Making progress in space – the European Union’s final frontier

Date: 12/06/03

By Daniel Keohane

Despite divisions, the EU is moving towards indigenous space capabilities. The sooner the better

AN EARLY version of the European Convention's draft constitution said that one of the objectives of the European Union should be "space discovery". That noble aim has since been dropped, although another new clause does set out the basis for an EU space policy.

Traditionally, space raises images of rockets and moon landings - not the bread-and-butter of everyday politics. However, nowadays space also raises broader political issues that are not immediately obvious but important nonetheless: should the European Union aspire to be merely an economic superpower, or should it aim for a more credible common foreign and security policy? Should its aerospace industry depend on US technology, or should the Europeans nurture their own technological base? And, more specifically, is the EU's stated ambition of being able to manage autonomous military operations realistic, unless it develops satellite networks that can operate independently of America's?

All these questions are relevant to Europe's hesitant efforts to develop a space policy and a space industry. Although divided on some of these questions, European governments appear to be renewing their efforts to build up capabilities in space. And some of the strongest supporters of space can be found in EU institutions. The European Commission published a space green paper in January highlighting the value of space technologies for a variety of EU policies, ranging from environmental protection to internal security.

The current focus of European efforts is Galileo, a satellite navigation system which will cost more than €3 billion. The aim of Galileo is to do a similar job to the American Global Positioning System (GPS), a network of satellites whose signals can be picked up by small devices that reveal to the user his or her exact location. GPS technology will soon dominate the management of transport flows whether the subject is air-traffic control, road congestion or rail networks. The military campaign in Iraq showed other uses for GPS technology: many of America's 'smart' bombs and cruise missiles were steered towards their targets by GPS signals.

But Galileo, for all its importance, is only one part of the European space business. The European space industry has a total annual turnover of approximately €6 billion, directly employing 40,000 people. Yet global space turnover amounts to roughly €70 billion. The US dominates global space expenditure: this year's US government space budget is €26.5 billion, with roughly half spent on military applications and half on civilian projects. Indeed, the US accounts for around 95 of the money spent on the world's military-related space projects.

The European space industry is much more dependent on the commercial market than its US counterpart. The American space industry receives 80 of the value of its orders from government markets, whereas for the European industry the figure is only 60.

The French argue that space is a "strategic" industry and Europe therefore needs a coherent space policy. After all, telecommunications is already almost completely dependent on space-based systems, while many other sectors, such as transport, will rely on the same technology to a much greater degree than before. And if EU leaders want to strengthen their ability to define and manage a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), they need to pay more attention to their space capabilities.

Space-based technology is now an integral part of modern warfare. In recent years, the US has pioneered a set of new IT- and telecoms-based military technologies, which are sometimes lumped together under the phrase the 'revolution in military affairs'.

This is about gathering real-time information from sensors, processing the information, displaying the relevant elements of a 'battle space' on a screen and ordering precision-guided munitions to strike the targets. Satellites are a crucial element of this 'digitization' of warfare, both gathering and transmitting information.

Galileo is conceived as a civil project but could certainly perform some military tasks. For example, European soldiers on peace-support missions in the Balkans, or elsewhere, could use Galileo to define their positions or steer their munitions. But it is the issue of military observation satellites that has, so far, created the fiercest transatlantic disputes on space policy. The French President, Jacques Chirac, has argued that unless Europe develops its own satellite capabilities, it will remain little more than a "vassal" of the US.

The French have been in the vanguard of European efforts to develop observation satellites. They already have two small Helios 1 satellites in orbit. More powerful Helios 2 satellites are due to be launched. Meanwhile, Germany is building a series of radar observation satellites that can look through clouds. They are doing so because they were unhappy with the quality of satellite imagery supplied by the US during the 1999 Kosovo conflict. The output from these French and German satellites will be made available to their European partners.

Britain receives privileged access to imagery from US spy satellites. Therefore, the British reluctance to develop national or European capabilities for satellite photography is understandable.

The Americans have tried to discourage European ambitions in this area, and not only because US defence companies hope to sell satellites to European governments.

They argue that European military capabilities are so deficient in so many basic areas - such as transport planes, precision guided munitions or aircraft that can bomb at night - that they should focus on these before investing billions of euro in the luxury of spy satellites.

And they argue that Europeans should focus their resources on improving intelligence assessment rather than more expensive intelligence collection capabilities - especially since metre-resolution imagery is now available from commercially-run US satellites.

The French retort that they do not trust the American government never to exercise "shutter control" and switch off the commercial imagery in some crisis.

The arguments for European space capabilities are economic and strategic. Despite divisions among the Europeans, the EU is moving slowly forward in its ramshackle, muddled way.

Many European politicians - even in the UK - appear to understand that indigenous European space capabilities will be an asset to their environmental and industrial policies; and - on those occasions when the EU may wish to act alone - a help to their embryonic foreign and defence policies.

• Daniel Keohane is research fellow for security and defence policy at the Centre for European Reform, an independent think-tank in London. He is also a member of a research group on 'Space and security policy in Europe', a study funded by the European Space Agency and managed by the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome.

Author is research fellow for security and defence policy at the Centre for European Reform, London.

http://www.cer.org.uk/ http://www.cer.org.uk/

---