The blueprint for a revamped European space policy with emphasis on military applications was presented by the European Union last week at a top-level industry summit in Paris.
The European Space Agency (ESA) should become the EU's de facto space agency, the green paper says. This would ensure more effective management of future programmes in the wake of the Galileo satellite navigation project launch, which was hit by extensive delays caused by arguments between the EU and ESA over control.
The ESA, which is independent of the EU, is responsible only for civilian spaceflight, while the EU has no authority over defence, although space projects with military applications are being increasingly justified as "security-related".
The proposed Global Monitoring for Environmental Security (GMES) project, for example, is "effectively equivalent to a military system", says former ESA science director Roger Bonnet, head of the science panel that helped draw up the EU green paper.
GMES should be followed by another major programme such as a European satellite broadband project, says an applications panel under Giuliano Berretta, president of the European Satellite Operators' Association. This would have a better business case than Galileo, he argues.
"We should try to implement the first phase within two or three months, with full-scale work starting in 2007," Berretta says.
EU research commissioner Philippe Bousquin says the war in Iraq served to highlight the "gap with the USA in space applications and reinforced my belief that our sovereignty is at stake and we must develop independent navigation, observation and communications".
Source: Flight International