Starshield: SpaceX's Secret Satellite Constellation for Military Operations
Quick answer
Should you get a backup connection for Starlink?
Yes. Starlink goes down every day — an always-on dish averages about 34 minutes of downtime daily from routine satellite handoffs. A second connection keeps you online when Starlink drops.
What’s the best backup connection for Starlink?
A 4G/5G cellular hotspot or SIM is the most practical backup for most Starlink users — it works anywhere Starlink works, requires no installation, and uses a different network so outages rarely overlap. Cable or DSL broadband is a strong option if you have it at a fixed location. A second Starlink dish is also possible if you need maximum throughput.
How do you use two internet connections at once with Starlink?
Speedify combines Starlink with any other connection — cellular, cable, Wi-Fi, or a second dish — into one bonded connection. Speedify runs on your phone, laptop, or router. When Starlink drops, Speedify moves your traffic to the backup instantly, so calls don’t cut out and downloads don’t stall. Speedify is free to try.
71% of Speedify’s Starlink users already run a second connection. The data below shows why.
Try Speedify free →Speedify Starlink Index — real-world performance from 6,209 Starlink users: 2.4% downtime, about 34 minutes a day for always-on connections
Starlink goes down every day.
Here’s what that actually looks like.
Speedify passively monitors every connection it bonds. These figures come from 6,209 Starlink users over 14 days — compared in real time against the other connections on the same devices. No speed tests, no lab conditions.
Daily downtime
~34 min
2.4% of connected time unreachable
Median latency
60 ms
p90 spikes to 257 ms
Avg packet loss
0.17%
vs 0.08% on T-Mobile
71% ran at least one other connection simultaneously — 4,381 of 6,209 users. Cellular is the most common backup.
Use Speedify to stay online during satellite handoffs every 15 seconds
Research confirms Starlink switches between satellites every 15 seconds on a fixed schedule. Each satellite handoff is a potential dropout, and on a congested network or with any obstruction, those Starlink dropouts become real interruptions.
Speedify fixes Starlink connection drops by combining your Starlink internet connection with another satellite dish, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, or wired Ethernet at the same time. When Starlink drops, Speedify keeps your traffic moving on the backup internet connection instantly.
Speedify alerts you about your Starlink dish status
Speedify software alerts you about your Starlink dish status as soon as your dish experiences an issue - e.g. when your actuator motor is stuck, the mast is not vertical or there's a thermal throttle.
Speedify's Starlink Control Center helps you monitor all your Starlink dishes, read obstruction maps, and align multiple dishes all in the Speedify app. Get a real-time view of each dish's health and optimize the position of each Starlink dish, so you get the best possible performance out of your Starlink connections.
Speedify
Speedify gives you faster, steadier internet by combining Wi-Fi, cellular, and Starlink
Speedify bonds Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, Ethernet, and Starlink into one connection at the same time, giving you more speed, automatic failover when one drops, and AES-256 encryption on every link.
Download Speedify ›More speed
Upload and download speeds combine across every active connection on your device.
Automatic failover
If a connection drops, Speedify moves your traffic to another in milliseconds. Calls stay connected.
Always encrypted
Every link runs through an encrypted tunnel, including public Wi-Fi, cellular, and Starlink.
Speedify Feature · Pair & Share
Speedify Pair & Share: share cellular between your devices, both ways
Most hotspots give. Speedify's Pair & Share gives and takes. Two devices running Speedify pair up and each uses the other's cellular connection simultaneously, so you both get faster uploads, faster downloads, and a steadier connection. No extra hardware, no new data plans, no setup beyond a tap.
Learn how Speedify's Pair & Share works ›More speed
Every device you pair with adds its cellular to yours, and yours to theirs.
Stays connected
If a paired device drops out, Speedify keeps you online on the remaining links.
Always private
Every shared connection runs through AES-256 encryption. Your traffic is yours.
No new gear
Runs on devices already running Speedify, over your local network. Pair once, reconnects automatically.
What Is SpaceX Starshield?
Alex Gizis: SpaceX has an entirely separate constellation of spy satellites known as Starshield. So, what is Starshield?
Brian Prodoehl: At least a hundred modified satellites for use for encrypted military communication and in some cases actually spying.
Alex Gizis: So, are they the same hardware? Like, these are just Starlink's owned by the military?
Brian Prodoehl: So, they're modified Starlink satellites. So, I think they have some slightly different technology on them.
