EU Considers Joint Funding of Next-Generation Military Satellites
The EU is increasingly interested in funding military activity, said Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defense for the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank. A central question is whether to pool EU money for military satellites, as was done with the Galileo navigation system, he said. The matter is up for debate at a public workshop Thursday in Brussels on space, security and defense policy hosted by the European Parliament (EP) Security and Defense Subcommittee. Valasek will speak.
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EU sensitivity to security and defense issues has grown along with its rising profile in international crisis work and talks with Iran and other nations, the European Commission Directorate-General on External Relations said in a report. Space technologies have become central assets in defense and security systems, with renewed strategic importance according observation and data collection, telecommunications and navigation satellites, it said.
Europe needs a better-organized, defense space-based architecture to meet growing security challenges, the EC study said. The U.S. treats space as a unique, integrated strategic sector, but EU counties have developed their own national systems. Their strained defense budgets are spurring cooperative efforts, it said.
One-third of military space funding comes from France, an advocate of pan-EU approach to the next generation of military satellites, Valasek told us. The EC study, the latest of several on space defense, advocates using EU funds to launch and run such a system, he said.
A June 2006 EC report branded European space policy as incoherent. After years of pressure from the EP, industry, the EC and the European Space Agency, efforts to craft a European space policy “have yet to come to fruition,” the 2007 report said. Political disputes dogged discussions of dual military-civilian use of space technologies, the relationship between national and European programs and security objectives, data policy questions related to national, integrated or shared space assets, and how to mesh with U.S. space policy, it said.
The EU lacks a common space policy, but Galileo and the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security project are “pushing at the boundaries of the civilian-military nexus,” the 2006 report said. The European Space Council acknowledges that those systems, together with better coordinated national observation, meteorological and communication satellites, can help support EU space and defense policy, the EC said. But there’s no consensus on the boundaries of a joint policy.
The report recommended that the EU remove a “firewall” between civilian and military space activities. European policymakers must keep civilian authority over space efforts and ensure that “U.S. dominance in NATO and European fears about offending the United States do not conspire to promote or allow developments contrary to European security to be imposed by decision of default.” In addition, it said, better infrastructure is needed to support space activities, reliable and adequate funding must be obtained, and Europe needs a policy to prevent “weaponization of space.”
Common funding is the main question, but a “small, vocal group” argues that European next-generation satellites are needed because the U.S. can’t be trusted, said Valasek. He believes Europe should have its own observation system, but not a navigation program such as Galileo, when the U.S. already provides such services.
European satellites also are needed for communications, said Valasek. Private companies are making a killing by leasing bandwidth to militaries, and demand for bandwidth for satellite phones is rising with the sheer number of peace- keepers being sent to places such as Chad and East Timor, he said.