WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is expanding its use of SpaceX’s Starshield satellite network aboard military aircraft, awarding the company a new fleet-level service contract that sheds light on how the system is being integrated across U.S. aviation fleets.
The Space Force’s Commercial Space Office posted an award notice on Aug. 25 for “Starshield Custom Fleet Aviation Services,” covering satellite subscription services for aircraft equipped with SpaceX’s Starshield Tile and smaller Tile Mini terminals. The value of the award was redacted.
The new task order was awarded July 28 and calls for worldwide Starshield service with data rates of at least 500 megabits per second downlink and 100 megabits per second uplink. The contract has a one-year base period through July 2027 and an option extending service through July 2028, according to the notice.
A supporting acquisition document provides some details on the Pentagon’s adoption of Starshield for airborne communications.
The document shows that U.S. government organizations have already funded development and qualification of ruggedized Starshield terminals for a range of military aircraft, including cargo planes and tactical fighter jets, and that additional installations are planned. Eleven government organizations participated in development of the Tile Mini during 2024 and 2025.
The Space Force said the government has spent about $51.9 million on development and qualification of the Tile Mini aviation-compatible terminals, including prototype fabrication, aircraft integration, interoperability assessments and testing. Acquisition officials cited that investment as one reason that moving to a competing provider would involve substantial duplicated costs.
The filing also provides a glimpse into Starshield’s aviation footprint. In estimating the cost of replacing existing equipment, the Space Force separately cites groups of 140, 90 and another 140 aviation terminals, along with additional hardware used by other mission partners. Redactions obscure which aircraft or organizations those numbers correspond to, so it’s not clear how many terminals are already operational or planned.
The award was made under the Space Force’s Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services contract, a multiple-award vehicle established in 2023 to let military users buy commercial satellite communications and other LEO services through individual task orders.
SpaceX has dominated task-order awards under the PLEO contract since its inception. By late 2024, the Space Force had awarded about $660 million in PLEO task orders, with the majority going to SpaceX, a service official said at the time. Demand grew so quickly that the Space Force subsequently increased the 10-year contract ceiling from its original $900 million to $13 billion.
Other companies have won work through the vehicle. OneWeb Technologies, for example, received the second task order this year under the Space Force’s new Warrior Plans initiative, an effort to acquire PLEO communications for the joint force.
For the latest aviation requirement, however, the Space Force concluded that SpaceX was the only provider currently able to meet its needs.
Government market research found OneWeb-compatible aviation terminals were the only potential alternative, but said none had been tested to MIL-STD-810H and MIL-STD-461G standards required for military aviation. The government also concluded that available OneWeb terminals were larger than the Starshield Tile Mini and could not meet requirements for some aircraft.
The justification was issued as an exception to the normal fair-opportunity process under the PLEO multiple-award contract, allowing the government to direct the task order to SpaceX without competing it among all vendors.
Space Force officials estimated that switching to another provider would require new terminal development, aircraft integration, cybersecurity and interoperability work, qualification testing and retraining. The government estimated such a transition could take 2-1/2 to three years and create operational gaps for aircraft already relying on Starshield.
The government also estimated that replacement hardware alone could cost roughly $72 million, on top of the previous $51.9 million spent developing and qualifying the Tile Mini.
The Starshield aviation architecture is also becoming more closely tied to Pentagon networks. The Space Force document says SpaceX is deploying Starshield-specific points of presence intended to improve connections between military users and the Defense Department Information Network, or DoDIN.
SpaceX describes Starshield as a secure, militarized satellite network built for government and national security use, leveraging SpaceX’s commercial Starlink technology and launch capabilities.
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