The European Parliament yesterday opened the way for the
civilian
Galileo satellite system to be used for military and security
purposes as part of a plan to improve the efficiency of defence
communications.
It also called for more standardisation in communications and
surveillance technology to get more from total defence spending
of over€200bn a year, and"strongly requested" member states to
focus their efforts on "common capabilities which can be used for
both defence and security purposes".
This applied to satellite-based intelligence, surveillance and
warning equipment, unmanned air vehicles, helicopters and
telecommunication equipment and air and sea transport.
In a statement the European Parliament said it considered it
necessary to allow the use of the Galileo and GMES (Global
Monitoring for Environment and Security) systems for security and
defence purposes.
Originally built to compete with the US's Global Positioning
System (GPS), Galileo has struggled to find commercial users.
Parliamentarians also demandeda common technical standard for
protected telecommunications and ways of protecting critical
infrastructure. They were "deeply concerned about the lack of
efficiency and co-ordination" in defence spending. They urged
greater efforts to reduce unnecessary duplication between member
states through specialisation, pooling and sharing of existing
capabilities, and joint development of new ones.
They said capability needs are often technologically very
similar or identical for armed forces operations, border
surveillance, protection of critical infrastructure and disaster
management. This created opportunities to rationalised and enhance
interoperability between armed forces and security forces, they
said.
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