French, Germans to merge defence satellite programmes

SCHWERIN, Germany – The Franco-German security coucil agreed at today’s bilateral summit to merge the two countries’ defence observation satellite programmes, Agence France-Presse reported.
The French Helios and German SAR-Lupe programmes will be brought together after the acquisition of an independent military information system.
The two sides also said they hope to create a joint space observation system to give the EU its own satellite reconnaissance capacity.
This morning, Handelsblatt newspaper said some 800,000 EUR will be spent on the research stage and that the two projects represent billions of euros in investments.