The Orchid has said that the DDS cannot rely alone on UNP funding and will need to find more and more money itself if it expects to expand and develop as planned. The Orchid cited a prime example the joint company with the Raegris to sell export versions of DDS warships which yielded well over a billion zarks to DDS funds last year.
At a joint media briefing with Finance Officer The Shiner The Orchid outlined some other areas of commercial revenue opportunity including weather reporting and communications which can piggyback on existing DDS infrastructure. "We produce weather data anyway for the DDS so why not sell a version of this data for commercial and civil use too? Our data network typically runs at 30-40% capacity in peace time so there is opportunity there to sell the spare bandwidth."
The Orchid has set a target of 500 million zarks a year revenue from commercial opportunities (not including exports) by 2112.
