Many things can cripple a military. One is the inability to adapt and integrate new technology and remain competitive on the battlefield, and the other is the loss of communication between personnel, military systems, and allies. U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers assigned to the 324th Expeditionary Signal Battalion (ESB), Bravo Company, are working to ensure that the Army continues to move into the future by utilizing new and better technology with their use of SpaceX’s laser-operated Starshield communications system.

“This is the UAT-222 dish,” said Cpt. Harvey Degree, a lead engineer with the 324th ESB. “This is Starlink’s high-speed dish. It’s a five-terabyte global plan that we use to activate our Starlinks and essentially make them Starshields.” The Starshield provides fast, high-bandwidth, low-latency information transfer to any unit, anywhere in the world, with upload speeds between 300-500 Mbps, and low 25 ms latencies.

The ability to reliably communicate within a military has always been a top priority that has existed as long as there has been conflict. As technology advances, not only does communication become easier, but the transport of communication devices also becomes safer and quicker.

One of the Army’s standard communication devices, such as the Satellite Transportable Terminal (STT), is around 12 feet long and 20 feet tall, and requires a large vehicle or trailer to move it, making transportation in a combat zone a danger to the equipment and to the soldiers tasked with using it. But the newer Starshield technology is a small square about two feet on each side. Along with its smaller size, the unit has fewer power requirements and components, allowing Soldiers to begin operations within minutes. In a field where efficiency and urgency can be the difference between mission success and mission failure, these improvements can be invaluable.

Because the Starlink systems are designed to be civilian-friendly, the time it takes to train soldiers in the use of this technology is also drastically lowered. “We’ve been using this new system for about five days,” said Sgt. Chandon Otten, an engineer with the 324th ESB. “You just grab it out of the box, put it up, there you go.”

All of this combines to make a better system that improves the Army’s capabilities in the field, with better data, speed, and decision-making. “That’s the bottom line, it saves lives,” said Degree.