Thats alright then, as long as theres no Huawei kit in it!
Red faces as Pentagon leases Chinese satellite
US lawmakers are up in arms after it emerged that the Pentagon has leased a Chinese commercial satellite to support non-classified communications with its African bases. The details of the one-year, $10m contract were revealed at a House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill last week. The Apstar-7 satellite is owned and …
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 04:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Republican Mike Rogers, ... expressed deep concern at how the Pentagon deal had been done without any political input."
Sitting on the select committee for intelligence clearly hasn't endowed him with any.
Mr Rogers is an ex-FBI agent so I'd be prepared to listen to him on criminal justice matters but he has no experience in national security or satellite communications technology ... so in this specific instance he's just another windbag politician.
Big +1 to the Pentagon for doing their job as they saw fit.
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 07:12 GMT John Smith 19
"Of course it's nothing at all to do with Michigan having loads of aerospace suppliers :) Nor anything at all to do with the campaign contributions from defense \ aerospace \ telecoms companies he gets."
When I pay my dog to bark, I expect him to bark.
This looks like one of those situations where some of that "responsive space" the Pentagon has been talking about for the last decade or so might have come in handy. The idea of smallish short lived satellites to provide services over specific areas for short periods while the DoD was on tour.
Seems like all that produces was a load of Power Points.
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Thursday 2nd May 2013 08:37 GMT Rampant Spaniel
China was likely cheapest. This is for non sensitive data so theres not a huge issue about it being China. If they went and provisioned their own bird or rented capacity that cost more they would be shouted at for that. Some people are just going to shout. Mike 'for hire' Rogers is always going to defend the interests of the companies who write the checks that get him reelected, but his party would be screaming blue murder if they paid more for capacity from a more friendly country (whilst usually advocating a raise in military spending, because never let hypocrisy get in the way of trying to score political points).
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 07:16 GMT John Smith 19
Actually the simple ability to shut it off remotely is just as potentially effective.
When someone else provides your infrastructure you're not in full control.
Ever
"But their prices were so good," that's the CEO Nurenberg defense IIRC.
Fine. Just hope they don't get a call from Beijing telling them to pull the plug.
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 10:07 GMT MacGyver
If only the US had their own satellites they could launch, we could ask Russia the launch it for us. //sarcasm
But really, if the demand is there, why is there no local source bidding on providing the needed comms. If that is the way capitalism works, then why are they buying time on a communist bird?
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 10:42 GMT nuked
Why are people trying to second-guess the reasons for this decision with nothing but a media headline to inform them. Maybe throwing some meaningless but encrypted comms through a Chinese satellite is an excercise in misdirection. Or, an attempt to understand their decryption capabilities. Maybe the satellite access gives the US something that it does not report as the purpose for the deal. Or; the deal is a cover for something else, such as a comms channel to coordinate any joint US/Chinese operations, like those we are about to see in North Korea...
Assuming this is some sort of schoolboy error would be foolish.
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Wednesday 1st May 2013 13:58 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Congressmen, please keep it to d*ck-sucking, m'kay?
Retarded how "lawmakers" seem to be expert in anything, now telling military on how to do their job.
I thought their role was to fund the military-industrial complex with money they don't have to push stuff the armed forces don't need and be absent due to a BBQ when the president starts yet another war?
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Sunday 5th May 2013 22:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @Destroy All Monsters
@ac 01:30 - Not to turn this into a civics lesson but you appear to be confusing civilian oversight with congressional approval. The US military is and always has been subject not only to civilian oversight but civilian control. That's the role of the Commander In Chief - You know, the civilian in the White House ?
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Thursday 2nd May 2013 03:25 GMT LateNightLarry
Re: Congressmen, please keep it to d*ck-sucking, m'kay?
Well, since most RepubliCLOWN lawmakers are chicken hawks who never served in the military themselves, they feel they're FULLY qualified to pass judgement on what the military needs... like more Abrams M-1 tanks when the majority of the 3,400 tanks the Army has are less than three years old...
I need a drink... put some WINE in that glass, El Reg... a good Cabernet Sauvignon will be fine...
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Thursday 2nd May 2013 08:03 GMT Turtle
Re: Congressmen, please keep it to d*ck-sucking, m'kay?
"Well, since most RepubliCLOWN lawmakers are chicken hawks who never served in the military themselves, they feel they're FULLY qualified to pass judgement on what the military needs..."
And where are you sources comparing to the number of Republicans and Democrats who served in the military? Here's mine: http://www.whoserved.com/congress.asp where we see that 21% of the members of Congress have served in the military, and that two-thirds of them are Republicans.
So you support the Democrats because they have even less personal military experience that the Republicans and you hope that they are simply going to rubber-stamp whatever proposals the Pentagon puts forth?
Also, at such times as we have a President who is not a armed forces veteran, who do you want as Commander-in-Chief? LeMay and Patton are dead, after all. And so is Custer, I regret to have to inform you.
And I know about a guy who served, with distinction, in the trenches, in the military and later, as a political leader, considered himself to be a gifted strategist. He wasn't. You can see some pictures of the results of his military insight and the effect that they had on his country by googling "Berlin 1945".
In short, the idea that having served in the military necessarily gives someone any real insight in military affairs is simply stupid. And that should enable us to see who the real "clown" is: it's not the Republicans, it's you.
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