Airbus, Rohde & Schwarz, constellr, Orbint HPS MoU.
Airbus, Rohde & Schwarz, constellr, Orbint, and High Performance Space Structure Systems (HPS) Consortium: BERLIN AIR SHOW, Germany — The geopolitical landscape is shifting beneath our feet, but the race for strategic autonomy is increasingly being fought hundreds of miles above them.
Against the backdrop of the Berlin Air Show, Airbus Defence and Space announced a sweeping Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with four German technology champions: Rohde & Schwarz, constellr, Orbint, and High Performance Space Structure Systems (HPS). The goal is as ambitious as it is urgent: to construct a fully sovereign, satellite-based Earth observation and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) architecture.
For years, European defense and governmental agencies have grappled with a lingering vulnerability: a reliance on non-European space assets and data pipelines. This new consortium, with Airbus stepping in as the prime contractor and system integrator, aims to sever those dependencies entirely. By uniting an aerospace giant with agile NewSpace startups and deep-tech mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), the alliance represents a concentrated, national industrial response to an era defined by security fragmentation.
“Europe has the talent, the technology, and the industrial base to build its own space intelligence infrastructure and the strategic imperative to do so,” said Mike Schöllhorn, CEO of Airbus Defence and Space. “This consortium brings together five German companies whose capabilities are genuinely complementary. Together we can deliver a sovereign, end-to-end solution that no single company could offer alone.”
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Unifying the Intelligence Chain
What makes this alliance notable is not just the political will behind it, but the surgical precision with which the industrial responsibilities have been divided. Rather than competing for overlap, the five partners have mapped out an end-to-end solution that spans the entire lifecycle of space intelligence—from data tasking and collection to processing and final dissemination.
As the anchor of the project, Airbus will oversee the grand architecture, managing end-to-end integration, program management, and the crucial customer interfaces for government buyers. But the system’s eyes, ears, and data processing brains are distributed among its partners.
Rohde & Schwarz brings decades of institutional defense heritage to the table, supplying high-performance radio frequency (RF) components, advanced signal processing, and radar antenna systems. “Together, we can help shape a sovereign European ISR capability that is technologically strong, resilient, and independent,” noted Thomas Bohne, Vice President SIGINT / EW at Rohde & Schwarz, emphasizing the power of blending established defense players with fresh innovation.
Plugging the Capability Gaps
A key vulnerability in current European surveillance is the reliance on traditional optical and radar systems, which can leave blind spots during specific environmental conditions or operational states. The consortium addresses this by integrating constellr’s cutting-edge thermal infrared satellite systems.
Max Gulde, CEO and Co-Founder of constellr, framed the partnership as a geopolitical necessity. “This is a mission before it is a contract,” Gulde stated. “Thermal infrared reconnaissance—the ability to detect operational activity, equipment state, and early-warning indicators that remain invisible to optical and radar sensors—is precisely where the ISR capability gap is greatest.”
To get these varied sensors into orbit and functioning optimally, the alliance relies on the specialized hardware of HPS (High Performance Space Structure Systems), which manufactures space-qualified deployable mesh reflector antennas optimized for high-frequency Earth observation.
Crucially, the partnership signals a shifting cultural tide in how defense giants interact with smaller suppliers. Ernst K. Pfeiffer, CEO of HPS GmbH, praised Airbus for weaving SMEs into the system architecture from day one. “We are technically capable of delivering, extremely agile when it comes to scaling, and, above all, oriented toward the long term,” Pfeiffer said, noting that a sovereign space architecture offers room for the entire German space ecosystem to thrive.
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A Fusion of Industrial Might and Startup DNA
The final piece of the puzzle lies in data exploitation and situational awareness, an area driven by Orbint. Born out of NewSpace innovation and the University of the Bundeswehr Munich (UniBw M), Orbint contributes specialized geolocation methods and data processing algorithms.
“The operational environment is changing faster than ever, with growing complexity across both the space and security domains,” explained Alexander Schmidt, Co-CEO of Orbint. “Bringing prime and start-up together as genuine partners is exactly what is needed to strengthen sovereign German and European capabilities.”
By combining RF-sensors, electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) data, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) products, and signal-related geospatial intelligence, the consortium is building a multi-layered, customer-ready intelligence stream.
As European defense ministries increasingly look inward to secure their borders and data supply chains, the formation of this all-German consortium marks a critical milestone. It serves as a blueprint for how legacy defense infrastructure and agile NewSpace technology can align, ensuring that when it comes to the future of European security, the continent is no longer looking to outside powers for its vision.
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