The Space Force has signed SpaceX to deliver Starshield internet service across its military aircraft fleets, a deal that shows how far Pentagon reliance on the company’s satellite network has spread.
The Commercial Space Office posted an award notice on Aug. 25 for “Starshield Custom Fleet Aviation Services,” a task order issued July 28 that covers worldwide service for planes outfitted with SpaceX’s Tile and Tile Mini terminals. The notice calls for downlink speeds of at least 500 megabits per second and 100 megabits per second uplink, with a one-year base period through July 2027 and an option running to July 2028. Its value is redacted.
Supporting documents detail the government’s investment in the aviation terminals. Eleven organizations helped develop the Tile Mini during 2024 and 2025, and the Space Force says it has spent about $51.9M on fabrication, aircraft integration, interoperability checks and testing. Officials cited that spending as a reason switching providers would be costly, and market research found only OneWeb-compatible terminals as possible rivals, none certified to the MIL-STD-810H and MIL-STD-461G standards military aviation requires, with the gear too bulky for some planes.
The result is a task order placed without competition under the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services contract, the multiple-award vehicle the Space Force set up in 2023 to buy commercial LEO communications.
SpaceX has dominated task orders there since the start; the ceiling grew from $900M to $13B as demand surged, and roughly $660M had been obligated by late 2024. OneWeb Technologies took the vehicle’s second task order this year under the Warrior Plans initiative.
The filing also cites groups of 140, 90 and another 140 aviation terminals when estimating replacement costs, though redactions hide which aircraft or units those numbers represent.
