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IP: Microsoft PowerPoint Death Ray
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 11:26:19 +0900
*** Satellite launch marks 'new era for warfighter' BY BOB BREWIN (antenna () fcw com) The Defense Department entered a new age of communications this week with the successful launch of a wide-bandwidth satellite that can zap a total of 96 megabits per second (megabits/sec) of data to small, deployable terminals that are part of a system modeled after commercial, direct-broadcast TV systems. While the system was designed for use by all the services, the Navy views the new satellite, with its Global Broadcast Service (GBS) transponder package, as essential to its Information for the 21st century project. IT-21 is the Navy's program to tie together all its sea- and land-based tactical and administrative computer systems. Hughes Space and Communications Co. launched the GBS satellite, called the Navy Ultra High Frequency Follow 8 (UHF F/O 8), from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Lt. Gen. David Kelley, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the launch marks the start of "a whole new era of bandwidth for the warfighter." Because the GBS package only works one way, DOD plans to use the new satellite to transmit wideband data such as large Microsoft Corp. PowerPoint slides, graphics, reconnaissance photos and live video from a central point to dispersed users. Users will use lower-band circuits to request data from central GBS distribution points, in a system Adm. Archie Clemins described as an asynchronous communications system. Clemins, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the principal backer of the Navy's IT-21 project, plans to use the GBS package on UHF F/O 8 to deliver high-bandwidth data to relatively small terminals on ships at sea. The Navy has developed its IT-21 architecture around the launch schedule of the three-satellite GBS constellation. [snip]
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- IP: Microsoft PowerPoint Death Ray Dave Farber (Mar 18)