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Spycraft for Sale
Israel Loosens Restrictions, Plans Micro-Satellites

By BARBARA OPALL-ROME, TEL AVIV

Israeli war planners and defense industry executives are intensifying their pursuit of the civilian satellite market as the most effective way — and perhaps the only one — of realizing many of their military space ambitions.

With ever-declining defense budgets forcing military space initiatives further into the out-years, Israel’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) has lifted many of the restrictions that govern the export and transfer of crown-jewel technology.

Earlier this year, MoD granted government-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) permission to market clones of the nation’s newest spy satellite, TechSAR, which is designed to carry a synthetic aperture radar payload. TechSAR is scheduled for launch in 2006.

This approval, along with earlier licenses to sell sensitive imaging technologies developed for Israel’s Ofeq spy satellite program, mark a policy shift for the MoD, which for 20 years has cloaked its national space assets in secrecy.

Moreover, MoD officials are encouraging other government ministries, including Industry and Trade and Science, Culture and Sport, to participate and fund ostensibly civilian projects that also contribute to national security.

In a related shift, Israel’s top two government-owned aerospace companies agreed to put aside their rivalry in space development to cooperate on a commercial satellite venture. In early October, IAI and Rafael Armament Development Authority launched MicroSat, officially aimed at commercial and scientific projects. But officials readily acknowledge its potential for furthering MoD’s military space road map.

The new company will develop and sell satellites weighing less than 120 kilograms, a niche area that conveniently overlaps with MoD goals to build a constellation of military micro-satellites for intelligence and communications.

Defense and industry officials here said sales and international cooperative projects secured by the new company can help underwrite advanced development and testing of micro-electronic and propulsion technologies hard-hit by persistent cuts to Israel’s military space budget.

In parallel, a government official said Israel’s MoD continues to solicit strategic investors for a program based on a constellation of small, relatively inexpensive multimission satellites that can be launched on demand from fighter planes. As envisioned, the modular satellites will weigh no more than 100 kilograms and will be capable of housing a variety of so-called plug-and-play payloads.

They will be deployed as a constellation, with particular missions divided among two or three satellites, so that the sum of the cluster exceeds the contribution of each spacecraft.

“A constellation of micro-satellites — that’s what we’re looking at,” said Nehemia Miller, a Rafael executive involved in negotiations with IAI to establish the new company.

Miller said he hoped the new company would advance developments under way at Rafael associated with formation flying, including laser links that facilitate communication among the planned spacecraft.

“We’re looking at using small, cheap satellites with very advanced technology for a variety of applications,” he said.

Miller said MoD space programs could benefit from the commercially oriented IAI-Rafael industrial venture.

“The line that used to separate military from civilian programs has been blurred for a long time now ... So while MoD is not involved at this time, it could be that, in the future, it will order satellites from us,” he said.

Yossi Weiss, manager of the Space Division at IAI’s MBT Group, said the new company would attempt to cultivate commercial uses for the type of micro-satellite constellation envisioned by MoD. “In the long term, our vision is to provide a constellation of micro-satellites whose contribution is far greater than any one of them,” Weiss said. “But this is still in the research-and-development phase and could take 10 to 20 years to realize. We’re going to need to do a lot of research in order to validate if there is truly a commercial market out there for this niche.”

Aby Har-Even, a former managing director of the Israel Space Agency, noted that aerospace industries worldwide traditionally try to maximize the complementary benefits of military and civilian space programs. “This has been the trend in the United States, in France, in Russia and many other countries. It’s the most effective way to maximize national space assets,” Har-Even said.

Already, the new IAI-Rafael venture has found a way to leverage MoD investments for civilian purposes through its participation in Project Venus, a French-Israeli cooperative program aimed at precision agricultural imaging and environmental monitoring. Planned for launch in 2008, the Vegetation and Environment Monitoring New Micro-Satellite (Venus) mission will make use of the same bus developed by IAI for MoD’s TechSAR satellite, as well as a low-thrust electric propulsion system developed by Rafael.

IAI’s Weiss said the new joint Israeli company expects to sign a contract soon with the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), partners with the Israel Space Agency on the Venus program.

The agreement between CNES and the Israel Space Agency also calls for Israel’s Elop Electro-Optics Industries to provide the multispectral imaging payload for the Venus mission.

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