Musk says Starlink can’t keep providing Ukraine broadband unless Pentagon pays

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SpaceX has asked the Pentagon to fund the Ukraine government and military's use of Starlink broadband, saying the Elon Musk-led company can't afford to donate more user terminals or pay for operations indefinitely, CNN reported.

"We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time," SpaceX's director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in a September letter, according to CNN. The letter "requested that the Pentagon take over funding for Ukraine's government and military use of Starlink, which SpaceX claims would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and could cost close to $400 million for the next 12 months."

Musk defended the request today. "SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely and send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable," he wrote on Twitter.

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from arstechnica.