Norway Plans a State-Owned Andøya Launch Pad for NOK 646 Million — Berlin Is Talking to Oslo About Military Launches
Ottobrunn, 21 October 2026
Key points
- Major General Wolfgang Ohl, deputy head of the defence ministry's forces directorate, told a space symposium in Ottobrunn on 21 October that Germany is talking to Norway at government level about converting the Andøya spaceport into a military launch site; Oslo has not commented on the talks
- The Bundeswehr secures launch capacity through standby contracts, paid before the payload is known; in August the ministry said spaceports would stay in commercial or institutional hands, with Bundeswehr use "secured by contracts"
- Norway's 2027 budget proposes a second, state-owned pad at Andøya: NOK 646 million in all, NOK 323.3 million of it in 2027, of which NOK 223.8 million is defence money and NOK 99.5 million trade-ministry money; the defence estates agency builds it, Andøya Spaceport leases it, the armed forces secure the area, completion in 2028
- No Bundeswehr launch tender or award appears in the EU procurement journal for 2025 or 2026, and the 2027 German defence budget draft has no launch line
Norway plans a state-owned launch pad at Andøya, mostly with defence money in its first year, and a German general says Berlin is talking to Oslo about military launches from the same spaceport.
Germany's 2025 space security strategy already named the site: with Britain and Norway, it said, Germany is "establishing responsive space launch opportunities" at SaxaVord in Scotland and at Andøya. In July Boris Pistorius said the Bundeswehr was considering a launch site of its own; in August his ministry said Bundeswehr use should be secured by contracts instead. Ohl described the result as payment before the payload is known, which he called a novelty under the federal budget code.
On the Norwegian side, Andøya Space, 90 per cent owned by the trade ministry and 10 per cent by Kongsberg, wants to offer launch "for both commercial and military launches". Tore O. Sandvik, the defence minister, presented the new pad as a spaceport "under Norwegian, national control" and told NRK that cooperation "with Germany and allies in NATO" was decisive for its space effort. German rockets already fly from the island: Isar Aerospace reached orbit from Andøya in September.
Berlin's launch contracts have no published address, and Andøya is only the likeliest one. The 2027 budget draft has no launch line; its line for complex space services, contract models for satellites and ground stations, rises from EUR 106 million to EUR 597 million, "more because of new projects in space security", and could hold standby launch contracts without saying so. The German Space Agency, surveying the market in July for a sea-platform launch in 2029, noted that Andøya and SaxaVord lie outside the EU and at high northern latitudes. Norway's defence share has a plainer explanation too: the armed forces' new duty to secure the area, and the Norwegian and allied exercises already held there. Signal No. 173 read the pad and the contracts as possible halves of one arrangement; a Bundeswehr contract naming Andøya, or an Oslo statement on German use, would join them.
Related · European launch from Andøya
