Two dozen unmanned surface vessels — autonomous boat drones, basically — were left floating in the Pacific ocean after a massive outage of SpaceX’s Starlink internet service left them adrift. That event, first reported by Reuters, left the experimental robots disconnected and bobbing in the ocean for nearly an hour off the coast of California.
It was one of several Pentagon experiments disrupted by the Starlink blackout, according to Reuters. That global outage left millions of Starlink customers in the dark back in August of 2025, dealing a blow to the company’s image as an always-on satellite internet provider. While service was eventually restored, the incident left customers frustrated and analysts concerned.
According to the company website, Starlink offers “high-speed, low-latency internet with more than 99.9 percent average uptime and reliable connectivity around the globe.”
That remaining 0.1 percent clearly represents a lingering pain point, though. Pentagon officials, who are increasingly leveraging Elon Musk’s pet internet company to run its massive drone program, previously voiced issues with Starlink reliability. Per Reuters, a similar drone test in April of 2025 suffered from spotty network connections, as Starlink struggled to handle the Navy’s demanding data use.
“Starlink reliance exposed limitations under multiple-vehicle load,” one frustrated report declared. A few months later — ahead of the August outage — yet another series of Naval drone tests was disrupted by spotty connection to the Starlink network. While it isn’t known what caused that incident, it’s clear the connection issues are forming a pattern at a crucial time for both the Pentagon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Musk plans to take SpaceX public in a massive $2 trillion offering this summer, which is likely to be the largest IPO in history. Starlink’s success is a major factor in the IPO overall, as the satellite internet provider brought in 67 percent of SpaceX’s total revenue in across 2025.
With so much riding on Starlink’s reputation, both the Pentagon and SpaceX may be in for a bumpy ride unless these reliability issues can be ironed out. If recent issues are any indication, the company has a long way to go.
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