When it comes to defense, savings no longer exist. Faced with the Russian threat, Emmanuel Macron announced this Wednesday, November 12 in Toulouse, an additional investment of 4.2 billion euros for French space defense by 2030.
While outlining France’s new space strategy for 2040, the Head of State specifically advocated the future development of reusable European launchers to gain competitiveness against Elon Musk’s SpaceX. “Today’s wars have been fought in outer space and tomorrow’s wars will begin in outer space.”said the President of the Republic at the Space Command headquarters he had just inaugurated.
“We have had espionage, for example by Russia, against our satellites with patrol ships, massive interference with GPS signals, cyber attacks on our space infrastructure, anti-satellite missile tests, the development of anti-satellite weapons (…) and even the very surprising threat of Russian nuclear weapons in space”he detailed.
To address these challenges, he announced that he intends to allocate an additional 4.2 billion euros of the 6 billion euros already planned for military space by 2030, as part of an update to the military programs law. Will be added “more than 16 billion euros for French civic space, including multiple activities” (civil and military), he added.
However, this amount is far below the 35 billion euros that German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has pledged to invest by 2030 in space defense to counter Russian and Chinese military capabilities. Therefore, France risks putting itself in a weak position during the European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial conference scheduled in Bremen, Germany, on November 26 and 27.
The French President also asked to move away from this principle “geographic return” The ESA guarantees that each Member State recovers, in the form of industrial contracts, a share of investments proportional to its contribution to the agency’s budget. this principle “had its justification and utility at one time, but now we must turn the page” so that “Our European Champions are very competitive”he insisted.
Emmanuel Macron also wants the development of space launchers in the future “around reuse, low cost propulsion, high thrust motorization” And “modernize” European space base at Kourou, in French Guiana, “to make it an agile place, open to small launchers and foreign partners”.
