On Wednesday, November 21st, Defence Minister Gabriel Les had a meeting with the Chairman of the Romanian Spatial Agency (ROSA), Marius-Ioan Piso, and a delegation of technical experts of the European Spatial Agency (ESA).

ESA experts arrived to Romania in order to offer technical support to ROSA, which participates in the development of the concept study to substantiate the telecommunications satellite system project, which will ensure the needs of the Romanian National Security System that will be coordinated by the Ministry of National Defence.

Defence Minister Gabriel Les thanked the Chairman of ROSA for maintaining good relations between the two institutions, which were strengthened by means of a collaboration protocol, as well as to the European experts for the support offered to ROSA in the implementation of this important project for the governmental organizations in the national security field.

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The development of a telecommunications satellite system is a strategic project of national interest in the field of the satellite communications and advanced technology, which will provide for the mission needs of the Ministry of National Defence and of the other institutions from the field of national security.

The programme set the following objectives: consolidation of Romania's role within NATO and EU, reducing dependence on the satellite services suppliers, phased out development of own satellite system , which will provide for the missions needs of the MoND and governmental institutions at peacetime, crisis and wartime situations as well as ensuring redundancy of the ground communication networks functioning at national level that can undergo serious damages in special, emergency situations or calamities.
Thus, Romania becomes a satellite services supplier in the Balkans area and the South-Eastern frontier of NATO.

The program's intent is to mostly involve, to the greatest extent possible, the national industry producers by locally manufacturing components of the satellite system as well as by using certain ways of industrial cooperation.

Currently, Romania annually outsources and uses an increasing number of satellite flux for its structures deployed in the areas of interest for the execution of its missions in the theaters of operations, participation in exercises and national and international commitments, all these lines of efforts involving huge financial costs not only for the Romanian Armed forces but also for the governmental organizations in the field of national security. Thus, the Ministry of National defence spent almost 7,500,000 euro over 2009 2018 for outsourcing and provision of the satellite communications services.

A series of steps have been taken so far in the substantiation process of the project adopting a HDSC decision for the approval of the project implementation, signing the collaboration protocol between the Ministry of National Defence and Romanian Spatial Agency, developing the technical papers for the project substantiation, developing the task, terms and responsibilities matrix and initiating the process for activation of geo-stationary orbit position allocated to Romania.

In the near future, Romanian will initiate the process of signing the international agreements in order to ensure coverage of the first geo-stationary telecommunications satellite, the technical specifications will be established and approved and the project will be submitted for Parliament approval.

Subsequently, the acquisition procedure will be run, making the most of the offset solutions and going through the launching, testing, acceptance, rendering the system operational and exploiting steps. The implementation timeline of the first stage /first semester is 2022.

The capability is to be developed in the future so that it launches other satellites, in accordance with the satellite coverage needs and the satellite communications services of the institutions benefitting from the project.

The life-cycle of a GEO satellite is minimum 15 years (guaranteed by the manufacturer), and the system will cover the national territory and the theaters of operations where Romania deployed its troops.

The costs related to the development of the first stage of the programme (building and launching GEO satellite, the building of the ground centers supporting the telemetry and the distribution of the telecommunications services), as well as the other elements comprised in the further development stages will be estimated after the establishment of the common operational requirements and technical documentation.

The Press Office