The Miami Herald reports that “in the latest sign that the Pentagon is preparing for Guantánamo prison operations after President Barack Obama leaves office, the U.S. Southern Command is shopping for a second fiber-optic cable for the base — this one from Puerto Rico. Price tag? Unknown.”  

“A division of the Defense Department invited contractors on June 8 to submit proposals to “design, manufacture, install, test and commission” a 750-mile underwater cable linking the U.S. Navy base to Puerto Rico. The work should be done, it said, 18 months after a contract is awarded. It set no projected award date.”  

“The Defense Information System Agency said in a statement that the new underwater cable ‘will provide secure, high throughput, highly reliable, low-latency network redundancy’ for the Department of Defense ‘and other government communications’ connecting Caribbean sites of the U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Northern Command to the Department of Defense Information Network.”