France's DGA Signs a EUR 350 Million Eight-Year CENTAURE Contract for OneWeb LEO Access
Paris, 15 June 2026
Key points
- France's defence-procurement agency, the DGA, signed the CENTAURE capacity contract with Eutelsat on 15 June 2026, securing guaranteed access to the OneWeb low-Earth-orbit constellation for the French armed forces
- The contract carries a ceiling of EUR 350 million (EUR 300 million ex-VAT) over up to eight years, with a firm initial commitment of EUR 138 million (EUR 115 million ex-VAT) over the first four years
- CENTAURE is the first call-off contract under the EUR 1 billion NEXUS framework agreement signed in June 2025, which pairs the sovereign Syracuse geostationary system with OneWeb LEO capacity
- It is an explicit bridge: it buys low-latency global connectivity while the European IRIS² constellation slips, a delay General Jérôme Bellanger has said he hopes does not reach 2035
France's Direction Générale de l'Armement signed the CENTAURE capacity contract with Eutelsat on 15 June 2026, securing the armed forces guaranteed access to the OneWeb low-Earth-orbit constellation under a ceiling of up to EUR 350 million over eight years.
Announced in Paris on 15 June 2026, CENTAURE is the first call-off contract awarded under the NEXUS framework agreement, a roughly EUR 1 billion arrangement the DGA concluded with Eutelsat in June 2025. NEXUS is built to combine France's sovereign Syracuse geostationary satellites with commercial low-earth-orbit capacity, raising security levels progressively. CENTAURE delivers the LEO half: priority and guaranteed access to OneWeb, which Eutelsat describes as the only global LEO constellation operated by a European provider, across several areas of strategic interest for the French forces.
The headline figure is a ceiling of EUR 350 million (EUR 300 million net of VAT) over a duration of up to eight years, against a firm initial commitment of EUR 138 million (EUR 115 million net of VAT) over the first four years. Patrick Pailloux, the DGA's Director General, framed it as a further step in modernising France's military satellite communications; Eutelsat chief executive Jean-François Fallacher called secure, low-latency connectivity a decisive driver of operational effectiveness.
The structural point is the timeline it is built around. Eutelsat states plainly that CENTAURE is meant to ensure continuity during the ramp-up of the European IRIS² programme — the EU's sovereign secure-connectivity constellation, now running behind its original schedule. General Jérôme Bellanger, the air-and-space force chief of staff, told a parliamentary hearing he hoped IRIS² would not be pushed back to 2035, citing unresolved technological and financing questions.
The proprietary read. An eight-year ceiling is the tell. France is not buying a stopgap of months; it is provisioning for the possibility that the sovereign European constellation does not arrive until the next decade, and meanwhile hedging onto OneWeb — a European LEO asset Eutelsat owns, which keeps the dependency continental rather than routing it through Starlink. The sovereign ambition and the commercial fallback are the same institution's two timelines, and the contract length quietly prices in how far apart they have drifted. First reported in Signal No. 84.
Sources: Eutelsat · DGA · French Ministry of the Armed Forces · OPEX360.
First reported in Signal No. 84, 17 June 2026.