Countries in the European Space Agency have agreed for the first time to fund a programme explicitly designed to serve military as well as civilian requirements, as they clinched a record budget increase for the agency’s next three years.

The agency’s proposed European Resilience from Space (ERS) project secured almost all the funding it had sought. It aims to create a military-grade “system of systems” pooling national space assets to deliver secure surveillance, communications and navigation capabilities, as well as earth observation for climate purposes. 

Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, said the agency — whose convention drawn up in the 1970s specifies it should develop technology for “peaceful purposes” — had received “a clear defence and security mandate from its member states”.