SatcomBW 4 and Germany’s technological sovereignty
by Vincent Tadday
Germany wants its own Starlink moment. That, at least, is the frame that now dominates discussion around SatcomBW 4, the Bundeswehr’s planned next-generation satellite communications architecture valued at roughly €10 billion and consisting of a constellation of around 100 low-Earth-orbit satellites intended to provide secure, high-bandwidth communications for German military forces worldwide.
In strategic terms, the project marks a major shift from Germany’s current reliance on a small number of geostationary military satellites towards a distributed and potentially more resilient architecture in orbit.
Yet, outside German-speaking defence and space circles, the scale of this ambition has only slowly begun to register. What makes the project striking is that Airbus, Rheinmetall and the satellite manufacturer OHB, initially seen as potential competitors, now appear to be forming a strategic alliance to jointly deliver the system. It is a clear view of Germany’s current idea of technological sovereignty and what that might mean for Europe, both politically and industrially.
Ukraine’s lessons and the strategic puzzle of redundancy
The constant comparison of the plans for Satcom BW 4 with Starlink, by journalists and decision-makers alike, reveals two things at once. First, the wake-up call from Ukraine is undeniable. The war has underscored a critical reality: resilient satellite communications are a military infrastructure. Nowhere is this clearer than in the prominent role played by Starlink, which has demonstrated how space-based connectivity can sustain operations, enable coordination and preserve information flows under extreme conditions.
Second, the comparison reveals a lack of strategic imagination. If Germany’s answer to a new strategic environment is essentially to build something “Starlink-like”, then its sovereignty debate starts from imitation rather than from a genuinely European conception of capability. This is the central puzzle of SatcomBW 4: why is Germany building this now, and why in this form, when the European Union is already building IRIS², its own €10.6 billion flagship secure-connectivity constellation?
Supporters of SatcomBW 4 argue that having a dedicated military SATCOM capability under direct national control offers clear advantages in terms of prioritisation, operational sovereignty and integration into military command chains. But why are such needs being addressed through such a large national LEO constellation?
SatcomBW 4 and IRIS² are not identical systems, but they overlap enough to raise difficult questions. IRIS² is an EU-level, multi-orbit system designed to provide secure connectivity for governmental users, with full governmental satellite connectivity services based on EU-owned infrastructure due by 2030. SatcomBW 4, by contrast, is a German, military-only system, with initial operational capability targeted for 2029. Germany is therefore not building a system far ahead of the European timetable. Rather, it is developing a major national constellation at roughly the same time as the EU is building its own secure-connectivity architecture.
European sovereignty rhetoric and Germany’s preference for control
IRIS² is one of the EU’s central sovereignty projects in space, supported by ESA, and explicitly intended to demonstrate that Europe can provide secure connectivity on its own terms. With the SatcomBW 4, the largest member state in the European Union is now building a large national architecture that no smaller member state could replicate based on the price alone. Critics say that if Germany believed that IRIS² is too slow, or not sufficiently tailored to defence, it could have argued for a stronger German presence within the European project, rather than announcing its intention to commit another €10 billion to a separate system.
The national choice appears to reflect a political preference for control, reinforced by Berlin’s dissatisfaction with the way IRIS² was structured under former Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. These concerns crystallised around the 2024 award of the IRIS² contract to SpaceRISE, the consortium selected to develop the system, which is led by the established satellite operators Eutelsat (France), Hispasat (Spain), and SES (Luxembourg). For many German stakeholders, this outcome confirmed the impression that IRIS² did not sufficiently take account of the interests of Germany’s own space-industrial ecosystem.
The emerging consortium and the politics of industrial consolidation
What is taking shape with OHB, Rheinmetall and Airbus appears to be apolitical-industrial alignment designed to avoid any form of competition and secure the award. OHB has a genuine heritage in satellite manufacturing, but the company has had its limitations in the past. For example, OHB lost the Galileo Second Generation contract to Airbus and Thales Alenia Space in 2021, and failed in court to reverse that outcome. Airbus brings scale and experience in system integration and is already deeply involved in the Bundeswehr’s satellite communications. So, what does Rheinmetall bring to the table? One could argue that it brings defence and political influence, military systems expertise, and, most importantly, significant momentum within German defence industrial policy. However, critics will continue to point out (rightly so) that the company has comparatively little space heritage. This criticism is exacerbated by the fact that, at the beginning of April 2026, a group of German start-ups and SMEs warned political decision-makers that they risked being relegated to the role of subordinate suppliers rather than being treated as direct contractors. The group argued that greater competitive inclusion would have made the system more innovative and resilient.
