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Power struggle jeopardises EU Galileo satellite system

15.03.2007 - 09:28 CET | By Helena Spongenberg

Political wrangling between governments and companies in the EU is jeopardising the bloc’s biggest ever joint technological project – the Galileo satellite navigation system – which is already facing several delays.

An internal power struggle has led to the negotiations in the private consortium - consisting of eight European firms who will implement and run the Galileo system - being suspended because they cannot agree a common commercial position.

EU transport commissioner Jacques Barrot said on Wednesday (14 March) he was writing to the companies building the Galileo system to discover the reason for more than a year’s delay. “They are just not working,” his spokesman Michele Cercone said, according to the Financial Times.

The consortium includes European aerospace company EADS, France’s Thales and Alcatel-Lucent, the UK’s Inmarsat, Italy’s Finmeccanica, AENA and Hispasat of Spain, and a German group led by Deutsche Telekom.

The companies are reportedly holding out for more work to be guaranteed by the consortium.

Officials from the EU and the European Space Agency have since June 2005 been negotiating with this group to put in place the details of a 20-year concession.

“The Spanish firms are the current block,” says one source close to the consortium’s negotiations, according to NewScientist.com.

“They are making outrageous demands over guaranteed work share arrangements. But Spain has already secured a completely unnecessary control centre and people aren’t having any more,” the source said.

However, there have also been complaints of political meddling, with EU member states still pushing for their interests to be taken into account.

Arguments continue over where control centres should be sited and where industrial contracts should be placed.

Severe delays
Galileo was meant to end reliance on the US Global Positioning System (GPS) by 2010. The US version is a free network but it is military-run meaning that it can be switched off at the whim of the Pentagon. The date has now been postponed to 2011 at the earliest.

Galileo’s 30 satellites are to be launched into mid-Earth orbits at a cost of around €3.2 billion, with one third of that coming from EU taxpayers, and the rest coming from the consortium hoping to regain its investment by selling location-based technology and services.

The consortium was meant to have formed a single Galileo operating company by the end of 2006 as well as appointed an independent chief executive.

The delays mean that orders cannot be placed for Galileo’s 30 needed satellites.

“This is posing major problems. As time schedules slip, costs go up,” says Paul Verhoef – the commission’s Galileo program manager, according to NewScientist.com.

Continued delays could also have an expensive knock-on effect. Last week the European Space Agency, was forced to order Giove-A2, a €30 million Galileo signal testing satellite.

It had not planned for the satellite but ordered it to be placed in orbit to maintain rights to Galileo’s frequency allocations expected to run out mid-2008.

It has fallen to the German government – which currently holds the agenda-setting EU presidency - to try to break the impasse. The country’s transport minister, Wolfgang Tiefensee, is set to chair a number of critical meetings, with one of them being a gathering of EU transport ministers in Brussels next week.

“The consortium must fulfil the conditions and obligations it agreed to in 2005,” a spokesman for Tiefensee’s office told NewScientist.com. “We expect substantial progress by June.”

“We will give the companies an ultimatum,” a French diplomat said, according to the Financial Times.

dans les années 60 le President DEGAULE à subit ce même scénario des USA qui installer cette fois leurs missiles en Allemagne et les diriger vers la Russie ou vers l’Europe de l’ouest suivant la politique internationale du jour :le Président DEGAULE à quitté L OTAN? avec l’Europe la décision doit-être collégiale et ferme il en va de notre crédibillitée internationale.

http://wdif.net/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=153&Itemid=2

Costs for the Joint Strike Fighter, a new generation of attack aircraft for the U.S. armed forces and its allies, have swollen 12 percent per aircraft, according to a U.S. government report Thursday.
The Government Accountability Office also said the program for the U.S. Department of Defense?s target to acquire 2,400 JSF jets by 2027 is well behind schedule and should be slowed to avoid rushing through flight testing and other development processes.
?Total JSF program acquisition costs [through 2027] have increased by 31.6 billion dollars,? GAO said, meaning a 12 percent cost hike per aircraft from 2004 estimates.
The JSF program proposes to replace several different earlier-generation aircraft for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines with the new Lockheed Martin-produced X-35.
GAO noted the program has experienced delays in starting the flight test program, delivering the first development aircraft, and testing critical missions systems. [....]

