The successful launch of the U.S. Navy's fourth Mobile User Objective System communications satellite Sept. 2 rounds out a multibillion-dollar constellation that has been in development for more than a decade. Navy officials hailed the launch as a milestone toward bring-ing unprecedented smartphone-like communications capabilities to otherwise "disadvantaged" users - typically mobile forces, operating in hard-to-reach areas, such as beneath jungle canopies - around the world. But the launch is also a reminder that more than three-and-a-half years after the February 2012 launch of the first satellite, some two years behind schedule, the MUOS system's advanced capabilities remain unavailable.
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