Leadership: Defense Firms Tell The Military How To Do It
Ezoic
January 10, 2026: As more transformative technology became available to the military over the last fifty years, something strange happened. The technologies began to generate new capabilities faster than the military could adapt and absorb the new tech into their operations. These changes became obvious in the course of the Ukraine war, although the new tech is showing in many other wars, rebellions, Islamic terrorist operations, and criminal enterprises.
Governments are no longer obliged to get everything via long-term development and manufacturing contracts. A growing number of firms have something the military needs and deliver it unsolicited, with the option to pay for a long term use. One of the first examples of this was in 2022 when SpaceX provided their Starlink satellite communications services to Ukraine. This happened because the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted SpaceX for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. SpaceX officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. SpaceX founder Elon Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk also sent to Ukraine. Musk ultimately supplied Ukraine with nearly 2,000 terminals and managed to persuade countries supplying military aid for Ukraine to include Ukrainian requests for more Starlink terminals, especially the more expensive, and capable commercial models. In this way Ukraine was able to obtain over 50,000 terminals so far. Most of these are used to keep the economy going and the ones used by the military are subject to combat losses. Civilian users face a similar but lesser risk and hundreds of terminals have been lost during Russian attacks. These have to be replaced and most, if not all, of the replacements are paid for by military aid for Ukraine.
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