Editorial: TSAT money crucial

Editorial: TSAT money crucial

Warfare has always been a jigsaw puzzle — all the pieces have to be in the right places for the whole to make any sense.

Sensors, communications and armor are interweaving elements, and advances in each allow a stronger whole.

Today, for example, the key element in the Army’s Future Combat Systems is architecture that will enable the most networked ground force ever. The trouble is that over the next decade, there won’t be enough bandwidth even to allow soldiers to train with the full-up system.

All the services rely heavily on bandwidth. The Air Force uses it to pass targeting data, track friendly forces and for a host of other needs. Yet even as bandwidth demands have soared, the government has continued to divest choice chunks of the electronic spectrum to commercial industry.

~snip~

No effort is more critical than TSAT, the Air Force’s Transformational Satellite Communications System. Sadly, Congress has cut this top-priority program every year, delaying its fielding from 2012 to at least 2020.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/community/opinion/airforce_editorial_tsat_080121/