“By Europe, for Europe” is one of the European Commission’s proud logos on the Galileo satellite webpage of the behemoth Europa website. Yet by the time the system is in place, the wider Europe as we know it might be gone!
As Russia recently opened its first non-Russia based ground-station in Brazil, and awaits the signing of agreements with Australia, the US, Spain and Indonesia for further stations, the EU has a measly four satellites in orbit.
Russia’s Great Bear
The US GPS system remains the number one satellite positioning system, but Russia’s Glonass is quickly closing in on it. For civilian uses, GPS remains slightly better, but at high latitudes on the earth, Glonass is superior. Russia is also aiming to launch 35 new satellites to replace the existing constellation in the next 7 years, and has a war-chest of $12 billion to spend on the project.
Currently, Glonass has 23 active satellites out of a total of 29, with the remaining 6 undergoing maintenance, commissioning or testing. The commercial use for Glonass extends from aiding the construction of buildings to facilitating traffic flows and tapping into Asia’s burgeoning telecoms markets. The military use obviously covers the same uses as the American GPS system, with the ability of the US military to close down GPS driving the development of Russia’s own independent and separate system.
China’s Draco the dragon
China has also muscled in on the global satellite navigation market with its Compass system, which already consists of 10 satellites in orbit. Strictly speaking, the Compass system, which in Chinese is Beidou, is named after stars in the Ursa Major constellation, but China is aiming to have far more satellites than the number of stars that visibly compose this constellation. China hopes that Compass will eventually have 35 satellites in total, and has looked at cooperating with the European Union’s Galileo system, though political wrangling seems to have limited any progress being made.
Galileo
The European Union’s attempt to access this market is the Galileo project. Unsurprisingly, it is 50% over cost, massively behind schedule and is expected to come in at over 5 billion Euros, but will probably cost more.
Today, in 2013, the constellation of satellites consists of four: two launched in 2011 and two more in 2012. Originally, the aim was to have the system functioning by 2008: now 2015 is the aim for initial operational capacity, with full capacity to be achieved in 2020.
Galileo was designed to have 27 satellites in total, with 3 spare, and officially is designated for civilian use and to be independent from Russian and US interference. As the Commission said, ‘For Europe, by Europe’.
The project’s very existence is a testament to the hard work of Italian Commissioner for Industry, Antonio Tajani, who took the bloated carcass and in the process of reviving it, managed to reduce some of the soaring overheads. The prediction for Galileo is that it could provide an extra 90 billion Euros to the economy of the European member states in its first twenty years, but those forecasts firstly most probably include military uses, such as allowing third-party states to use the system for missile defence shields, and secondly must look a little incredible now, given the global competition (India and Japan, too, are developing satellite systems) and compromises that have gone into Galileo.
As covered by the European Journal previously, the US has already forced several changes onto Galileo, limiting its independence and capabilities, while the ongoing Euro crisis could still leave the project still-born. Because the Euro, via the destruction of competing national currencies, has destroyed financial literacy within the European Union and removed the risks and rewards of states taking on too much debt, the Euro itself, the glue of the EU project, is under threat, and new political forces are emerging that could tear the current EU apart.
Paying for a Franco-German present?
Galileo is fundamentally flawed in that it suffers from a lack of ownership. In order to get the UK to provide more funding, contracts were given to firms based in Britain, a principle which, whilst good for Britain, shows that the ‘free’ market is non-existent and political compromises riddle the project.
Should the Euro crisis lead to member states of Europe exiting the EU, the Galileo project could be severely undermined. With operations centres based in Germany and in Italy, a dependency on launching centred on French Guiana, and a headquarters in the Czech Republic, its geographical spread and lack of ownership caused by the fudge of powers brought about by the existence of the supranational layer of government in the EU, could leave satellites in space happily beaming back information to empty stations in Europe below, or more likely, to the system that every member of the current EU funded being inherited by a future rump-EU consisting of a German-French coalition.
Galileo, as such, appears to be an expensive present given by all, but ultimately usable only by the old, core EU states.
