SISCOMIS (Sistema de Comunicações Militares por Satélite)

networkingISP & telecom

Brazil's military satellite communications system, providing the armed forces with sovereign links independent of commercial or foreign infrastructure.

Begun in the 1980s and now a component of the wider military command and control system, SISCOMIS exists to answer a question every country eventually asks: what happens to your command links if the satellites, cables or ground stations you depend on belong to somebody else. Its ground stations are distributed across Brazilian territory, and the Geostationary Defence and Communications Satellite launched for it carries an X band reserved for the armed forces alongside a Ka band used for the national broadband programme - a dual-use arrangement that funds sovereign military capacity with civilian demand. The concept worth taking from it is not military. Sovereignty over infrastructure is a design property, not a policy statement: a network is independent to exactly the degree that its physical layer, its orbital slots and its spare parts are, and no amount of encryption changes who owns the transponder.

Also known as: siscomis, brazilian military satellite communications

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