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Satellite Access in Time of War

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fractional-T-1-just-not-cutting-it dept.

miladus writes "Interesting report in the Washington Post this morning about how the Pentagon is buying access to commercial satellites to meet its bandwidth needs. Most of the commercial access will be used for backup to the military satellites and for non-military tasks. And the Pentagon has to compete on the market with all the news organizations trying to cover the conflict in Iraq."

3 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Used all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know from working at different military installations that commercial services are used quite often for military purposes. All of the projects I've worked on utilizing satellite comms have always been over commercial satellites with Type-1 encryption.

  2. Just how much bandwidth is up there? by TellarHK · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've always wondered about the amount of actual bandwidth available to news organizations like CNN, the BBC and the rest. It's one of those things that came to mind whenever I'd see something like the grainy videophone footage we got used to in Gulf War 1.0, that looked like it was shot with a QuickCam using the Sony Pantycam(tm) image enhancement.

    --
    My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
  3. Propaganda Control / Censorship by death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bandwidth shmandwidth. This is propaganda control!

    BBC correspondent Kate Adie who is now covering the US invasion reports in an interview on Irish radio about pentegon censorship:

    "I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness. The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon ...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."

    "I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks--that is the television signals out of... Bhagdad, for example--were detected by any planes ...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Bhagdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists ..."

    Some will argue this is a necessary step in protecting the invaders, but this threat came well before the 'war' started. I for one doubt physical safety is anywhere close the true goal here. Political and public opinion safety is more like it.

    And perhaps foreshadowing our buying up extra bandwidth for 'backup' Adie later in the interview says:

    "...the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are... have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.

    Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment ...those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves."

    Guess she had it right.

    A description of the interview with links to audio and other sources can be found here