General JJ Mingus, US-Armee: „Normalerweise haben wir Dinge so gebaut, dass wir sie an den Rand bringen können, aber wenn wir die Daten und die Transportschicht richtig hinbekommen, und zwar zum großen Teil im Weltraum, dann wird es eine geben.“ Der Tag, an dem wir nur noch ein Endbenutzergerät an den Rand tragen müssen.“ Interpretationen?

IMHO this is about the [Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture](https://www.sda.mil/sda-layered-network-of-military-satellites-now-known-as-proliferated-warfighter-space-architecture/) which was where the military was already going when SpaceX decided to ramp up Starlink. The idea is essentially a constellation of satellites providing communications support to US military anywhere on the planet with low latency and no advance notice (so no need to retask a geostationary satellite days in advance of an operation).

It’s not just about Starlink but Starlink is going to be a major asset to use in parallel with the PWSA.

The essence of the statement from General JJ Mingus is that in the old days they’d have to specially design a radio to survive in the field and use the frequencies and encryption standards the military are able to deploy via trucks or aircraft in that area. With tools like PWSA and Starlink the soldiers only need the equivalent of a smartphone – essentially a commercial off-the-shelf package with no special handling requirements. If it breaks you just issue a new one, no big deal (well yes big deal, but not the same level as damaging or losing a military radio in the field).

Iridium have already demonstrated (or described?) hybrid satellite stations in the field that can manage communications between local assets and Starlink and Iridium through one antenna. I’m probably misremembering the demonstration and I have no idea whether it was a demonstration of actual technology (actual electronics actually interacting with multiple satellite systems) or intention (painted pizza box connected to the router with liquorice instead of electrical cables, accompanied by a shiny brochure), but the idea was you have one antenna, one ground station (ie: “router”) and access to multiple orbital communications assets. Perhaps it’s as simple as allowing access to multiple satellite networks using similar frequencies, or they have some clever electronics allowing their phased array antenna to communicate on multiple frequencies. Or it was just a fibreglass pizza box used as a stage prop.

So the other end of the “off the shelf electronics” is that there’s also no special hardware deployed into the field to support those comms, so you don’t need to risk an AWACS or 4×4 electronics truck to support that team of a dozen soldiers doing a deep scouting mission.

I don’t know, I’m not a general in the US Army so I’m just pulling my information from shiny brochures published by tech companies, and Tom Clancy stories.