For those who don’t know, for a ~$400 terminal, UA can C&C a medium-long range drone/ plane or cruise missile which has low latency, massive global coverage, and which is resilient against EM jamming (apparently the terminal handoffs from one satellite to another make it ideal for resisting an enemy’s jamming efforts). Also the obvious: it maintains MUCH better resilient comms between front lines and HQ (RU depended on this, but they were cut off a few months ago, causing coordination chaos).

There is discussion that if Taiwan gets a similar deal to Ukraine for StarLink access, it makes the porcupine strategy much more viable.

Conversely, any country which can’t get access to it loses a massive tool in the tool chest.

And sadly, it means that if the US continues to be fickle with allies, those allies may not be able to rely on such a valuable tool.

Cool, nationalise SpaceX, reintegrate its costs into NASA, done.

The US would never let its access to space be cut off.