Wideband Global SATCOM

[3] According to United Launch Alliance, quoted on Spaceflight Now, "A single WGS spacecraft has as much bandwidth as the entire existing DSCS constellation.

WGS-1 with its 2.4 Gbit/s wideband capacity, provided greater capability and bandwidth than all the DSCS satellites combined.

The end users of the communication services provided by the WGS are described by the DoD as the terminal segment.

Additionally, the Satellite Control Network will also use the WGS in a similar manner as the DSCS III constellation is used to route ATM packets through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) "cloud" to establish command and control streams with various satellite constellations.

One of the emerging applications is SATCOM-ON-The-Move which is now being extensively used on the military tactical vehicles for Blue Force Tracking and C3 missions.

On 3 October 2007, Australia's Department of Defence announced that the country would fund a sixth satellite in the constellation.

The satellite was carried by an Atlas V 421 launch vehicle lifting off from SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS).

The WGS-2 satellite was positioned over the equator around 60° East longitude (over the Indian Ocean) for use by United States Central Command in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of Southwest Asia.

[14] On 23 August 2010, Boeing was awarded an Air Force contract worth US$182 million to begin work on the seventh WGS satellite.

The satellite was partially-funded by allied nations, including Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, New Zealand and the United States, for military access to the entire WGS constellation.

[19] WGS-10 is the latest part of a constellation of highly-capable communications satellites that serve the armed forces of the United States and its allies.