[pantsforbirds]

There is a separate entity, StarShield, that the US military uses. I think it's a fully separate set of satellites, but I'm not 100% on that.

[kotaKat]

IIRC it’s separate sats but same backhaul and they also leverage the same terminals?

[ianburrell]

Starshield means multiple things, or really it is SpaceX business unit with military. Starshield is the name for US military buying Starlink service. It is also SpaceX building Starlink-based satellites for the military. This doesn't have to be communications, the first ones were missile defense trackers.

I think the custom satellites came first and they rebranded the communications after it.

[pantsforbirds]

That seems entirely plausible. I based my comment on one of Elon's tweets (xeets?) about it: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2028261823678759335?s=20