Five European Defense Forces Sign Joint Working Document

Space News | June 24, 2002 | Peter B. de Selding, Brussels

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Pooling of Space-Based Reconnaissance is the Goal

By Peter B. de Selding, Brussels

Military authorities from five European nations say they are moving toward a common European system for space-based reconnaissance by stitching together their separate national programs.

Each of the five — Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — has signed a joint operational requirements document for space-based reconnaissance. By agreeing on what hardware is needed for a military observation system, they are making slow but steady progress toward a full pooling of their resources, these officials said.

Known by its French acronym, BOC, the "Common Operational Requirements for a European Global System of Observation by Satellite" for security and defense is a detailed checklist of what these nations’ military authorities think they can reasonably ask their governments for between 2004 and 2007.

The document, presented here June 18 during the "European Satellites for Security" conference arranged by event organizer EyeforSpace, describes radar, infrared and optical image quality and resolution, overflight frequency and other guidelines.

All five nations are already financing, through investments made before the BOC was approved, separate radar, optical and infrared satellites to be placed into service: Italy’s radar system Cosmo-Skymed, Germany’s SAR-Luperadar, and France’s Helios 2 optical and infrared spy satellites are viewed as the initial components of a system to which all five BOC nations will have at least some access.

"BOC is based on the conviction that no European country can go it alone," said Brig. Gen. Kurt Herrmann, commander of the German Defense Ministry’s strategic reconnaissance command. "We start with common use of first-generation systems and a consideration of second-generation systems."

Herrmann said the BOC signatories have agreed that the European Union’s emerging military command will be granted access to the satellite systems now in development. But the formula for granting access to the European Union, and to individual nations that are not part of the BOC agreement, remains to be decided, he said.

Rear Adm. Andrea Campregher, chief of the information and security department at the Italian Defense Ministry’s general staff, said Italy’s participation in France’s Helios 1 spy-satellite program, launched in 1995, paved the way toward the BOC. He said it also paved the way for the French-Italian agreement on joint access to Helios 2, the French Pleiades high-resolution optical satellites set for launch later this decade, and Italy’s Cosmo-Skymed radar spacecraft.

"The BOC’s most important aspect is that it expresses our joint-will to have an open consultation with each other over operational needs," said Col. Jose Tamane Camarero, chief of the images section in the Spanish Defense Ministry’s intelligence division. "This document is a guide. It is not binding on the signatories, but it should help all of us as we think about our own future national or bilateral systems."

Camarero said Spain’s Istar observation satellite, long under study, remains an option but has not yet been approved. Col. Yves Blin, deputy director of the space bureau in the French Defense Ministry, said the systems now being built in France, Germany and Italy would not, by themselves, satisfy all the strategic reconnaissance requirements listed in the BOC. All three nations’ systems were designed and contracted too early to permit major modifications based on the common-requirements list.

Blin said the challenge for the BOC signatories will be to erect a ground segment that permits each nation’s military forces a speedy access to the other nations’ satellites. Several officials stressed that the common-requirements document is only a first step, and that it does not eliminate the problems associated with having several sovereign nations negotiating access rights to imagery owned by individual nations, or groups of nations, and not by all BOC signatories equally.

Blin said the Helios experience between France, Italy and Spain since 1995 gives reason for optimism that, over the years, a common vision will result from a system that starts out with unequal ownership. France is 79 percent owner of the two-satellite Helios 1 system, with Italy at 14 percent and Spain, 7 percent.

Blin said that in the first couple of years of Helios operations, only 5 percent of the imagery ordered by the three Helios-1 owners was the result of a joint demand. Currently, he said, 36 percent of all Helios programming is for images jointly requested by the three defense ministries.

"When we program the Helios spacecraft, we find conflicts between what one nation wants and what another wants," Blin said. "So we sit down and discuss priorities, which normally are kept secret by each nation. More and more often during the discussions, we ask: ‘Are we submitting orders for imagery of the same area?’ And often it is."

Even the BOC list covers only a part of what Europe ultimately should have in place for space-based defense purposes, said Air Brig. Gen. Daniel Gavoty, head of the French Defense Ministry’s space bureau. As he has in the past, Gavoty insisted that for around 800 million euros ($756 million) per year over 15 years, European nations could assemble a broad military-space capability that would include satellites for telecommunications, observation, signal intelligence, missile warn ing and space surveillance.