The race for sovereign space reconnaissance
Few topics shaped ILA 2026 as much as the question of who organises Europe's view from orbit. The answer: three new alliances at once.
Deals · ILA Berlin 2026 Photo: Messe Berlin / Johannes Zappe Three teams, one goal
Rheinmetall and ICEYE, Helsing and OHB, plus an Airbus-led consortium: German industry lines up for space-based reconnaissance.
Sovereign reconnaissance from orbit was the strategic leitmotif of ILA Berlin 2026, and industry delivered daily. Rheinmetall ICEYE Space Solutions led off: the joint venture of Rheinmetall (60 percent) and Finnish radar satellite specialist ICEYE (40 percent, based in Neuss) presented its industry network and won four German new-space companies, Reflex Aerospace, OroraTech, ConstellR and LiveEO, as initial partners for an open, multimodal ISR architecture.
Airbus Defence and Space responded with a team of its own: together with Rohde & Schwarz, constellr, Orbint and HPS, the company formed a non-exclusive sovereign space intelligence team for satellite-based Earth observation, with Airbus as system integrator.
KIRK gathers the start-ups
The busiest schedule belonged to KIRK, the space defence joint venture of Helsing and OHB, expanded to include Kongsberg and HENSOLDT: on a single show day, KIRK signed seven memoranda of understanding with European space start-ups and mid-sized companies, among them ConstellR, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Marble Imaging and LiveEO. The alliance sees itself as the nucleus of a European space reconnaissance capability.
That three competing consortia chose the same trade show for their formation says a lot about ILA: whoever wants a seat at the table of space security shows up in Berlin, with partners, models and signatures.