(AFP / DANIEL KARMANN)
The German companies Helsing and OHB announced on Tuesday the creation of a joint venture intended to develop a European reconnaissance and tactical targeting system from space, responding to the sharp acceleration in public military investments in Europe since the war in Ukraine.
OHB, a major space player in Germany, and Helsing, an artificial intelligence start-up specializing in defense, will notably apply for the German army’s “SPOCK” project, a military space program which stands for “SAR-Spacesystem for Persistent Operational traCKing”, i.e. a space radar system for the operational monitoring of operations.
A first tranche of this program, residing in a constellation of military reconnaissance satellites using SAR radar technology, was entrusted in 2025 to a joint venture created between the defense giant Rheinmetall and a Finnish start-up Iceye, specializing in radar satellites Earth observation, to provide 40 SAR satellites.
The German army has planned a second phase of the project which combines several types of sensors, AI and tactical targeting.
It is in these areas that OHB and Helsing want to combine “tactical spatial surveillance and designation of objectives by artificial intelligence”, to “radically” reduce the time between detection and engagement of targets, they explain in a joint press release, without disclosing the amount of the investment.
“The war in Ukraine demonstrates the importance of targeting from space – and that there is no time to lose,” Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of artificial intelligence start-up Helsing, said in the press release.
“Europe must win the battle for sovereignty in orbit,” he added.
“Space systems are essential to making the Bundeswehr the strongest and most modern army in Europe,” argued Marco Fuchs, chairman of the board of satellite manufacturer OHB.
The OHB and Helsing project, provisionally named “KIRK”, must bring together other companies, including the Norwegian Kongsberg and the German Hensoldt.
This announcement highlights Germany’s military space ambitions, decided last year with the desire to invest 35 billion euros by 2030 in space defense to face the Russian threat, against a backdrop of fears of American disengagement.
During this announcement last September, the German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, also pointed out the delay of the Europeans over Russia and China, accusing his rivals of espionage, aggression and of having developed anti-satellite weapons.
