European defence money is now behind a transportable system that can watch observation satellites crossing overhead and temporarily stop them seeing a given patch of ground.
The EOBLINDING project was selected under the European Defence Fund with €6M for 30 months. Integrasys leads a consortium that includes Centrale Space Agency, Odysseus Space, TTI Norte, XYSENSING and Aldoria, the French firm handling the surveillance and tracking component.
Tracking, jamming and dazzling
The system combines precise satellite tracking with radio-frequency jamming and laser dazzling. It is meant to work against both radar and optical observation satellites, and the countermeasures are designed to be temporary and reversible, leaving the spacecraft and its sensors undamaged. Any activation would require a decision by human authority.
Aldoria’s share is its first mobile space surveillance station, a transportable optical platform that follows low-Earth-orbit satellites and times their passes over a specific area, feeding the countermeasure side of the system.
Force protection in an age of hourly imagery
Observation satellites are now a targeting input rather than a curiosity. Recent conflicts have left forces located soon after a pass, and that makes the question of who is overhead a force-protection problem: an army that cannot forecast when it will be photographed cannot plan around it.
Aldoria chief technology officer Alexis Petit said the company’s surveillance expertise is being adapted for use close to operations. Integrasys research director Pedro Ruiz described a deployable package that keeps human authority over every decision.
The two companies already cooperate on space surveillance, including work for Luxembourg’s Ministry of Defence announced in February.
