with friends and family, the ability to pay a bill online, take an online class or even just check the score of the game (…) all of this allows our Sailors the opportunity to access something that reduces their stress level and then return to work after a short break more focused and able to complete the mission.”
But beyond morale-boosting applications, SEA2 also reportedly offers significant benefits for the “tactical and business applications” that sailors use every day, such as, for example, Those used for wing maintenance or for monitoring salaries and benefits.As White explained in a Released in May At the Navy’s initiative, most of these applications operate at higher classification levels and are encrypted, but are still designed to operate on the commercial Internet without compromising information security.
“The fact that we’re not taking advantage of that opportunity with modern technology to allow classified tactical applications to travel over the commercial Internet is something we’re missing out on, which is why we built (SEA2) to be able to do that in the future,” White said. put it“We are close to demonstrating a couple of those applications and I am fully confident that they will be game-changers.” (As of June, the Navy had not authorized the use of data classified with the system)
The Navy also expects to see a broad “tangible impact on warfighting” from the proliferation of SEA2 across the surface fleet, specifically in “recruiting and retention, mental health, cloud services, and work stoppages due to slow and inaccessible websites,” as one service official put it. said DefenseScoop in April.
The Navy isn’t the only service adopting Starlink to enable faster, more persistent internet connectivity for deployed service members. The U.S. Space Force signed A $70 million contract with Starlink parent company SpaceX in October 2023 to provide “global, best-effort subscription for diverse terrestrial, maritime, stationary and mobility platforms and users” using Starshield, the company’s name for its military products. The U.S. military currently remains reliant on Starlink, but the service has been looking at new commercial satellite constellations to take advantage of advanced command-and-control capabilities. according According to Defense News, SpaceX is actively building a network of “hundreds” of specialized Starshield spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, according to Reuters. reported Earlier this year.
But Starlink is far from a perfect system, especially for potential military applications. According According to a technical report obtained by The Debrief, Ukraine has claimed that Russia’s military intelligence agency has carried out “large-scale cyberattacks” to access data from Starlink satellite constellations that have proven to be essential to the former’s military communications infrastructure since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Indeed, major hardware vulnerabilities have put Starlink terminals at risk at the hands of experienced hackers, as WIRED has previously documented.
More importantly, there is the question of Musk’s ownership of StarlinkThe controversial SpaceX founder had previously refused to allow Ukraine to use the satellite constellation to launch a surprise attack on Russian forces in Kremlin-controlled Crimea in September 2022. incitement Concerns among Pentagon decision makers that A private citizen with a questionable perception of geopolitics. It could dramatically shape U.S. military operations during a future conflict simply by shutting off service branches’ access to Starlink, according to the Associated Press. last year’s report.
“Living in the world we live in, where Elon runs this company and it’s a private business under his control, we live off his favors,” one Pentagon official said. said The New Yorker in August 2023. “That sucks.”
Given these potential risks, it’s unlikely that Starlink will be more deeply integrated into the core tactical systems that govern the operation of a Navy warship at sea. But for the moment, it seems that sailors will at least get a welcome respite from the stress and loneliness of life on the high seas.
