Satellite Access in Time of War

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."

Comments

Used all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Try AOL Broadband!

[mschoolbus]

So fast and easy to use, no wonder its number 1!!! Even make use of parental filters!

(ducks)

Re:Just how much bandwidth is up there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reuters has huge amounts of bandwith - they own Radianz (www.radianz.com) which is an enormous redundant network - however it is used mainly for financial data. But it is a huge network.

GPS

[ackthpt]

I heard that civilian use of GPS may become less acurate, during war. This morning I fired mine up and it says: "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

War = $$

[canning]

The Pentagon "is hoovering up all the available capacity," said Richard DalBello, president of the Satellite Industry Association, a trade group.

I can't tell if he's amazed or excited. Chances are DalBello is calculating his stock options as we speak. War will always make some people millionaires.