ROME — Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has said Italy may employ Elon Musk’s Starlink service to provide encrypted satellite communications to link its military contingents around the world because there is “no public alternative.”
Meloni said Starlink offered advanced technology and, unlike European collaborative satellite program IRIS2, was ready.
“This is a European problem,” she said, adding the European Union “did not get there in time to have public technology able to secure this communication.”
Italy is in talks with Starlink, part of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace business, to use its 6,700 satellite constellation in a reported five-year, €1.5 billion ($1.55 billion) deal.
“Space X has illustrated to the government its technology that allows secure communication nationally and globally which means for us guaranteed communications with our diplomats and military missions abroad,” Meloni told reporters in Rome on Thursday.
She said no decision had been made, and that talks were also being held with other private operators, but said Space X had “the most advanced technology.”
She added, “There are no public alternatives.”
Meloni said, “Tomorrow there will probably be public entities able to guarantee the protection of communication. Today there are not.”
On Monday, Elon Musk said he was “ready to provide Italy the most secure and advanced connectivity.”
The European Union has signed to develop an array of 280 satellites known as ISIS2 which will offer encrypted satellite communications to governments, but it will not be ready until at least 2030.
Meloni said that she considered relying on a private operator to protect sensitive military data less than ideal, but could not wait for IRIS2.
“There are two scenarios and neither is optimal,” she said.
Fabiana di Porto, an expert on Innovation and Regulatory policy at Rome’s Luiss University, said, “Musk’s satellites are cheaper than IRIS2 and there are more of them, but the security aspect is important since we are talking about government communications in the hands of a private operator.”
She also pointed out that Italian state-controlled defense champion Leonardo had a stake in IRIS2.
Meloni said that Microsoft had previously worked on data centers in Italy, adding, “no-one complained.”
She said, “Is the problem with Space X that it is private, or is it the political ideas of Elon Musk?”
Handing control of Italy’s military satellite communications to the U.S. tech tycoon has prompted sharp criticism in Italy from opposition politicians given Musk’s recent use of his social media platform X to lambast governments in the U.K. and Germany.
Meloni has forged a friendship with Musk, recently calling him a “genius.”
“I value investments overseas through one lens – national interest – and not through friendships or political ideas,” she said, adding, “I have never talked to Elon Musk of this project.”
/ Satellites
C4ISRNet
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