The Department of Defense and its contractors have delivered extraordinarily capable space systems, but have had difficulty the last several years in fielding capabilities on time and on budget:
http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=6831
The current difficulties are being spotlighted by companies and analysts in the "small space" community, who advocate more research into cooperative contellations of smaller spacecraft, as opposed to relying almost entirely on a small number of large, complex platforms. Those people include the author of this blog, who has always advocated a "high-low mix." We will always need some "top end" spacecraft, but it's worth examining supplementing these increasingly complex assets with a larger number of smaller, less capable, but more affordable satellites. See: http://www.aiaa.org/tc/sos/ws2000/docs/microsattrack.ppt
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