DoD looks to the skies to reduce battlefield-communications costs
From NextGov.com: The Pentagon spends $500 million a year on commercial satellite communications to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) wants to cut those costs dramatically with a $440 million, 15-year lease of a single commercial satellite. DISA expects such a deal could meet 78% of U.S. Central Command’s requirements.
CENTCOM forces also could tap into military satellite services from two low-bandwidth Defense Satellite Communications System satellites and a single high-capacity Wideband Global Satcom satellite in orbit over the Indian Ocean. But these satellites hardly keep up with growing demand, and commercial operators provide 80% of the CENTCOM satellite service today. Read the entire article here.