ST. LOUIS, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- The Pentagon has placed a formal order for the fourth Wideband Gapiller Satellite (WGS) in what will become a high-capacity military communications network.
Boeing late last week received the $148 firm contract for the spacecraft that is slated to become part of the constellation to begin deployment next year.
"The Wideband Gapfiller Satellite constellation will be a key element of a high-capacity SATCOM system, and provide a quantum leap in the communications capabilities for the war fighter," Air Force Lt. Col. Steve Hargis, the program manager for the WGS, said Monday in a Boeing release.
The spacecraft is based on the Boeing 702 communications satellite and operates on the Ka and X-bands with the ability to let users of one of the bands to communicate with the other. With the ability to route up to 3.6 gigabytes of data per second, the WGS is considered the most robust in the U.S. military.
Boeing boasted that a single WGS bird has a greater communications capacity than all of the satellites currently in orbit, which is necessary due to the military's increasing reliance on IT and worldwide communications
"The WGS satellites address a critical bandwidth shortfall," Boeing stated. "The satellites provide two-way, point-to-point, multicast and broadcast communications that may potentially support what is known as 'communications-on-the-move' for troops in the field. "
