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Editor’s Note
Germany’s massive investment in military space capabilities underscores a fundamental shift in Europe’s security landscape and offers a potential opportunity for India’s rapidly expanding space industry. The author argues that New Delhi must move quickly to enhance its space ecosystem and enable Indian firms to capitalise on Europe’s defence-space expansion.
As part of its rearmament efforts, Germany has allocated 35 billion euros to space capabilities. The country’s political tradition had, until the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War in 2022, been decidedly non-militaristic. Now, with the government having embarked on a 780 billion euro spending programme for the armed forces, which lasts up to 2030, there is a scramble for defence contracts. Among the most promising sectors for India might be the space sector.
Since 1999, India has been launching satellites into space on behalf of foreign powers, including Germany. A total of 434 satellites from 36 countries had been launched until the beginning of 2026. India aims to increase its share of the global space market sector from 2-3% to 8-9%. Consequently, the development of a military satellite programme in Germany is worth tracking.
There would be challenges in partnering with German companies because of the sensitivity of the satellites’ purpose and Germany’s own preference for duplicating its military capabilities with largely domestic supply chains rather than relying even on its most trusted European Union partners. German companies such as Rheinmetall will be favoured, but there may be room for Indian firms to partner with them.
Firms from within the EU, such as Poland’s SATIM and Finland’s ICEYE, have done so, collaborating with Rheinmetall on a reconnaissance satellite programme known as “SPOCK-1”. The programme uses synthetic aperture radar, a specialisation of ICEYE, to provide imagery which is processed by SATIM using artificial intelligence to generate real-time updates for military forces. Among the troop formations it supports is reportedly the German brigade that has been permanently deployed in Lithuania since 2025.
Currently, two parallel satellite programmes are being developed to support the German military. One is an EU programme, worth 10.6 billion euros, known as IRIS2, which will consist of 290 satellites and will have both military and civilian uses. In the military realm, it will support border and maritime surveillance and intelligence-sharing through encoded communications. It is expected to become fully operational in the 2030s.
The other is a 10 billion-euro programme, known as SATCOM Stage 4, which will be pursued separately by Germany and aims to launch 100 military satellites. It is expected to come online faster than the EU programme, thereby plugging capacity shortfalls. At present, the country has between eight and ten largely obsolescent military satellites and around 100 civilian satellites.
For some years, it has relied in substantial measure on commercial satellite imagery and intelligence-sharing from friendly countries, especially the United States. The outbreak of tensions between Russia and Ukraine in 2013-14, and the question of whether Russian military units were covertly operating inside Ukraine as part of ‘hybrid warfare’, created a demand for real-time imagery.
Starting in 2016, there was a push to fund up to three satellites to be operated by the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). This project, codenamed ‘Georg’ (Global Electro-Optical Reconnaissance System Germany), has experienced delays. The first satellite was meant to be launched in 2022, but a series of postponements occurred, and the launch has been vaguely promised for sometime in 2026. Over half a billion euros have already been expended on the programme, which is led by the Bremen-based company OHB, which has also supplied reconnaissance satellites for the German military.
The country has set up a Space Command, based at the town of Uedem, close to the Dutch border. Compared to the more than 200 military satellites controlled by the US, Russia, and China, Germany’s space warfare capabilities are modest. But the country plans to upgrade these, having observed how crucial satellite imagery was in helping the Ukrainians intercept Russian missile launches. Berlin recognises that the United States’ commitment to European defence is wavering and does not want to be wholly dependent on Washington for German national defence.
It offers a potential opening to India. A 2025 study advocated expanding business-to-business collaboration between German and Indian space firms, noting that only one such collaboration existed at the bilateral level. In part, this was because India’s other space partners, such as the US, France, Japan and Russia, were willing for their own reasons to commit to co-development and co-production of systems, while Germany was not.
On the Indian side, regulatory hurdles impeded foreign direct investment in the space sector until 2024. The situation in India has changed dramatically: the country had only 11 private space companies in 2019, but over 400 by the end of 2025. On the German side, there is also greater openness, although perhaps not so much as in India. Concerns have been expressed that the 35 billion-euro budget approved by Berlin will mostly go to well-established companies such as OHB, leaving Germany’s 100 space-oriented startups out of the windfall. The budget aims to reduce dependence on non-European systems, which is potentially a hurdle for Indian participation.
However, India’s impressive track record as a space power, with the ability to offer cost-efficient solutions, might give it a competitive advantage. To actualise that the Indian space programme will either have to fill up the almost 2400 personnel vacancies that it currently has, in order to generate exportable capacity for building foreign partnerships, or develop a rigorous vetting regime for overseas collaboration that supplements Indian strengths in programme management, while accepting that scaling up will remain a long-term project.
The January 2026 Indo-German joint statement on the occasion of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to India mentioned enhanced dialogue between the German and Indian space agencies. It comes slightly more than a year after the European Space Agency, Germany’s traditional partner for collaboration, agreed to support the Indian human spaceflight mission (known as ‘Gaganyaan’). It is possible that as overall defence collaboration between India and the EU increases, Germany will become more comfortable with bilateral collaboration, offering new opportunities to Indian space startups.
Prem Mahadevan, a Switzerland-based researcher on European affairs
