French satellite manufacturer Loft Orbital landed a nearly €50M ($58.6M) contract from the French military to deliver the country’s first sovereign synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) capability, the company announced today.
The demonstration is part of France’s DESIR program (translated to the Demonstrator of Sovereign Radar Imaging Elements), which is intended to widen the pool of EO capabilities available to the French defense sector. While other European nations—like Sweden and Germany—have opted to purchase SAR data or satellites directly from ICEYE, France is developing a custom-built solution.
SAR team six: To complete the contract, Loft has gathered a consortium of French companies, with the aim of putting the demo sat into service by mid-2029.
- Thales Alenia Space and TEKEVER France will co-design the SAR payload.
- The payload will be integrated into Loft’s Longbow satellite platform, which is derived from the OneWeb sat architecture.
- Loft will handle the project entirely out of its facilities in Toulouse, France.
The satellite, like other SAR-capable sats, will allow the French military to monitor the Earth’s surface 24/7. Unlike optical EO sats, SAR payloads can see just as well at night and can peer through clouds, giving intelligence officials a clear picture of conflict zones and maritime passageways. Building more SAR capability quickly, however, requires a mix of expertise.
“This is exactly the type of program where…speed, execution, discipline, and operational maturity matter,” Loft’s European GM Emmanuelle Meric told Payload. “This is a perfect example of how you can combine the new ‘space-agile’ way of working, with the more traditional way of working.”
Making space: The agreement marks the first time Loft will play the role of prime contractor for the French government, signaling a big win for France’s NewSpace sector, as government contracts have traditionally been led by A&D primes with many decades of experience.
Meric told Payload that the contract gives Loft an opportunity to prove its worth as a prime contractor, and to position itself as a valuable partner for future sovereign systems.
“The basic concept of Loft is that we can fly any payload on any platform, deployed on any cloud, relying on any ground station network,” Meric said. “We now are really seen as a credible player in the French ecosystem.”