The present consortium looks nothing like open competition. It looks more like pre-emptive consolidation. OHB and Rheinmetall first emerged as an alliance when the SatcomBW 4 debate entered the public domain earlier this year, with Airbus initially seen as a potential rival. The subsequent move towards convergence is politically significant. For the government, bringing the main industrial players into one camp lowers the risk of a fragmented bidding process, reduces the likelihood of later industrial disputes, and increases the chances that the project can be presented to parliament and the public as technically and politically deliverable.
Launch, timelines and the limits of sovereignty
A question that remains unresolved is how Germany would actually place more than 100 satellites into orbit once they are manufactured. If SatcomBW 4 is truly meant to embody technological sovereignty, there are strong reasons why Ariane 6 should be the preferred launch option over SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Europe now has a credible launcher for exactly this class of mission: in February 2026, the first Ariane 64 successfully placed 32 Amazon Kuiper satellites into low Earth orbit, demonstrating that Europe can support large-scale constellation deployment. This matters because the Bundeswehr has already relied on SpaceX for military satellite launches, with the first SARah-1 radar reconnaissance satellite launched on a Falcon 9 in June 2022 and SARah-2 and SARah-3 following on another Falcon 9 in December 2023. Another German constellation launched by Elon Musk’s company would not amount to a European answer to strategic dependence. At the same time, German debate often invokes micro-launchers as a future national option. However this should be treated with caution: a constellation of this scale requires reliable, repeated, and economically viable access to orbit. And Isar Aerospace, German’s champion in the field, has flown only once, for 28 seconds, before exploding in mid-air.
The 2029 timeline should be read in that same light. Officially, 2029 refers to initial operational capability, not to completion of the full constellation. Even so, given the status of the programme in May 2026, that date looks more political than technically feasible. The tendering process still has to conclude. The first step in this process was the Bundeskartellamt (Germany’s cartel office) giving the green light to the planned joint venture between Rheinmetall and OHB in mid-April. However, even if the formalities are completed at record speed in the coming months, the constellation itself still needs to be manufactured, launch services remain unresolved, and the ground segment, testing, and integration into the Bundeswehr’s structures still lie ahead. None of this is impossible in theory. But anyone familiar with the history of major German procurement projects will find it hard to read 2029 as anything other than a politically useful deadline. There is also a specifically parliamentary bottleneck that should not be overlooked. In Germany, any Bundeswehr procurement above €25 million requires approval by the Budget Committee of the Bundestag before the contract can be signed. That makes the parliamentary stage one of the real choke points in the process, precisely where the language of sovereignty collides with hard questions of cost, competition and realism. What happens next is therefore not trivial: the consortium structure must stabilise, the tender must move towards award, the contract package must go through parliamentary approval, and only then can industrial execution begin in earnest.
SatcomBW 4 and the technopolitical condition of Europe
SatcomBW 4 ultimately says something uncomfortable about the current state of Europe’s sovereignty debate. Germany is right to take military space seriously. It is right to conclude from Ukraine that resilient satellite communications can no longer be outsourced to benign assumptions. But the path it has chosen reveals a sovereignty instinct focused less on building Europe together than on reducing dependence while retaining national control. That instinct is understandable. Yet if every European capital responds in the same way, the result will be overlapping systems, weaker economies of scale and continued dependence in key parts of the value chain, including launch. Europe’s problem is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of strategic coherence. The question is not whether Europe needs sovereign military communications. It is whether it can build them without each capital reinventing them nationally.
All opinions expressed in this article are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of any institution or organisation with which I am affiliated.
Vincent Tadday is a policy advisor in the German Federal Parliament, working on national and European innovation and space policy. He previously contributed to transatlantic policy dialogue on trade, security, and emerging technologies at the Aspen Institute Germany. He also writes Technopolitics, an independent newsletter on geopolitics and technology.
Thanks again to Emma for publishing this piece and opening up space for a debate Europe urgently needs.
Curious whether others see SatcomBW 4 as a necessary German “correction” to a European process that went wrong, or simply as a national necessity. Let me know!