Summary: Congress has urged the Pentagon to make greater use of commercial satellites to reduce the cost of military communications. Although the Defense Department (DOD) is studying the issue, a new criterion that DOD uses to set communication requirements has reduced general purpose requirements by more than 40 percent. In addition, core requirements may be overstated because users may have favored military communications that are provided at no direct cost to them. General purpose requirements may also be understated because users must pay for commercial services through their units' budgets. All these factors reduce the potential use of commercial satellite services. DOD's current approach to leasing commercial satellite services is not centrally managed and does not take advantage of economies of scale. According to DOD, most of this leasing is done on an ad hoc basis. In addition, leasing individual circuits is costly, compared with packaging them into larger quantities and using full satellite transponders that have the capacity to handle multiple circuits.