Se pourrait-il que les missiles commencent à coûter cher… à Boeing ?

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actubourse/20070316.FIG000000112_l_airbus_a_fait_un_tabac_dans_le_golfe_et_en_russie.html

Voici si dessous une explication suplementaire sur le comportement de Nancy Pelosi dont vous vous montrez bien deçus dans un de vos articles.
Même le parti démocrate est gangréné.

http://www.alterinfo.net/Nancy-Pelosi-une-femme-de-poids-entierement-devouee-a-Israel_a4465.html

Elle aurait du cesser d’exister avec la chute de l’URSS. Elle constitue la grande menace pour la paix en Europe.
En matière de guerre, certains pays européens ont compris : ils en ont marre. Nous n’aurons jamais une paix durable avec la Russie si nous les contraignons à se surarmer, face aux menaces de l’OTAN.
Le rôle de l’OTAN : un immense tremplin d’où les troupes US,soutenues par des “légions” recrutées en Europe, se rueront sur l’Eurasie et ses richesse. En somme, une nouvelle expérience Barberousse !

petit rectificatif il s’agit du australian financial review et du daily telegraph.
une precision so far le projet jsf a raporte 100million$ a l’economie australien et certainement pas beaucoup plus dans l’avenir le tout pour un investissement probable de 16milliard de $A…

Courant fevrier le pentagone a dit non a un eventuelle achat de F22 par l’Australie, un non d’autant plus vexant pour les Australiant car il vient d’un simple bureau intermediere de l’administration. Les officiels Australiens ont reussis a tourner la chose comme quoi le meilleur avion du monde, egalement qualifier de joyaux de la couronne, ne ce vend pas meme a son meilleur allie (les Israeliens auront ils plus de chance, si oui il y aura des jaloux entre “les meilleurs amis des americain”).
D’autre part dans le Daylie telegramme du premier fevrier (de menoir) en page central est parus un article tres critique a propos de la technologie meme des avions F35 qui en gros ne fonctionnerait que par beau temps et dont la discretion ne serait pas si determimente, en plus des delais extravagants et de son cout en hausse constante.
De maniere general L’Australie semble prise d’un engorgement significatif et systematique dans la gestion de ses programmes militaires lire a ce propos L’Australian fimantial time d’Hier.L’AFT fait aussi remarquer de maniere ingenue que le programme f35 permetra un retour genereux de 200m$ pour l’industrie local pour un investissement initial de plusieurs dizaines de milliars. L’amitie a un cout.
Ps dans un article ecris par vous dans lequel vous comparez le culte de John F. au culte de l’Amerique vous paraphraser dans les premieres lignes le lonly planete sur Vanuatu sans le cite, c’est tres vilain ca…

Trident upgrade under way, MoD admits

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday March 14, 2007
The Guardian 

Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons are being secretly upgraded to increase their accuracy and ability to attack a wider range of targets, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers have repeatedly denied there are plans to refurbish Britain’s nuclear warheads, arguing that it will be up to the next parliament to decide whether to do so. However, the MoD has now admitted that a new firing device developed by the US is to be installed in Britain’s nuclear weapons system by scientists at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire.

Analysts said the device - called the Arming, Fusing and Firing (AF&F) system - would make the Trident system more effective because the weapons’ power, impact and radioactive fallout could be changed depending on the target.

The Mark 4A system is a new version of the older design currently fitted in the Trident missiles.

The disclosure angered anti-nuclear campaigners on the eve of a Commons vote today on the government’s plans to renew Trident.

Labour is likely to suffer a damaging rebellion with backbench MPs questioning the need to renew a £20bn submarine fleet. Two members of the government have already resigned this week to vote against the motion.

Joan Ruddock, a Labour MP and longtime opponent of nuclear weapons, said the discreet upgrading of the weapons system belied government claims.

“This is further evidence of enhancing the warfighting capability of Trident and gives the lie to the claim in the white paper that it is a matter of simple deterrence.”

She added that the government had been very coy about whether the Trident weapons system was being designed to carry different yields.

“Ministers want to maintain the myth that it is a matter of deterrence and they have no scenario to carry out warfighting,” she said.

Hans Kristensen, the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, said yesterday: “The bottom line is that the new [device], which we now know is being added to the British system, is part of an effort to increase the warfighting effectiveness [of the Trident D5 missiles].”

