  We address the issue of radiative corrections to Kaluza-Klein (KK) masses in
five-dimensional QED supplemented by aether Lorentz-violating terms.
Specifically, we compute the corrections to the KK photon masses from one
fermion loop. In general, the KK masses receive radiative corrections due to
breaking the five-dimensional Lorentz invariance by compactification. As we
show, the presence of the additional Lorentz violating factor - an aether
background, leads to the non-trivial modification of these corrections. This
model may be of interest in addressing important phenomenological issues such
as the relation between radiative corrected KK mass splitting of a particular
mode and uncertainties in the measurements and/or possible spatial variation of
the fine-structure constant. For the recent data on the fine-structure
constant, we find a KK mass splitting of magnitude $\sim 0.01$ MeV for the
first excited Kaluza-Klein gauge boson at TeV scale. On the other hand, the
large KK modes limit displays a very interesting phenomenon, showing the very
special role of the aether in protecting the higher modes from the quantum
corrections.
