British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said he and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth welcomed the restoration of Ukraine's Starshield service during talks at the Pentagon on Thursday, though Streeting noted the two did not discuss why access was disrupted. The roughly 36-hour slowdown capped terminal connectivity at speeds of 160 km/h (100 mph) and at times 60 to 70 km/h, disrupting Ukrainian battlefield communications, medium-range strike drones and interceptor drones used to counter Russian jet-powered Shahed drones amid US pressure on Kyiv to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries.
The disclosures follow a dispute over responsibility for the outage after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk denied throttling the network, stating that the US government owns and controls Starshield and that any speed or usage limits are decided by the US military and ultimately the president. A bipartisan group of US senators, including Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis alongside Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, sent a letter to Pentagon Inspector General Platte Moring demanding an investigation into who authorized the satellite and intelligence-sharing disruptions.