He added: “It will broaden the range of targets that can be held at risk with the weapon.” The new firing mechanism would make the weapon more accurate and nuclear bombs could be exploded with relatively little radioactive fallout, Mr Kristensen said.

John Ainslie, coordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said it was “astonishing” that the MoD was secretly upgrading the existing Trident warhead without telling parliament.

Paul Ingram, senior analyst at the British American Security Information Council, said: “The level and type of investment at Aldermaston of which this is a part indicates that Britain is looking to further upgrade its warheads for a variety of uses beyond simple deterrence.”

In a statement to the Guardian, an MoD spokesman said: “The Mk 4A Arming, Fusing and Firing system is a non-nuclear component used in the Trident warhead.” He added: “This has nothing to do with any potential successor to Trident on which decisions have still to be taken.”

While there is no risk of the government losing today’s vote, it will have to rely on Tory MPs to get it passed.

Many backbenchers said they expected the revolt to surpass the 69 MPs who voted against the schools bill last year or the 72 who voted against the government on tuition fees in 2004.

A second member of the government resigned yesterday so that he can vote against the motion. Jim Devine quit his post as parliamentary private secretary to health minister Rosie Winterton.

His decision followed the resignation of Nigel Griffiths, deputy leader of the house, on Monday.

Article et réactions excellentes!!
- Effectivement. “...Vous êtes actuellement une des rares voies d’information lucides en francophonie…”
- Je me suis d’autre part autorisé à vous citer à mon bord dans la rubrique “Air du temps”.
. Bien cordialement & Chapeau pour votre boulot!
http://www.souvenirs-de-mer.blogdns.net/

Un scandale qui couve… des blessés US renvoyés en irak pour faire le compte de soldats.

“...( Lt. Col. George ) Appenzeller denied that the plan was to find more warm bodies for the surge into Baghdad…”

http://www.salon.com/news/2007/03/11/fort_benning/?source=whitelist

rien à redire sur le fond, ok.
par contre ce que dit élie doit être passionnant ou au minimum interressant. Mais je ne parle pas anglais, je sais c’est une énorme faute, les anglos saxons dominant le monde, ça devrait être obligatoire mais je suis passé à travers.
Donc je ne saurai pas ce que dit élie.
salut

Totu à l’heure je regardais une rediffusion du “Talk de Paris” émission programmée sur France 24 (http://www.france24.com), la chaîne d’information internationale française et dont l’invité était Mr Juncker.

Au détour d’une question sur le climat, Mr Juncker nous a donné un aperçu de la philosophie et du dogme (que lui bien sûr récuse, rendant un peu d’honneur à la maison) d’un certain nombre de commissaires concernant le moyen de lutter contre le réchauffement climatique. En fait tout est simple pour ces diafoirus : le marché régulera bien tout ça.
Bien sûr tout le monde ici peut sentir l’atmosphère de la commission et ses orientations idéologiques et psychologiques grâce aux excellentes chroniques de l’intervenant principal de ce site mais il y a même dans les MSM, une explicitation de la façon dont “ces gens-là” (permettez moi l’expression) agissent et pensent ce que doivent être les réponses aux grandes problématiques humaines.
Et c’est quand même assez triste et affligeant.

Merci pour vos commentaires sur la prise de position de J Chirac au sommet de Bruxelles de début mars 07.
En cette période d’élection présidentelle française,la question qui vient bien sûr à l’esprit est:
“La force glacée des réalités(i.e.:le nécessaire découplage à terme des US et de UE) sera-t-elle plus puissante qu’un atlantisme sentimentalo-servile d’un éventuel futur “Président” francais(après hésitation, j’ai mis une majuscule).
Votre avis sur l’impact de notre élection future,dans un prochain article sur ce sujet serait le bien venu.
Les enjeux sont peut être tels que les problèmes de personne n’auront qu’une importance mineure,pour inverser une tendance européenne.?.
D’avance merci.
Jean-Louis

Votre réaction est excellente.

Il faut voir si cette constitution “allégée”
constituera toujours une allégeance à l’OTAN.

Dans ce cas, l’allègement serait NUL.

Bonne continuation. Vous êtes actuellement une des rares voies d’information lucides en francophonie.

C.D.