Military applications of ACTS technologies

It is noted that the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) provides a glimpse of some of the communication technologies that can be utilized to meet the military's emerging communication needs. ACTS represents the beginning of the continuum that will see the military capitalizing on and making use of advances in commercial communications services. The imminent need is for a satellite system that provides variable data rates for personal communication to higher data rates and in a small terminal size. These requirements need to be provided as a commercial service and will have to meet the growing volume of military data communications requirements.<>