For ICEYE, the German deal is the latest in a handful of high-profile sales to European militaries as the continent moves out on a collective effort to establish "strategic autonomy" in from the United States in the space domain.
NRO Deputy Director Maj. Gen. Christopher Povak said that the spysat agency soon will begin using a new commercial contract vehicle with a five-year "rolling" window for bids.
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
ESA's ruling Council of Ministers approved a whopping $25.7B in funds over the next three years — a 32 percent increase over the previous three-year budget.
The new strategy calls on German MoD to develop a number of new space-based capabilities, including "effectors" to counter adversary threats on orbit such as agile spaceplanes and "bodyguard" satellites with shoot-back systems.
Since its founding 50 years ago, the European Space Agency has shunned involvement in military space activities.
“What has changed is that we’ve doubled down on the Army’s priorities, and I believe our Army senior leaders and Congress are helping us remove some of the barriers to acceleration," PEO Aviation Brig. Gen. David Phillips told Breaking Defense.
Cyber resilience has become a frontline mission for the US military. Breaking Defense’s new eBook rounds up key reporting from the 2025 Alamo ACE conference with the latest developments in cyber offense and defense.
"The ADF will seek space advantage to enable freedom of action by temporally assuring access and disrupting or denying an adversary use of the space domain, as required," states Australia's Concept SELENE outlining military space operations.
NATO's collectively funded space efforts are focused on space domain awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, Col. Jonathan Whitaker, who heads the NATO Combined Forces Space Component Command, told Breaking Defense.
“Using government-furnished Bombardier Global 6500 jets, the HADES prototypes will be the first Army-owned, large-cabin business jets utilized as aerial ISR platforms,” SNC said in a press release today.
The new strategy strongly echoes the US Space Force's Commercial Space Strategy published in April 2024, and copies some of the implementation tools the service has put into place.
Standoff capability means warfighters stay connected and remain remotely located in a safer environment while making it harder for adversaries to target them.
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman stressed that the commercial imagery the Space Force gathers will not be used directly for targeting, rather to allow commanders to rapidly understand evolving situations.
"[I]ncreased situational awareness in the space domain is absolutely essential for NATO allies," Maj. Gen. Paul Lynch, deputy assistant secretary general for intelligence on NATO's military staff, said today.
During a HASC strategic forces subcommittee meeting Wednesday, Ranking Member Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., expressed concern that OMB has "slashed" NRO's budget for acquiring commercial imagery.
"COCOMs reported after these tests that J-REN and SlimGIMS not only met the capability gap, but also reduced the time to create a collection request from an hour to 5 minutes," an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.