Soldiers assigned to the 50th Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E), 35th Corps Signal Brigade (CSB) are in the early stages of using the Starlink commercial satellite system throughout Europe – improving transport diversity options for commanders and pushing data across the Army network at a faster rate. The Starlink system, operated by SpaceX, consists of low earth orbiting satellites which provides high-speed, low-latency broadband internet across the globe. The terminal is small (.6 meter phased array antenna) and lightweight (16 pounds). “The benefit of this system is th
Soldiers assigned to the 50th Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E), 35th Corps Signal Brigade (CSB) are in the early stages of using the Starlink commercial satellite system throughout Europe – improving transport diversity options for commanders and pushing data across the Army network at a faster rate. The Starlink system, operated by SpaceX, consists of low earth orbiting satellites which provides high-speed, low-latency broadband internet across the globe. The terminal is small (.6 meter phased array antenna) and lightweight (16 pounds). “The benefit of this system is the amount of time it takes for the signal to go up into space and come back down; it saves us a lot of time on latency,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kyle Neese, the senior battalion network technician for the 50th ESB-E. “The old military satellite communication system (SATCOM) uses what's called geosynchronous [satellites], which orbits around the equator at a steady pace, but it takes a little over half a second for the signal to travel up and back down. With Starlink, it comes back at more than twice the speed.” The 35th CSB aims to use the Starlink system to achieve faster broadband and increase internet speed capabilities in order to support XVIII Airborne Corps’ warfighters and their mission command systems. “The Starlink terminal is being used to provide tactical network speeds of up to 70 Mbps with approximately 1/3 of the normal latency over military SATCOM” said Neese. “Testing is still being conducted to increase these speeds further in support of troops on ground.” SpaceX is also piloting the creation of a miniature mobile satellite antenna to make the Starlink system more portable. “So far, we’ve tested version one which comes with a dish, a power injector, and a router. The simplest way to hook the Starlink up to our kit is to take an Ethernet cable and plug it into our router, which connects to our cradle point router and t
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