Starshield System Military Applications and Current Deployment
Alex Gizis: So, is this SpaceX by themselves or are there other companies involved here?
Brian Prodoehl: SpaceX worked with Northrop Grumman to develop a lot of this technology here. Obviously, SpaceX brought the base what Starlink offers and I think whatever the NRO wanted to add, Northrop Grumman helped do that.
Alex Gizis: So, isn't there a concern that by militarizing these satellites You're making a target of them?
Brian Prodoehl: Definitely. The more militarized Starlink gets, the bigger a target is for either somebody that's looking to start a conflict or somebody that just wants to flex their might. But absolutely, yeah. Right.
How Russia Jams SpaceX's Starshield
Alex Gizis: So I was reading about Russia's new Starlink killer, Kalinka? Is that what they call it? What is that?
Brian Prodoehl: Kalinka, yeah. So it's a system of jammers to jam the ground terminals. So your dishy or, in the case of Starlink, people in Ukraine, they have ground terminals that are using Starlink. As long as you have a jammer that can put out a signal that's stronger than the satellite that's 300 miles away, you can kind of drown out that satellite signal and just knock out the signal at the ground station. So they're not targeting the satellites themselves. They're more just trying to jam the ground terminals.
Alex Gizis: One of the things that's very obvious about Starlink is right now it's a very open system. I mean, not only is it well published what frequencies they're using, so you know what to jam, but there's a website where you can go look up where each of the satellites will be when. I mean, if they want to point dishes at the satellites, there's a website where they can pull up where to point the dish to jam the satellite.
Brian Prodoehl: Yeah, I think it's difficult to really hide that stuff. So they can make sense to make it all public, but it certainly makes it easy for somebody that's looking to disrupt it.
Alex Gizis: They're really putting themselves in that kind of position. They've given 500 of these Starshield terminals to the Ukraine already, and now the U.S. government is funding them going all the way up to 3,000.
Brian Prodoehl: Yeah, we're providing these terminals and making it an important part of somebody's networking that's in a conflict, and so we're certainly making that, the whole Starlink constellation, a target for somebody that wants to disrupt that, yeah.
Vulnerabilities of SpaceX Starshield
Alex Gizis: And disrupting orbital constellations is not difficult, right? Back in 2019, India famously shot down a satellite, which, as I recall, didn't make anyone happy, right? Like, please stop. We know you can shoot down satellites, right? I mean, once you blow up a satellite, you have these little pieces of metal whizzing around that super high speed, which can take out other satellites, leading to more pieces of metal whizzing around.
And we're starting to have a lot of satellites, right?
Brian Prodoehl: Yes, there's a lot of metal floating up there. And so it's...
Alex Gizis: SpaceX now has more than 6,000 satellites. Amazon just announced they're going to put up 3,000 more satellites over the next two years. There's a lot of satellites!
Brian Prodoehl: Yeah, there's a lot up there, and it can certainly lead to some cascading situation where you have a bunch of satellites that are destroyed, and their debris destroys a bunch more, and it destroys a bunch more, and pretty soon all that's up there is a cloud of metal.
Alex Gizis: As someone on Reddit observed, all you need to do to take down one of these constellations is to put a rocket full of gravel into the same orbit as the satellites and then just step back and the gravel will take care of everything. So it's a dangerous game like militarizing space is not such a great idea.
So there's another funny thing here. They're spy satellites, they fall under the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office of the U.S. government. And their director said, and this is actually a quote, "you can't hide because we're constantly looking" about these two Starshield satellites spying on everyone all the time. It seems like an odd thing to say, or to admit, or to brag about.
Brian Prodoehl: Yeah, it's tough to know if it's just bravado, or if that's really how he feels, or if he's just... It's tough to say, but it is an interesting thing to say. I think usually directors of the NRO have been pretty quiet and not really in the limelight, but here we are.
Alex Gizis: You almost imagine that as one of the spy people, everything he says must be a lie, right? So if he says they're not spy satellites, and I would assume they're watching everything, but since he says they're watching everything, does that mean they don't work? I'm never going to figure it out. I can't go down these rat holes.
Who Controls Starshield?
Alex Gizis: So Is Elon Musk controlling the spy satellites?
Brian Prodoehl: So it's not completely clear. Believable rumors have it that the NRO is controlling them and they're at kind of a different elevation than regular Starlink, so it sounds like no.
Alex Gizis: Yeah, that would make sense that SpaceX gets them up there and then they hand them off. I mean, you wouldn't want to know, right?
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