To be honest I'm not all that impressed.

 

They should develope a system using several high altitude UAV's providing local GPS should a nation (China) wanna take out the sattelites

Just to complicate things.

 

They should develope a system using several high altitude UAV's providing local GPS should a nation (China) wanna take out the sattelites

While airborne retrans is a much better idea then manned retrans (a mission designed to get retrans operators killed given retrans teams TOE), it still has significant drawbacks.  First, being unmanned, it requires time off of station to fix it when it breaks as well as it may be quite some time before anyone knows it's broken.  Don't even worry about the number of times that we'll all be conviced that it is broken and needs to be fixed, just because the distant stations weren't paying attention.

 

The better choice for long range comms in difficult terrain is high frequency radio.  Unfortunately, HF communications takes time and training to make it work and we'd, institutionally, rather invest in technology than in operators.

--

An old 25U.

If you're an old 25U, what was your MOS, 31V or C?

 

Retrans units are basically DIPs.....die in place.

 

HF works, but FM retrans works better for highly mobile units. Too many variables with HF that can be a PITA on the move.

Back when we were 31 series I was a 31U.

 

HF on the move is tricky.  It takes skilled and trained operators to make it work right, but technology has progressed in this area as well and it's much easier than it once was.  But FM won't get you more than half a klick in most of Northern Afghanistan.