During these times of increased use of commercial satellite equipment and services by the U.S. military, companies looking to do business with the Department of Defense (DoD) need to set up common standards for all branches of the armed services.

“We need to establish a baseline understanding that we are going to have assured access to commercial satellite communications,” said Lt. Col. Dean Olson, U.S. Army chief of satcom operations branch, operations directorate, for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). “One problem with commercial [satellite operators] is this unwieldy gaggle of entities that we have do deal with at the various satellite companies.”

In remarks here at SATELLITE 2003, Olson emphasized that streamlining procedures would act as a catalyst for increasing military use of commercial satellite communications. He pointed out that currently the DoD’s total annual expenditure for commercial satellite communications is roughly $400 million. With the possible war in Iraq looming ever larger and tensions increasing on the Korean peninsula, that amount is expected to go much higher.