Great link, ty.
The "Such an arrangement would mean all seven satellites would have continuous radio visibility with Indian control stations." and "A network of 21 ranging stations located across the country will provide data for the orbit determination of the satellites and monitoring of the navigation signal." should help most readers understand the navigation system.
Great news from India and it shows the long term design efforts. Fully understanding the science and been able to build the needed systems at a national level has allowed for the year by year growth.
"But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society." has worked out well.
from Indian Space Research Organisation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

RE"So there were chemical weapons in Iraq?"
Iraq invaded Iran and the West was very happy to see Iran fully degraded.
Iraq was winning so Iran was supported a bit. Then Iran was winning so Iraq was supported a bit. Other nations got to sell all kinds of support and old mil spare parts over the years to both sides for huge amounts of cash.
It was a huge arms sale and everybody was winning but Iraq and Iran.
Iran finally got creative and was able to push Iraq back in open battle. This was not good so the US, UK and EU offered the chemical weapons systems to push Iran back and restore the expected no-win situation.
So Iraq was full of US, UK, EU supplied raw materials, production lines and brands.
Iran, Iraq, the US, the UK, UN, world press all knew what was going on and had the paper work.
Years later all Iraq had was out of date raw materials in bulk, listed with the UN and US, UK.
When the UK and UK invaded and occupied Iraq they found, walked into sites with the out of date, UN registered raw materials.
Did all the US and UK troops have all the protective equipment needed all the time for industrial exposure at all sites? Where all the filters fitted correctly, in good working order and in good condition to protect the US and UK troops per site, every time? The on site UK and UK had two options. Destroy on site or secure the sites and allow contractors to make a site safe later.
If the raw material sites where destroyed where all US and UK troops in the area fully protected over the time until safe?
If not US and UK troops would have returned home with different levels of industrial exposure.
That would be costly to any US or UK medical system. Better for the West to say and do nothing and hint their own exposed troops where suffering from stress.
Any tests done would have to be cleared by gov experts on cost and need. No need for complex tests if its just stress after war and occupation.
Govs and mil never have to tell the public too much about their export deals to Iraq or lack of clean up skills during occupation.
Brands that exported to Iraq are safe thanks to state and federal political leaders.
Troops exposed to US and UK export grade chemicals or products is just not an issue that fits with the winning, greeted with "sweets and flowers" talking points.
Win win win. Iran and Iraq are degraded while been supplied by the West. The costs of keeping troops in wars and occupations by the contractors was wonderful.
The troops returned with "stress" after many years of duty.
Now the media and medical experts are finally reporting reality but the only real question is:
Did your quality filter work well and was it on at the right times in Iraq or (other nations if in "special" forces) every time?

Not much people can do about tame Interactive voice response (IVR), calls kept for kept for training purposes over the years and passed onto gov/mil.
The good news is people now know more and know of the public, private , gov and mil sharing of tech like voice prints and the low cost of huge generational databases.
What was once used to track high ranking Soviet officials in realtime and people of interest in South America is now at home, cheap and for 'legal' domestic use.
With the added features on International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers and the next gen IMSI-catchers expect the voice print tech to be in the hands of city and state officials.
Driving your car near any protests with powered cell tech and city parallel construction kit might just log all.

re "Well, speaker recognition dates as far back as facial recognition does."
It was big in the 1980's to find interesting people using different phones and very early cell phones in South America by the US mil/gov.
The UK enjoyed using it "Spy-in-sky patrols over British cities in hunt for Taliban fighters" (3 August 2008)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
"They are attempting to identify suspects using ‘voice prints’" ... "Traffic’ intercepted by the equipment on board is analysed and processed, probably at the GCHQ spy centre in Cheltenham, searching for voice matches"
The only real change is the cost of collection, cost of sorting and ability to build on public, telco, private and mil databases been shared with the Five Eye nations and friends.
Expect every arrival chatdown to be recored and indexed with your face, passport and the usual biometrics details.
Expect every car rental, duty free, cafe airport chatdown to be recored and indexed with your face, passport and the usual biometrics details.
Get you talking, keep you talking, its not just about the car rental use or been friendly to the wider travelling public ;)
Domestically the telco and trusted brands Interactive voice response (IVR) will record the rest of the wider populations over years.
That 1 or 5 min chat with Bob or Sally in telco support is not just kept for training purposes or quality control :)
Your billing details have been matched with something globally unique.

What are the options for the USA?
Got that negative pressure or half-facepiece respirator ready, full facepiece or hood or helmet per medial team member?
Or is the just in time supply track on the way with more expensive kit?
How many negative-pressure airborne infection isolation rooms are ready per city, state?
With all that potential for aerosolising fluids the infection-control teams really have to start thinking fast per city.
Home stay with a box of food and expert medical care visit per home per city?
Big new tent outside a regional teaching hospital? Your local Care Camp is ready too ie a drip and a camp bed.
Then you have the contractors to clean up the used camp bed and get that hermetically sealed casket.
The legal system is ready per state. The expert camp contractors are ready to feed, wash, clean and care for huge numbers of people at short notice. The caskets have always been ready.
The only question is are people ready to stay home, hope that powered air-purifying respirator was fitted correctly every day for all staff or wait for the legal order to get ready for that local camp?
So dont worry, the state and federal legal system will get people into well funded camps. The contractors have all the quality hermetically sealed caskets needed per camp.

