# Robot Boats Lost Contact for an Hour During Starlink Outage

- slug: robot-boats-lost-contact-for-an-hour-during-starlink-outage
- date: 2026-04-17
- category: Robotics

In August 2025, a Starlink outage left 24 Navy robot boats drifting off California for nearly an hour with no way to receive commands. The Pentagon has no backup system — and SpaceX’s $2 trillion IPO will make that dependency public and permanent.

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