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Brussels is exploring building a new satellite network to provide military intelligence as doubts mount over the US’s commitment to European defence.
The system would aim to partly replace US capabilities, after President Donald Trump’s pause on intelligence sharing with Ukraine this month highlighted Europe’s reliance on America.
“Given the changes in the geopolitical situation, the European Commission is considering expanding its satellite capacities to improve geospatial intelligence support for security,” defence and space commissioner Andrius Kubilius told the Financial Times.
The new satellite network would be used to detect threats such as the movement of forces and to co-ordinate military action. Discussions have just begun, but the Lithuanian said the bloc needed a network to complement other programmes used for navigation and earth observation.
It would need to produce updated information more often than the low-orbit Copernicus, which monitors climate change and natural disasters but only generates images about every 24 hours.
Accepting that the project would be expensive and take time to build, Kubilius said he would ask member states if they wanted a “temporary commercial approach”.
“We are looking to create a specific system as an earth observation governmental service. It would have high technology and high data availability.” The system would operate in low Earth orbit, he said. Such networks require dozens of satellites.
He said the best commercial systems can track targets and military deployments with updates every 30 minutes.
The Commission is also procuring IRIS², its own multi-orbit broadband network in low Earth orbit. This year it will complete the Govsatcom programme, which will link member state systems.
Kubilius was speaking ahead of the launch of a defence plan next week. The Commission has made available €150bn in loans to member states and will allow them to exclude some defence spending from its fiscal rules, which would permit them to commit up to €650bn more.
The plan, seen by the FT, would also allow member states to ask the Commission to procure weapons, pooling demand to secure better prices.
The Commission has yet to determine how spending should be restricted, but President Ursula von der Leyen has said the funds should be spent on European products.
Kubilius said countries included within that remit would include Norway and “I hope” the UK.
Turkey was “still under discussion”, he said. But he pointed out that Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, which holds the rotating chair of the EU, met Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on March 13, which was a “visible symbol”.
He said the funds could also be used to buy weapons from Ukraine for its armed forces. They were half the price of western ones and “and of course it supports the Ukrainian economy”, he said.
Kubilius said the plan would highlight strategic areas in which EU countries are too dependent on the US. These include airlift capacity, air-to-air refuelling, and air warning and control.
He would also prioritise a missile defence system, which could cost €500bn.
“We are naked,” he said. “Are we going to develop that air defence each country alone or collectively? I feel it’s better to have a joint system to co-ordinate to cover the whole territory. But that is not for us to decide.”
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