The Pentagon is searching for efficiencies as it adjusts to an austere budget situation, and it has begun looking hard at the costs of its communications, including its satellite communications. The commercial satellite communications industry can help the military cut costs in a way that will not sacrifice communications bandwidth and geographic reach, but such a strategy will require detailed planning and perhaps even some hard decisions on the part of the government. The good news is that the Defense Department is showing new receptiveness to the idea of making greater use of commercial satellite capacity as an extension of its satellite communications architecture. The receptiveness was energized last year with the approval of an initial capabilities document for the Joint Space Communications Layer, the military's plan for improving communications through space. This document recognized that there are certain exquisite capabilities, such as highly protected nuclear and command-and-control communications, that should be designed, developed and owned by the U.S. military, but there are many other kinds of communications that can be -- and arguably should be -- transmitted over commercial satellites.
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