Will GALILEO happen?

DR GUENTER HEINRICHS, MIGUEL ROMAY MERINO, JIM DOHERTY, F MICHAEL SWIEK, RONALD R HATCH

Dr Guenter Heinrichs
Director Business,
Development, IFEN
GmbH, Germany
A clear YES, from IFEN’s point of view. The reason for this answer is that Galileo is the largest industrial project ever organised on a European scale and the first infrastructure owned by the EU. Thus, as the first truly European infrastructure project, Galileo has become a lighthouse project in Europe. This means that Europe cannot stop the project in the present stage any more without suffering from a great loss of face and taking politically big damage worldwide. From the industry political point of view, we still believe that Galileo will bring an added value to the user community. Nobody denies today that navigation and its obliged applications will be an integral component of our everyday life in future. The introduction of Galileo as another GNSS has already led to new product developments, which will lead to many new market opportunities also for Small and Medium Enterprises like our company IFEN GmbH. We, however, see a certain uncertainty at the equipment manufacturers and also with the users due to the recent delays in Galileo lately again.

Despite all difficulties in the recent past, at its June 8 meeting the Transport Council of the EU reaffirms the value of Galileo as a key project of the European Union. The council’s backing for Galileo was buttressed by a survey asking 25,664 EU citizens about their opinion of satellite navigation, Galileo, and public funding of a European GNSS. Some 80 percent of respondents endorsed a European system and 63 percent were in favour of it being publicly funded. In our opinion, this is a clear sign also from the EU citizens for an independent European GNSS. Can be held tight summarizing, that Galileo goes on. At the end of the day, Galileo will happen.

Time to inject realism

Miguel Romay Merino
Head of the GNSS
Business Unit of
GMV Aerospace
and Defence S.A.
Even if it seems to be a difficult question, especiallywhen considering the current situation of the Galileo programme, the answer is certainly ‘yes’.

Satellite Navigation is playing a crucial and ever increasing role in our society and it is today quite obvious that multiple Satellite Navigation Systems will be operating simultaneously in the future. Europe has always been very active in the field, and despite all of the hurdles that the Galileo programme may be facing, Europe’s interest in Satellite Navigation is continually growing.

Notwithstanding the difficulties that the Galileo programme is facing, it is also true that significant achievements have been reached during the last years. The development of Galileo at the industrial level is progressing at a good pace, and Critical Design Reviews are already taking place or are planned for the short term for most of the key elements of the Galileo system. Furthermore, the Galileo System Test Bed activities continue to provide better insight as to the system characteristics through the analysis of the first Galileo test satellites (GIOVE-A) experiments, and the planned launch of additional test satellites in the coming months will only increase this understanding.

The roots of the situation that Galileo is suffering today at the programme level can be traced to the very optimistic and enthusiastic decisions made at the start of the Programme:

A difficult balance between Programme objectives, schedule and costs. Very ambitious objectives have been defined for Galileo which have not properly taken into account the limitations of the available budget, as well as the difficulties of achieving them within the planned schedule. The combination of these factors has placed the European industry in a difficult situation.

The management structure of the programme is spread among several strong institutional and industrial groups. This situation has sometimes created confusion due to the fact that there is no clear entity ultimately responsible for the overall programme. This is in part a consequence of another optimistic undertaking: the Public Private Partnership.

It is now time to inject more realism into the Galileo Programme and defi ne a credible programme in terms of objectives, cost and schedule, and establish a clear management structure. The European institutions and industry continue to be strongly motivated for and see Galileo as key to the future of Satellite Navigation growth in Europe. This motivation will drive all partners to overcome these hurdles and set up the basis for transforming the on-going work on Galileo into a complete reality within the next few years.