European defence ministries are expected to push the trigger during 2010 on billions of Euros’ worth of satellite acquisitions, firming up several long-awaited programs which should keep the industry busy for at least the next six years.
French…
European defence ministries are expected to push the trigger during 2010 on billions of Euros’ worth of satellite acquisitions, firming up several long-awaited programs which should keep the industry busy for at least the next six years.
French officials, in remarkably open presentations at their main space intelligence centre in Creil, near Paris, and some of their main European counterparts at a AAAF conference, provided updates in early December on the next generation of imaging, electronic surveillance and communication satellites:
— MUSIS, a constellation of radar and optical satellites due for launch in 2014, was to meet a key milestone on January 11 when industrial proposals were due on the three high-resolution optical satellites, expected to cost on the order of E1bn each.
The MUSIS satellites are to provide significantly higher resolution than France’s current Helios 2 satellites, said to achieve 26 cm in panchromatic images, and would put Europe’s capabilities more or less on the same level as the US.
Discussions continue with the French MOD on a possible requirement for similar resolution in colour imagery but whether the European industry can achieve this yet appears to remain in debate.
— Also during 2010, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Greece and Italy are to finalise a MoU signed in 2008 on how they would share the MUSIS program. Spain proposes to contribute a separate series of wide-field, lower-resolution optical satellites, and was to decide in early 2010 on follow-ons to the two dual-use satellites, Paz (optical) and Ingenio (radar) which it has procured on its own and is to launch in 2012 and 2014.
Germany and Italy will in principle provide MUSIS´radar satellites, starting in 2014 with the second generation of Italy´s Cosmo-Skymed satellites.
— France and Italy were due in December to sign a long-awaited contract with Thales Alenia Space for the Athena-Fidus dual-use Ka-band satellite, although as of early January final negotiations continued to drag on.
Significantly, during 2009, Italy’s Sicral 1B military satellite also became available to civilian government departments, potentially extending its user base and associated terminal market from a small number of soldiers to thousands of police, coast guards, firemen and civil protection officials. Athena Fidus would serve the same broad community.
— The French MOD is separately preparing to call for expressions of interest on the outsourcing of capacity on its Syracuse III communication satellites. The intention is now to sell their capacity and to lease it back from a contractor, with TAS and EADS Astrium expected to be the main bidders.
However, industry officials said this would stop short of the end-to-end service and terminal leases from which Paradigm appears to derive the bulk of its margin. They also expressed some doubt as to whether the MOD is fully prepared to navigate the unfamiliar world of lawyers and bankers who would get involved in the deal, or to agree on a methodology for valuing the bandwidth. No quick decision is expected.
— France, Greece and Sweden are also in “advanced discussions” on Ceres, a less clearly-defined signals intelligence satellite to be launched no earlier than 2016.
Less visibly, officials said the community of Helios imagery users is now expanding rapidly, as security classification has been lowered from secret to confidential and new image processing centres are being added; there are now 11 in France and at least seven more are planned, each a sizable piece of infrastructure.
“More and more weapon systems eat imagery and needs are really exploding”, one of the managers of the Creil centre said.
Interestingly, the growth of demand is now such that officials also express concern on becoming overly dependent on space. At the AAAF conference, the French general staff’s procurement chief called for “not letting space take the importance it is on its way to take”. UK and US officials have made similar noises in recent months.
Unmanned aircraft manufacturers are expected to exploit this concern by offering cheaper substitutes to satellites, and the UK MOD has already begun to depict the successor to its Skynet 5 communication satellites as a system partly made up of drones and airships.
