Moves by the EU to try to stop British armed forces from accessing the Galileo satellite system, and to prevent British companies from bidding for work on it, are, as one senior UK official told the FT, ‘outrageous’. Britain has contributed 12 per cent of the costs. The EU’s argument that to allow British involvement would be a security risk are perverse, given that China, Israel, Ukraine and Morocco are participating in the project. Does anyone really think that relations between post-Brexit Britain and EU will sink so low that European governments will consider us more of a security risk than China?
Galileo isn’t principally a military system at all. It is designed more as a civilian system, to be used by aircraft, trains, buses, motorists hikers and anyone else. It is designed for military use in an emergency, but the prime motivation behind it was to provide an alternative to the Global Position System (GPS) set up by the US.
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