Europe discusses connecting Ukraine to its satellite communications network

This will allow Ukrainian and European military personnel to coordinate their actions.

The European Commission has begun talks with Ukraine on joining the European Union’s secure satellite communications systems, GOVSATCOM and IRIS. Euractiv reports this.

According to the publication, the issue concerns connecting Ukraine to the GOVSATCOM secure governmental satellite communications system and to the IRIS satellite constellation, which the EU is still in the process of creating. In the future, this will allow Ukrainian and European military personnel to coordinate their actions using a single secure communications system.

The European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, has already allowed for the possibility that Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Norway could join IRIS. The development of the EU’s own secure satellite communications systems is linked, among other things, to the desire to reduce dependence on US infrastructure.

IRIS (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) is a secure satellite communications constellation being created by the European Union across multiple orbits. It is planned for use by government agencies, security forces and the armed forces.

The full deployment of IRIS is scheduled for 2030. Until then, the EU intends to use existing satellite capacity במסגרת the GOVSATCOM system.