France to emphasize milspace

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France Eyes Milspace Push
Jun 24, 2008
By Michael A. Taverna/Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

PARIS - France plans to greatly expand its military space capabilities
in its first major strategic shift since the end of the Cold War.

The move is part of a major reinforcement of reconnaissance/
intelligence, ballistic missile protection, force projection and
ground force capabilities planned over the next 15 years to allow the
country to combat terrorism and other evolving global threats.

The move, outlined in a white paper presented last week by President
Nicolas Sarkozy, is to be paid for by stretching out conventional big-
ticket weapons programs like the Rafale fighter, Tiger attack
helicopter and Fremm multimission frigate, shuttering unneeded bases
and equipment and eliminating 54,000 defense jobs.

Sarkozy said annual space spending would more than double, to nearly
800 million euros ($1.24 billion) per year, as recommended by military
space leaders, with an eye to bringing most of the new systems into
operation by 2015. The bulk of the undertakings would be conducted in
cooperation with European partners.

Much of the new space hardware will have to wait until the white paper
recommendations are transformed into a new five-year spending plan for
2009-13, to be decided in the autumn. Although Sarkozy's comfortable
parliamentary majority would normally be expected to assure passage,
strong resistance is likely from lawmakers worried about base closures
and stonewalling within the conservative military establishment
itself. Late last week, a group of high-ranking officers published an
anonymous article in Le Figaro roundly condemning the plan.

However, some programs can be started beforehand using funding already
available. Sarkozy said work is likely to get under way this year on a
new high-resolution optical satellite design that will replace the
existing Helios satellites. Planners hope a quick green light will
help jump-start Musis, an ambitious optical/radar image intelligence
constellation planned with Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Greece.
Year-end approval of a French payload for Italy's new Sicral 2 secure
communications satellite and a development go-ahead for the Franco-
Italian Athena-Fidus dual-use broadband spacecraft is also likely.

The main focus of the space effort will be to turn experimental
satellite systems into new operational capabilities currently lacking
in the European arsenal. The first, Ceres, will create a sigint
constellation drawing on experience from Elint, a small satellite
cluster to be launched in 2010. Several European partners, notably
Germany and Italy, are said to be showing an interest in this system.
The second endeavor will be to establish an early warning satellite
system to protect against intermediate ballistic missiles, using
feedback from Spirale, to be orbited this year. Because of the
technical challenge involved, this objective will be realized in two
steps, beginning with a precursor that would nominally be ready by
2015 and ending with a fully operational system by 2020. The
satellites would operate in conjunction with a long-range land-based
radar that will be derived from yet another demonstrator now in
development.

France will also lend strong support to a European Space Agency plan
to develop a space situational awareness (SSA) system. This system,
which would be built around France's Graves ground radar, already in
operation, and other existing units in the U.K., Germany, Italy and
ESA itself, is to be proposed at the agency's ministerial summit in
November. Sarkozy said SSA will also be one of the top objectives when
France takes over the European Union's rotating presidency in July.