The Ministry of Defence is inviting defence industry representatives to an industry day at Abbey Wood in Bristol on 29 June to discuss its ISTARI space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programme, with an estimated contract value of up to £800 million excluding VAT.
ISTARI is described as the overarching programme initiated to deliver the UK’s space-based ISR end-to-end requirements, designed to cohere, integrate and adopt various operational concept demonstrators to deliver what the MoD describes as a sovereign, defence-controlled, continual, resilient, timely, pervasive and flexible observation capability across the globe, augmenting capabilities owned and developed by key allies. The estimated contract runs from August 2027 to August 2031.
The industry day will provide an update on the National Armaments Director’s space portfolio landscape and an overview of planned work across all space capabilities, as well as a briefing from the MoD to industry setting out the scope, vision and current status of ISTARI in the aftermath of the Strategic Defence Review. A guest speaker from the Government Commercial Agency will also brief attendees on the Space Technology Solutions Dynamic Market, described as the team’s primary route to market and an evolutionary successor to the Space-Enabled and Geospatial Services Framework.
Attendance is in person only and capped at two representatives per organisation, with a minimum of Baseline Personnel Security Standard clearance required. The registration deadline is 5 June or when capacity is reached, whichever comes first.
Other than nuclear weapons, ISTARI is probably the single most important thing for the UK to work on. The EO satellite constellation lead by Juno and the Oberon SAR constellation already seem more than adequate in terms of platforms we just need an increase in numbers from two to five.
They should also bring BAE Azalea into the ISTARI constellation to give us a full ELINT capability. Beyond that a full deployment of the AMBER cube sat constellation will give us global maritime tracking capabilities.
What we really need next and we should perhaps do with our JEF Allie’s is a role out of an infra red search and track satellite. THALES is offering such a system in Geo stationary orbit. One satellite in GEO can track all of our region across Europe. If all of Europe is chipping in we can easily get two or three covering every were from west Australia to Bermuda.
Once we have these systems in place we will have largely replaced our US dependence on space based assets for the defence of Europe and if we along with the CANZUK nations also looked to deploy two SIGNIT satellites in GEO using the same antenna technology developed for Oberon then we can replace much of the peace time intelligence infrastructure we rely on the US for as well.
This can all be done for a few billion over ten years and much of it can be self financed by selling the data to commercial providers. If we were not spaffing £6 billion on a recon vehicle whose greatest sensor development is a telescopic mast imagine what we could from space based assets.
The UK lead in satellite technology, especially small and cube sats gives us a strong advantage in this arena. The USA is still spending billions launching 2 meter wide mirrors on spy sats designed in the 70’s.