Poland is preparing to build its own equivalent of SpaceX’s Starlink, Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk said on Polskie Radio 24’s “Strefa Wpływów” podcast, in comments published October 17, 2026.
What Tomczyk said
Tomczyk said the planning is already well along: the government knows what it wants the architecture to look like, has collected its first offers and has secured funding. He expects Poland to announce a concrete initiative in the coming months, possibly together with other European partners.
The rollout he described is staged. The network would serve the military first, then the security services, then the wider state, and eventually potentially all of Europe. He called it a “fundamental change” and said Poland can’t be dependent on “some guy” on one side of an ocean or the other.
Why now
His comments came in direct reference to the slowdown of the Starlink and Starshield services used by Ukraine’s military, which Ukrainian officials say still cuts out above roughly 161 km/h. We covered Zelensky’s account of those restrictions yesterday.
Background
Prime Minister Donald Tusk first announced the idea of a “Polish Starlink” at the MSPO defence show in Kielce on September 11. At the same show, state defence group PGZ and ICEYE signed a memorandum to jointly build a military satellite communications system, MILSATCOM, for Poland’s armed forces. The government hasn’t published satellite counts, a launch timeline or a budget.
The national effort runs alongside Europe’s IRIS² secure-connectivity constellation. In July, Poland committed €656 million to IRIS², which is expected to become operational in 2030.
Why it matters
Poland joins a growing list of European governments looking for sovereign alternatives to Starlink for critical communications. For now Starlink has no real equivalent in scale, so plans like this are years from replacing it, but they show how the Ukraine restrictions are reshaping procurement decisions across the continent.
Sources: Polskie Radio 24 (Polish), Mediasat, Notes from Poland