Costly blunders and redesigns all part of military networking growth pains
The U.S. military originally had a virtual monopoly of certain communications channels. It was one of the few entities to be using internet, and it used many areas of the spectrum untouched by civilian communications. However, with the digital revolution and the expansion of civilians onto the internet and increasing using of the digital spectrum, the military is finding adapting to the deprivation of these bands difficult.
Last year during the bandwidth auction, the portion of the spectrum used by the B-2 bomber's Raytheon APQ-181 radar was accidentally sold to an obscure multinational organization (Russian)according to Military.com. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will be footing the over $1B USD bill to replace the radar in the 20 remaining jets.
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