The
European Defence Agency (EDA) is quietly moving toward involvement in the
military-space sector by providing Europe's civil space authorities with a list
of military requirements for future civilian-financed Earth observation and
space-situational awareness projects, according to EDA and other European
officials.
It remains
unclear how far the effort will go, and already some heads of individual
European government space agencies are protesting that they are being asked to
fund programs with military specifications but no military funding.
EDA, the European
Space Agency (ESA) and the commission of the 27-nation European Union have
agreed to create a task force with European space-hardware manufacturers to
identify technologies that Europe needs but does not have on its own.
Leonardo
Argiri, an EDA research and technology project officer, said one EDA role will
be to encourage its member governments to coordinate with ESA on what
manufacturer to use for a given technology deemed to be in short supply in
Europe.
Argiri said
during a Sept. 25 presentation at a space-technology seminar organized by the
Eurospace space-industry association that by coordinating supply-chain
decisions with ESA and the European Commission, EDA can help assure that the
space sector maximizes its chance of assuring low-volume production of critical
space hardware.
European
government and industry officials say a key roadblock to Europe's
self-sufficiency in certain space technologies is that the customers for these
products do not agree to use the same suppliers. Without a sufficiently large
market, manufacturers of high-end electronics components are unlikely to
maintain production lines.
"The
idea is to select, for a given component, one company that we can agree
to," Argiri said, "and to agree among the governments that we won't
try to duplicate that product throughout Europe."
Some
European governments, such as France, have long welded civil and military space
into a single research and development organization. The French space agency,
CNES, is funded by the French
research and defense ministries and does work for both.
But other
governments, as well as ESA, have maintained a strictly civil role for their
space agencies, if for no other reason than that they have no military space
ambitions.
But these
governments have agreed, through the European Commission and ESA, to fund programs
that have clear military applications. One, called Kopernikus, is a fleet of
Earth observation satellites planned for the next decade — many of interest to
military users. Another, which ESA calls Space Situational Awareness, is a
proposal that ESA coordinate existing ground-based radar and optical assets in Europe to get a better look at what is in orbit over European territory.
"There
are reasons for combining our work in the context of the Commission's European
Security and Research Program, of the [Kopernikus] community and of ESA,"
said Dick Zandee, EDA's head of planning and policy.
"How
do we do this?" Zandee asked during the Sept. 9 conference with ESA and
the European Commission that set up the task force. "First, where others
can take our military requirements into consideration, [EDA] will provide them.
We have already provided the commission with military requirements for
[Kopernikus] use for maritime surveillance. In the future, military
requirements for wider military use of [Kopernikus] will be developed. We have
also started work on military requirements for Space Situational Awareness,
though these will not be available before 2009."
Argiri said
that in addition to these areas, EDA is interested in military satellite
telecommunications and in satellite data relay. In Europe, most military
satellite communications technologies are based on commercial work. ESA has
launched a data-relay capability with the Artemis satellite in geostationary
orbit and ESA governments are expected to be asked to fund a follow-on
data-relay system when they meet in late November to vote on ESA's long-term
budget.
Christian
Breant, EDA's research and technology director, said EDA is active in assuring
that the next generation of military or dual-use reconnaissance satellites are built as a network
rather than independently as is the case of existing or currently planned
observation satellites in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
These
nations, joined by Belgium and Greece, have formed a group to design what is
called the Multinational Space-Based Imaging System, or MUSIS, to assure that
future reconnaissance systems can be used by all members. The MUSIS goal is to
have these nations agree, by mid-2009, on a design architecture for all future
European reconnaissance satellite programs.
