Galileo is key to the constitution of an independent European Defense. The EU commission presents the agreement with the US as favorable (see Federico's entry). The situation might be more complex though.
This is the conclusion drawn by Strafor.com a site specialized in intelligence analisis with close ties to official military and intelligence institutions:
"The crux of the agreement is that both GPS and Galileo will share the Binary Offset Carrier (BOC) 1.1 signal -- wholly separate from the U.S. M-Code -- and have agreements in place to optimize the performance of the shared signal in the future. This is almost exactly what NATO had proposed nearly two years ago and means that Galileo will be a European commercial competitor, but GPS will remain the primary satellite navigation system used by NATO -- with Galileo likely acting as a backup system.
"This is another nail in the coffin of an independent European defense. Previous efforts to create a European Common Defense Force separate from NATO have stalled. This is due as much to an inability to formulate a common foreign policy as to the lack of capable and willing military forces. Despite these setbacks, many Europeans have held out hope that limited military independence from the U.S.-led NATO umbrella was possible.
"The preservation of the U.S. M-Code as the military navigation frequency ensures that all European militaries -- whether they like it or not -- are inextricably linked to the U.S. Global Positioning System for the foreseeable future."
Posted by Francis Pisani at March 2, 2004 02:01 PM