Airbus and Thales Share Contract Worth Over €1.5 Billion: France Chooses Both Firms for Next-Generation Observation Satellites
On Monday, Airbus and Thales confirmed that France has selected them to lead the design and construction of the country's next generation of military observation satellites.
The European aerospace giant Airbus and the French company Thales confirmed on Monday that they had been selected as prime contractors for France's next two military observation satellites, the subject of a total contract worth "more than 1.5 billion euros". The choice of these two industrialists by the Ministry of the Armed Forces was revealed by the daily La Tribune at the end of September. “The Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) has awarded Airbus Defense and Space and Thales Alenia Space (TAS) the contract for the IRIS program, the next generation of extremely high resolution Earth observation satellites intended for the French armed forces,” Airbus said in a press release.
“This contract covers the design, construction and testing of two satellites, as well as the ground control and use segment, maintenance and in-orbit operations,” detailed Airbus. Successor to the CSO satellites This contract “represents more than 1.5 billion euros for the entire consortium” until the end of the 2030s, added the group. Thales Alenia Space is 67% owned by Thales, a high-technology supplier to aerospace, defense, security and transport, and 33% by the Italian aerospace group Leonardo.
This IRIS program is planned to succeed the CSO (Optical Space Component) satellites of the MUSIS (Multinational Space? based Imaging System) program. This involves five European partners of France: Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Greece.
Machine-translated from French
Not cross-checked yet
Only BFM Business reports this story so far. We show it as a single source until another newsroom confirms it.
- BFM Business9 Nov, 18:49
| Publisher BFM Business (established tier) | +76 |
| Total | 76 |
Method: reports are grouped by the words of their headline and summary; each newsroom counts once; figures are read from the reports as published. Nothing here is written by an AI.