France Readies Comsat NG Order after Milsatcom Pooling Effort Falls Flat

摘要

The French Defense Ministry will order two military telecommunications satellites from French prime contractors in the coming weeks in a conventional procurement that likely will divide the work between Airbus Defence and Space, and Thales Alenia Space, French government and industry officials said. The contract for what has been called Comsat NG, or Next Generation, represents the stunning failure of France and its prospective partners - Britain, Italy and, to a lesser extent, Spain - to pool their demand for next-generation military bandwidth. These four nations, plus Germany, all operate separate military telecommunications satellite systems. The European Defence Agency of Brussels, an arm of the 28-nation European Union, has estimated that joining forces in the procurement of next-generation capacity could save European taxpayers up to 2 billion euros ($2.5 billion). European military officials have been saying for several months that the combination of national pride - the unwillingness to be dependent on anyone else for strategic military bandwidth - and satellite replacement schedules, coupled with financial issues among them, had scuttled attempts to join forces.