Why The Pentagon May Pay Elon Musk
Two officials from the Pentagon are reportedly in discussions over whether or not the agency should pay SpaceX money for its continued supply of Starlink internet to Ukraine.
After Elon Musk said last Friday that SpaceX could not indefinitely fund Starlink internet service in Ukraine, the Pentagon announced that it might be willing to pick up the tab to keep the war-torn country online. If so, according to an article on Politico, the funding would likely come from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. The initiative was designed in 2014 to provide Ukraine with weapons and equipment in its ongoing conflict with Russia.
Earlier this month, Musk replied to a tweet that stated widespread Starlink outages were hindering Ukraine’s efforts to “liberate territory from Russian forces.” Musk replied, “Bad reporting by FT. This article falsely claims that Starlink terminals & service were paid for, when only a small percentage have been. This operation has cost SpaceX $80M & will exceed $100M by end of year. As for what’s happening on the battlefield, that’s classified.”
Musk’s statement was a follow-up to the warning he gave the Pentagon via SpaceX’s director of government sales in September. After detailing how much the 20,000 donated satellite units were costing SpaceX, the letter told Pentagon officials that service could be terminated unless the U.S. military starts paying tens of millions of dollars per month to keep Ukraine online. The SpaceX letter explained that Starlink would cost more than $120 million through the end of 2022, and could reach $400 million over the next twelve months.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” said SpaceX’s director of government sales. The letter was sent with other documents, including a previously unreported request made by the Ukrainian military’s commanding general, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhniy. In July, Gen. Zaluzhniy directly asked Musk for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals. In a separate letter to the Pentagon, a SpaceX consultant wrote, “SpaceX faces terribly difficult decisions here. I do not think they have the financial ability to provide any additional terminals or service as requested by General Zaluzhniy.”
The written communications provided a previously unseen look into the extent of how much Starlink had provided to Ukraine at little cost to Kyiv. It also shed some light on Musk’s other motive for asking the Pentagon to foot the bill. After reading Musk’s proposed peace plan for Russia’s war on Ukraine, Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany said, “F*** off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk.”
When a tweet referenced the Pentagon/Starlink proposal and Melnyk’s comments, Musk simply said, “We’re just following his [Melnyk’s] recommendation.” Musk was already under criticism for the details of his proposed peace plan because it included Ukraine giving up its control over the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he questioned who Musk sides with, but Musk replied that he still supported Ukraine though he feared a massive escalation of the violence.
However, on Monday, Musk tweeted that SpaceX had withdrawn its funding request from the Pentagon. According to CNN, the U.S. government and other entities including the U.K. and Poland have already been partially funding the expensive but critical internet service in Ukraine. Some feel that it’s wrong for Musk and SpaceX to act like heroes for providing Starlink service when others have been helping to fund its presence there.
If the Pentagon does decide to help Starlink keep Ukraine online, it will be another hefty taxpayer-funded expense in the ongoing battle between Russia and Ukraine. The DoD’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative has sent an astronomical amount of money to Ukraine over the past year, but its numbers are far from the actual total. From August 2021 to August 2022, the initiative’s published total exceeded $8 billion, but according to Market Realist, the real sum is over $54 billion.
