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By joining forces with Ukrainian designers to craft next-generation drones and interceptors, SpaceX could take the worldwide lead in this sphere of defense technology. Shown here is the leading-edge but expensive $4 million American Patriot missile. (Photo by John Tlumacki\/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Boston Globe via Getty Images<\/p>\n
While Iran\u2019s radical regime is threatening to strike the operations of trillionaire Elon Musk across the Mideast, SpaceX\u2019s founder could swiftly turn the tables by teaming up with Ukraine\u2019s defense-tech inventors to begin shooting down the Islamic Republic\u2019s drones, says a world-leading space defense scholar.<\/p>\n
On the eve of the SpaceX IPO that transformed Musk into the globe\u2019s first trillion-dollar tycoon, an Iranian news organ aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a warning that his entire business empire has been placed on the military\u2019s hit list.<\/p>\n
That means not just the thousands of Starlink internet satellite terminals scattered across the region, but also SpaceX\u2019s ground stations, and any outfit controlled by Musk\u2019s AI start-up xAI or messaging platform X, could all hypothetically come under attack, says Brian Hurley, founder of the influential New Space Economy think tank and digital magazine.<\/p>\n
SpaceX’s world-leading expertise in aeronautical engineering and AI-enhanced autonomous flight “are exactly the kinds of capabilities that matter in counter-drone defense.\u201d (Photo by Loren Elliott\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s state news agency Fars claimed the American and Israeli militaries had been using SpaceX Starlink technology and even \u201cTwitter software\u201d in attacks on Iran, and vowed armed revenge. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Starlink ground station located in the occupied territories of Qatar, Jordan, the UAE, and Oman, along with the partners of SpaceX \u2026 are Iran\u2019s new targets,\u201d Fars said in a provocative threat.<\/p>\n
Space scholar Hurley told me in an interview there has been no \u201cclear public evidence that SpaceX or Starlink directly supported U.S. military communications, battlefield coordination, or targeting in specific operations against Iran.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIran may be assuming or alleging this based on Starlink\u2019s role in Ukraine,\u201d adds Hurley, who chronicles the rising new space powers worldwide, and their strategic and diplomatic moves across the global geopolitical chessboard. <\/p>\n
Just months after American intelligence agencies<\/a> revealed that Moscow was secretly providing its defense partners in Tehran with pinpoint satellite-derived coordinates on the location of U.S. radars, space gear, jet fighters, troops and warships across the Middle East, Hurley says, \u201cRussia could extend intelligence support to include SpaceX or Starlink-related infrastructure in the region.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cRussia and Iran,\u201d he adds, \u201care clearly deepening their military and strategic partnership against Western interests.\u201d <\/p>\n The Russian army stages joint military exercises with Iran. (Photo by Dimitar DILKOFF \/ AFP) (Photo by DIMITAR DILKOFF\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a series of posts on the messaging platform X that the Kremlin\u2019s joint development, with Iran, of bomb-tipped drones to hit Israeli, American and Arab outposts, along with providing real-time targeting intel, shows that Moscow aims \u201cto effectively turn the Iranian regime\u2019s strikes against its neighbors and American bases into a second front of Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine and, more broadly, against the entire West.\u201d<\/p>\n President Zelensky, a lodestar leader hailed across the European democracies, also wondered, on X, whether Vladimir V. Putin might send Kremlin combatants to aid in Iran\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n Victoria Samson, chief director of space security at the globally influential defense think tank Secure World Foundation, in Washington, D.C., says while she agrees the Iran conflict could be morphing into a new front in the wider Russian-Iranian war with the West, dispatching Russian soldiers to face off against American forces might be too dangerously escalatory for Putin to risk.<\/p>\n One of the foremost experts in the U.S. on space defense and the predicted space wars of the future, Samson told me in an interview that Iran, while mirroring Russia\u2019s battle tactics, is threatening to escalate the scale of assaults on SpaceX gear. <\/p>\n While Moscow has sought to obliterate Starlink terminals across Ukraine, she says, Iran appears to be preparing to target SpaceX stations throughout the entire Middle East.<\/p>\n During Zelensky\u2019s epic leadership of Ukraine\u2019s remarkable resistance to the invasion by gigantic Russia, it has emerged, almost miraculously, as a world power in drone warfare. <\/p>\n Across the country, tech wunderkinds directing aerial defense skunkworks have been inventing a fusillade of leading-edge drones, along with hit-to-kill interceptors to destroy the swarms of automated Russian-Iranian bombers that crash into Ukraine\u2019s ancient cities nightly. <\/p>\n Ukraine has become a global power in crafting leading-edge low-cost aerial weaponry like these “Peklo” drone missiles, and could team up with SpaceX to lead the world in this ever-expanding market. (Photo by Genya SAVILOV \/ AFP) (Photo by GENYA SAVILOV\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Zelensky has dispatched leading Ukrainian aces of drone battles, along with their anti-drone defenders, to help protect Mideast outposts targeted by Iran, even as their counterparts back in Europe begin training NATO forces in Denmark<\/a>, Germany<\/a> and Poland<\/a>.<\/p>\n The commander of Ukraine\u2019s fight to preserve its democracy and independence has opened the way to joint production, with liberal Allies, of remotely piloted compact aircraft for deployment across Europe and the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Iran starts targeting SpaceX, Starlink terminals, or related infrastructure in the Middle East,\u201d Hurley told me, \u201cthat would give both regional governments and SpaceX a stronger reason to consider Ukraine-style counter-drone defenses.”<\/p>\n \u201cUkraine has developed practical experience using lower-cost interceptors, electronic warfare, sensors, and rapid adaptation against Shahed-type drone attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n While American forces in the Mideast have been firing off high-tech but high-priced missile interceptors to destroy dirt-cheap Iranian drones bombarding Israel and the Arab allies of the U.S., along with U.S. radar installations and aircraft, there is a growing apprehension that these defenses could quickly be depleted.<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s moderately priced interceptors and drones could provide a perfect solution, Hurley says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes little sense to rely mainly on $4 million [American] PATRIOT missiles or $12 million THAAD interceptors against much cheaper Iranian-Russian drones.”<\/p>\n SpaceX and Elon Musk could initially press for the massive deployment of Ukrainian drones and interceptors to protect their outposts across the Gulf, Hurley says.<\/p>\n Yet the spacecraft superpower, with its world-leading expertise in aeronautical engineering, high-resolution sensors, constantly updated onboard imagery and map archives, and AI-enhanced automated flight and navigation, could join forces with Ukrainian designers to co-craft a torrent of increasingly sophisticated drones and interceptors.<\/p>\n While the Israeli and American armed forces have been experimenting with pilotless fighter aircraft, SpaceX could swiftly take the worldwide lead in crafting cutting-edge interceptors and drones. (Photo by IDF\/Newsmakers)<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n The crystal-gazing Hurley predicts SpaceX could “enter into the business of building lethal autonomous drones and autonomous defense systems and also military robots.\u201d<\/p>\n While Iran might be ahead, for the moment, with its stockpiles of explosive Shahed drones, SpaceX, with its just-realized $85 billion in IPO share proceeds, has a fantastical potential war chest to enter and win a drone arms race. <\/p>\n