What Happened
Next Generation Military Earth Observation Capabilities
The French defence procurement agency has awarded the contract for the IRIS programme to Airbus Defence and Space and co-contractor Thales Alenia Space. The programme represents the next generation of extremely high-resolution Earth observation satellites for the French Armed Forces, with a contract value of over €1.5 billion. The IRIS satellites will replace the CSO satellites, providing improved performance and continuity of France’s operational image-origin intelligence capability. This development was first reported by an unknown source.