Just as the tame telcos have been very helpful so have Western shipping firms ;) Lots of interesting container ships around and into China :)
The space plane is just another way of keeping the cash flowing to contractors and keeping old space related jobs safe.
Keep the expensive skill sets with a few more projects and generations.

Re optics of a military spy satellite... how handy would that be?
Many nations that would be interesting to a military spy satellite would have the ability to track this and over time every other US spy satellite.
The selling point of this project would have been to remove all the limitations of a traditional, trackable path of a hardware limited military spy satellite.
Other nations know its up, know kit can be swapped out, know it is a bit different and have taken simple, very low cost steps to avoid any new US spy efforts.
The handy aspect is the US tooling, profits, jobs, ongoing development boondoggle at a state and national level.
Most nations understand and track all US spy satellites, ships, aircraft new and old.
Container ships and then containers with a signals package moving deep in country would be more creative and unexpected that another expensive, trackable military spy in the sky :)
Other nations just ensure the US has something to see 24/7 from space. A bit harder now than than classic warm shadows. Lined up in neat rows and countable.

Re "It's not a weapons platform."
Just for surveillance.... all the complex space related international treaties are still in play.

The problem is text is decrypted back to plain text looking for advertising on the free email services after they offer their free new https all the way.
The message is then seen as classic random numbers and is then flagged at some stage as using encryption and further sorting by gov/mil.
The gov/mil does not care what is in your message but the slightest hint that any person is using crpyto like numbers or letters in bulk would ensure any ip, user, isp is noted.
That message glows.
Expect 3-4 level of hops to all other communications to be looked at retroactively and users listed for future tracking. Friends of friends going back. "Collect it all" gets it all and can then be given a sorting task.
The good news is the one time pad works. The fun part is getting the format to look very normal and be machine readable for advertizing.
The bad news is random numbers stand out, the path of the message stands out and will ensure a lot of interest from gov/mil with global reach and years of storage.

FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit (May 22, 2012)
http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-q...
Somewhere between a tame telco, tame hardware, tame software and the "Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
an average users gps, voice, text, images, voice print and all other cell related data will be as easy to get as always.
An average user might be sold on the idea that some user data is protected from wider outside network man in the middle efforts but that will not help with CALEA and a tame brand having to sell compliant telco products in the USA over generations.
Staff often then move into the private sector and then contract methods and skill sets back at a city and state level. Thats a lot of people with the keys to consumer grade telco standards.

re 'It is difficult to compromise open source crypto."
If the crypto is quality and correctly used every time, just follow the use down the tame network to the tame operating system or charm, make friends with the users.
Over time the message entry and decryption side reverts to plain text, thanks to understood OS, tame network, turned staff, users with new friends, new staff, malware or physical access.

There is not much any nation can do anymore. All the top staff gov or mil crypto staff are of the same mind set going back to the 1950's. Thats generations that got cleared by the US and where educated into UK and US methods in West Germany. They then ensured like minded West German staff where selected to replace them years later.
They all know how to keep the optical sites running data to the US and UK. They know how to pass crypto that is just good enough for German use but is open to the US and UK as used and is kept degraded over decades.
Crypto at an international and US domestic level seems to be favoured front companies, tame staff, turned staff or have staff trained to a mid or top level over years.
Products sold or pushed on a US domestic or for international standards would seem to be safe from man in the middle efforts but very open to the US, UK, cleared staff, ex staff, former staff.
Germany would need to find staff not tainted, trained, cleared or selected by the US and UK with the skills to create new German crypto.
Word would get around within the German academic community and the US and UK would ensure any such effort was tamed or defunded.
Back to face to face meetings or one time pads.

It really depends on the quality of parallel construction needed and what has to be presented in an open US court.
"Feds reviewing DEA policy of counterfeiting Facebook profiles" (Oct 9 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
"Twitter says gag on surveillance scope is illegal “prior restraint”" (Oct 8 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
US says it can hack into foreign-based servers without warrants (Oct 8 2014)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
It seems the NSL aspect is just one aspect a very complex, hidden way of getting and using data for later use in the US legal system.
In the past other surveillance programs like FAIRVIEW, OAKSTAR, RAMPART-A and WINDSTOP could bring in the data locally, globally via friendly nations and tame trusted big brands.
The NSL seems to just fit in between a global sorting and direct use in the US legal system.
It really depends how this plays out. Will the classic GCHQ view of not going to court so people feel like nothing telco related is going on?
Or the new US idea that surveillance is now of such a global reach and low cost that US courts can know and and will have to just understand "collect it all"?
The keys to a server and all users over time are now in play even if its just for legally finding one user for one case.
Once your servers are part of a case, who can legally say that case has stopped? Weeks, months, years of no crypto and all logs. All very legal now? Soon?

RE 'US doesn't even trust the other Five Eyes nations' spy agencies to be able to do this?*"
Some data is kept private for 5 Eye political leaders and policy formation over decades or longer.
Some information needs to be laundered in public in the short term to ensure good public relations spin, good news for sock puppets on social media or new public funding for gov/mil.
The press finds a new story.

The Fourth Amendment is clear on traditional, reasonable safeguards for 100% of the cases.
Bulk collection is not legal and permits things that would not be legal.