UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

or blue ray system.

Add in a killer laser app and this time we wont be sending Bond out to recover the diamonds.

"With the UK system being V2000?"

You could argue that position was taken by Beidou v1 or the original prototype French Navigation system that became DORIS.

This would be more like Knock-off Nigel No-mates one which has "Quality Bru^Hitish Merchandise" labels hastily plastered over the "Made in North Bumfuckistan's second-finest sweatshops" labels, where every side of the enclosure is a slightly different shade of "mixed up from all the leftover paint in the cupboard" none of the panels line up when new and the moment you open the cover all the wiring explodes outwards, making it impossible to close it again. "But it's BRITISH mate, you can't get better than that!"

Sometime after being "convinced" to pay twenty times as much for this monstrosity as for anything off the high street in dresden by NIgel's extremely large and persuasive older brother Fat Tony, you discover it only gives directions in Gumby and has t be programmed using Ecky-thump.

Curiousity gets the better of you and you open it up to find a small commercial GNSS receiver stuck to the inside with doublesided tape, butchered with a mountain of strange wiring coming out of it into some kind of vacuum tube based elecronics which doesn't appear to actually do anything except get hot.

But isn't it more expensive to launch the further you are away from the equator and hence why Ariane launches from French Guiana rather than anywhere in Europe?

Depends where you want the orbit to be but for geostationery stuff, the equator has a higher angular velocity.

"But isn't it more expensive to launch the further you are away from the equator and hence why Ariane launches from French Guiana rather than anywhere in Europe?"

That depends on the orbit: it's true for equatorial orbits such as geostationary satellites. Navigation satellites are in polar orbit so one place is as good as another with a preference for there being uninhabited areas downrange where bits of rocket fall. The proposed spaceport in NW Scotland is fine for that as there's a lot of sea downrange.

Why do they seem to think it will be easy to become a major player in the market?

Perhaps because it already is? Do try & keep up at the back there.

"And it's exactly the access to the encrypted bits that Britain is going to lose"

And just who was it insisted not-EU countries shouldn't have that access?

Article read and understood, thanks. I can't find anything in it relating to Norway's lack of military access, nor can I find anything elsewhere on the topic (brief search only as I'm only on my phone i'm afraid).

"Last time EU wanted to defend something..."

Now, if only UK stayed at home instead of bombing Libya...

Despite his loathsome behaviour, he is right. Europe has ridden the coat tails of other peoples defence spending for decades. Germany in particular has had to train with broom sticks and barely has an airforce or tank regiment that works. He is also correct to point out that NATO has a minimum spend target of 2% and people really should hit that, especially rich countries like Germany.

So perhaps Rich 11, you should get back in your patronising little box and leave the international affairs to adults who understand what the phrase 'long term interests' means.

"Get back in your box, Donald. Leave international affairs to adults who understand what the phrase 'long-term interests' means."

It's not in the UK's long-term interest to leave the EU. But if we're going to do that, we seriously need to be saving money. Long-term interests are one thing, but spending billions on international aid and Europe's defence when we will need that to pay for medicine and food for the destitute millions is not a good idea.

Re: Gaileo was willy waving

@ Doctor Syntax

"That's a way of saying without US approval and GPS is a part of that. It reduces the Europe to being simply vassals of US foreign policy. Now do you see why they wanted Galileo?"

Willy wagging. Do you really think the EU has the balls or the lack of braincells to go to war without the US being ok with it? If the US really disagreed with the EU going to war the EU would put its tail between its legs faster than the EU committee could figure out which direction they are going.

Re: Gaileo was willy waving

It reduces the Europe to being simply vassals of US foreign policy. Now do you see why they wanted Galileo?

So it could see which way it should have been going?

Re: Gaileo was willy waving

"Now do you see why they wanted Galileo?"

They wanted to pretend they were actually able to mount independent operations without spending much money? As I pointed out, actually having that capability means serious spending over a medium to large period of time. There's no sign of that happening outside the likes of Eastern Europe.

Re: Gaileo was willy waving

Doctor Syntax,

That's all very well - but without the military investment the satellite capablity is a joke. Only Britain and France have any serious deployment capability at all - and we'd both be pretty overstretched by anything large nowadays.

Since the Commission decided to start shitting all over our post Brexit security cooperation (will be interesting to see how much of that stands when the Council of Ministers do the final deciding), Europe's defence capabilities look even weaker. For example (going from memory here) 13 out of 14 EU military deployments have been HQed out of Northwood. But that's ending next year, unless minds change. As the Commission's current position is that once we leave the EU, and not even during the transition period, we not only can't run joint HQs for missions we've been running for years - but even if we commit troops, we'll be allowed no joint decision making in how they're used. Which pretty much is saying, "fuck off we don't want your help" - as that's a pretty much unacceptable positon to take for a country committing forces. Even to the sort of peacekeeping stuff that the EU mostly does. The surprise of that decision seems to have come down to the weird negotiating strategy, where the Commission decided that the one important bit of Brexit was that the UK pay over loads of cash. And all other talking should be left to the last minute.

Running a joint forces, multi-national HQ can't be all that hard, these mostly aren't that complex missions. But it is suggestive that there's almost no existing EU HQ capacity.

Then we get to one of the most sensible bits of EU defence integration. The idea that as most EU countries have lower defence spending, they each specialise in certain capabiliites. Which can then be shared at need. It's a great idea in theory, as you get much better capabilities for smaller investment, rather then countries trying to do everything badly, and on a small scale. Except that when France called on Germany during the Libya campaign, for air transport/tanker assets, Germany said no. Since when, France has been trying to get much better bilateral military cooperation going with the UK - as France have rarely been happy to work through NATO, and the EU route hasn't borne that much fruit. Remember that France and Germany have joint military formations, and were supposedly the big two committing to EU defence cooperation.

The German foreign minister (later publicly shot down by Merkel) and French President both said in speeches last week that Europe can't rely on the US under Trump. Which leads to the question, what to do about it? I suspect Merkel contradicted that interview because her policy is not to increase defence spending very much at all. Germany's current budget is that it rise from 1.1% of GDP now, to 1.3% by 2020 - then start dropping again - so my suspicion is that current German policy is to do little and hope for the best. Trump being a one-term President and Russia not upping the ante anymore.

But there is a worry in Eastern Europe about security. Them being closer to Russia and all. Especially if Trump does manage 2 terms, and carries on being so erratic.

Britain went into Brexit negotiations pretty much accepting that we couldn't bargain our security cooperation for a better deal. What I don't think we were expecting was for the Commission to take the initiative and make post Brexit security cooperation so hard. In the case of Galileo of course there's hi-tech jobs for France and Germany to nick off us, but the other stuff seems to be nonsensical. Will be interesting to see how long that lasts? That's actually as likely to damage NATO as Trump's stupid antics. I've no idea what will happen. A deal on Galileo seems perfectly sensible, we've paid a huge chunk of the costs so far - and I think the UK government were gernally surprised at the decision, on the grounds that this was the security cooperation the EU were begging us not to mix up with Brexit.

We have an MOD satellite comms system called Skynet. I think we should threaten to give this GPS capability and then start building robot soldiers with human skin over metal endoskeletons. That should get everyone worried...