Rheinmetall, Vantor plan joint ISR venture for Bundeswehr

WASHINGTON — German defense behemoth Rheinmetall and US imagery provider Vantor announced today that they have inked an agreement on a joint venture to provide “spatial intelligence” to the German military.

The new entity will support Germany’s “sovereign defence requirements” from offices within the country, “as well as existing and emerging European intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) programs,” the press release said.

The plan is to “integrate Vantor’s spatial intelligence platform into Rheinmetall command-and-control systems.” The new system will fuze satellite synthetic aperture radar, electro-optical and infrared imagery from a variety of government and commercial satellites, as well as airborne sensors.

Dan Smoot, Vantor CEO, explained in a statement that the partnership will bring his company’s “Tensorglobe platform into a European-controlled solution that can task, fuse, produce, analyze and deploy spatial intelligence in sovereign environments.

“This is how European nations can maintain operational control while delivering intelligence directly to the warfighter when it matters most,” he said.

Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall CEO, added that in the future “reconnaissance will not be determined by sensors alone, but by the ability to quickly and reliably process information from a wide variety of sources and make it usable.

“Together with Vantor, we are laying the groundwork for a sovereign European capability in the field of geospatial intelligence,” he added.

The memorandum of understanding with Vantor marks the third partnership Rheinmetall has signed in recent months in the military space domain.

The partnership accord with Vantor comes only a week after Rheinmetall and Bremen-based satellite firm OHB SE announced a joint satellite communications venture. Called “OHB Rheinmetall Space Networks GmbH,” the firm will “provide the Bundeswehr with a high-performance, secure and continuously available communications architecture within the framework of SATCOMBw Level 4.”

SATCOMBw Level 4 is the Bundeswehr’s planned next-generation high-bandwidth, secure communications constellation of some 100 low-Earth orbit satellites —in essence a German rival to SpaceX’s Starshield. It is expected to cost €8-10 billion ($9.2 billion to $11.5 billion) and become operational by 2029.

According to the OHB-Rheinmetall press release, the “future system will connect soldiers, vehicles, platforms and unmanned systems, ensuring the secure transmission of voice, data and real-time information across all command levels.” It will serve as the system integrator, with OHB providing satellite and ground-stations, and Rheinmetall providing user and network systems.

And on June 10, Rheinmetall announced the standup of its long-planned joint venture with Finnish SAR satellite provider ICEYE. Called Rheinmetall ICEYE Space Solutions GmbH and headquartered in Neuss, Germany, the venture also includes German space startups Reflex Aerospace, OroraTech, ConstellR and LiveEO as initial partners.”