A paper given at the 31st Space Symposium on ... HIGH CAPACITY SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS - COST-EFFECTIVE BANDWIDTH TECHNOLOGY “As the demand for service increases in the future, the cost of COMSAT services purchased by DISA is projected to grow to $3B-$5B over the next 15 years. This growth will cost DoD precious dollars during a period of tightening budgets if DoD does not change its current approach to procuring COMSAT services.”1 ... Today, a single satellite, ViaSat-1, with 140 Gbps3 of capacity and a cost well below $0.5B, has more on-orbit communication capacity than the entire DoD, including WGS4, AEHF5, and MUOS6, plus the 51 satellites of thecommercial broadcast market leader, Intelsat, combined at a combined cost exceeding $35B, as shown in Exhibit1.* ... and more in the article, on satellite economics and performance, etc. DoD is currently having to pay for unsecured commercial services for some 40% of its bandwidth usage, according to another article out there. Lost the link to that one. The new generation of drones eat up a lot of bandwidth. https://www.spacesymposium.org/site...len_31st_Space_Symposium_Tech_Track_paper.pdf
Mebbe gonna spy on Rocket Boy... US Launches Spy Satellite From California September 24, 2017 — A spy satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has been launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
