After this war, Musk is probably in no danger of losing federal contracts just because of his free speech politics.
The Russians knocked out the entire Ukrainian SATCOM infrastructure at the start of the war, plus quite a few stations elsewhere in Europe; AFAIK none of them went online again. Electronic warfare at its finest. Once this happened, Starlink was used as a drop-in substitute and defeated all Russian attempts to knock it out too. The Ukrainians coordinate their artillery, drones etc. over Starlink and the Russians can ... gnash their teeth.
This is an impressive capability and it gives the U.S. a huge advantage in any potential future military conflict with a near-peer power. Advantages like that aren't discarded just because of random culture war flare-ups.
They did, which actually indicates that they find value in it already in its embryonal phase. (The necessary satellite constellation is far from complete right now.)
The Russians knocked out the entire Ukrainian SATCOM infrastructure at the start of the war, plus quite a few stations elsewhere in Europe; AFAIK none of them went online again. Electronic warfare at its finest. Once this happened, Starlink was used as a drop-in substitute and defeated all Russian attempts to knock it out too. The Ukrainians coordinate their artillery, drones etc. over Starlink and the Russians can ... gnash their teeth.
This is an impressive capability and it gives the U.S. a huge advantage in any potential future military conflict with a near-peer power. Advantages like that aren't discarded just because of random culture war flare-ups.