An Entire Chief's Mess Broke the Law and Lied In Order to Get Starlink
Starlink's fast and inexpensive data service has quickly gained traction among maritime users in the commercial space, and the U.S. Navy is contemplating the possibility of Starlink for crew welfare on vessels across the fleet. The service is exceptionally popular among seafaring personnel - so popular that some are willing to spend their own money, deceive their superiors and break the law to get it.
In early 2023, 17 members of the chief's mess aboard the Independence-class trimaran USS Manchester decided to set up their own Starlink Wifi network. They came up with a plan to put an antenna dish on top of the wheelhouse, affixed to a pallet, and connect it to a router hidden in a DC locker - in violation of Navy regulations on communications and vessel RF emissions, rules intended to keep the ship's movements secret and safe. For their highly prohibited connection, they bought a high-performance Starlink flat panel antenna for $2,800 and selected the $1,000 per month service plan, which currently includes one terabyte of data per month and download speeds of up to 220 megabytes per second - an abundance of speed and capacity. They did not go to great lengths to hide the paper trail, since they used their Chief Petty Officer Association bank account to pay the monthly bill.
The network was administered by the ship's command senior chief, Grisel Marrero. She named the network "Stinky" until other members of the crew began asking questions, and then changed the name to appear as though it came from a Wifi-enabled printer. Rumors of a secret Wifi network persisted, and by May 2023 - one month after the ship's departure - the ship's XO asked a member of the chief's mess about it. The chief in question denied it - the first of many denials to come.
Later that month, commanding officer Cmdr. Colleeen Moore asked SCPO Marrero whether the vessel had a secret Wifi network on board. She denied it, and denied it again in July when a sailor who was not in on the plot asked Cmdr. Moore for the Wifi password. Moore - looking for her own confirmation - worked with her XO to search the ship; finding nothing, she concluded that there was no secret network.
The ruse came to an end in August, when USS Manchester called Guam and a comms tech found the antenna on top of the wheelhouse. One of the chiefs agreed to take the fall for the plot and admitted to Moore that there was a Wifi network - but the would-be scapegoat claimed that it was only used in port. Since this was not true, Marrero altered the system's usage logs to make it appear as though the network had not been used at sea. The alterations did not fool Cmdr. Moore, and Marrero was forced to admit at last that she was operating the network. The entire chief's mess was referred to 3rd Fleet for administrative punishment.
"In over 25 years of naval service, I have never seen such heinous and egregious conduct by a Command Master Chief and an entire CPO Mess," Navy Captain Douglas Meagher, the commander of LCS Squadron 3. "The deep level of manipulation is only overshadowed by the level of corrupt dealings in which CMC Marrero used to conceal the system."
For this extended campaign of deception, Marrero received a demotion in rank, and she remains with the Navy as an E-7.
If she and her colleagues had waited a year, they might have received comparable satcom service without cost or penalties: the Navy is now experimenting with shipboard Starlink for crew welfare.