Starlink outage halted 20+ US Navy drones

Internal U.S. Navy documents reveal a significant operational disruption caused by a global Starlink satellite internet outage in August 2025. The outage forced more than 20 unmanned surface vessels (USVs) conducting a test to go dead in the water, exposing a critical single point of failure in the Navy's reliance on commercial satellite networks. Officials realized the fleet's connectivity was entirely dependent on Elon Musk's satellite network, which had an outage affecting millions of users worldwide. The incident has prompted a review of communication redundancies for unmanned systems.