The European Defense Agency (EDA) has secured backing from five of its governments to pool resources to purchase commercial satellite bandwidth on the spot market for military use as a way of saving money, EDA officials said Nov. 30.The effort will start small, with no more than 2 million or so euros ($2.7 million) being put into an EDA account to be used by contractor Astrium Services to purchase mainly C- and Ku-band satellite capacity on behalf of the five participating nations - Britain, France, Italy, Poland and Romania.The decision to actually begin operating the long-planned European Satellite Communication Procurement Cell, or ESCPC, was made by EDA's Steering Board during a Nov. 30 meeting in Brussels.It was one of several initially small efforts to coax still-recalcitrant European governments to engage in "pooling and sharing" of military resources and budgets with a view to reduce the overall cost to taxpayers.
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