Comment by earcaraxe

The US gov't is working with contractors to make use of cubesats built from commercial off the shelf products to be able to produce cheap constellations of satellites for a fraction of the cost (hundreds of thousands per satellite instead of hundreds of millions) of what they've been paying. These satellites also will have significantly shorter lifespans (1-2 years) so they'll need more frequent launches to replenish the fleets, but the advantage is they can keep upgrading with the latest technology without being locked into a 10 or 20 year old machine. SpaceX dropping the cost of launches fits right into this.