Source: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/t ... r-arm.html
By Nathan Hodge October 22, 2008
So the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program -- which is supposed to provide secure, high-bandwidth satellite communications for the future military -- is in major trouble. At this point, it looks like the Pentagon has put off a decision to go ahead with the program until at least 2010. That means the super-duper satellite constellation probably won't be in orbit until 2020. If it ever gets up.
Ironically, the service that may be hurt the worst by the collapse of this space program is the Army. Its gajillion-dollar modernization project, Future Combat Systems, is supposed to trade heavier armor for a better network. If troops can swap data quickly, the thinking goes, they won't need to roll around in such hulking tanks and armored vehicles. Now, that plan may be screwed. Bill Sweetman over at Ares writes:
TSAT was supposed to bring high bandwidth down to at least a small vehicle-mounted system, with anti-jam and other secure features, while using laser crosslinks to connect the satellites together, and link the front line to CONUS [Continental United States]. As such, it was the assured, non-line-of-sight network that was supposed to tie the Future Combat System together. In fact, the whole idea of a battlefield-wide network depends on that capability, which has just gone back to the drawing board.
Colonel Patrick Rayermann, head of the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Division, said as much at a commercial satellite confab back in June: "Virtually every space system that's on the books today - that's intended to be fielded - is going to deliver capability that we in the Army intend to use, either directly or indirectly, with our Future Combat Systems."
Rayermann said a future Army brigade combat team in 2018 would require about 1 gigabit per second of information throughput. I'm probably not the right person to translate that, but in essence, it means future Army units are going to need massive amounts of satellite bandwidth to move the all data and video from their futuristic surveillance systems. So what's the solution? The military may continue to depend, in some part, on commercial providers. Not an ideal arrangement it you're paranoid about security.
