Signal No. 173 · Andøya: German military launch talks, a Norwegian pad

Germany is talking to Norway at government level about converting the Andøya spaceport into a military launch site, Major General Wolfgang Ohl, deputy head of the defence ministry's forces directorate, told a space symposium in Ottobrunn on Wednesday. The ministry is contracting launch providers to guarantee capacity, he said; it pays before it knows the payload, which he called a novelty under the federal budget code. The symposium's organiser calls them standby contracts. Norway has not commented on the German talks.

The 2025 space security strategy names Andøya, with SaxaVord in Scotland, as a site where Germany is "establishing responsive space launch opportunities" with Norway and Britain. In July Boris Pistorius, the defence minister, said the Bundeswehr was considering a launch site of its own; in August his ministry said spaceports would stay in commercial or institutional hands, with the Bundeswehr's use "secured by contracts".

No contract, provider or value has been published. The EU procurement journal lists no Bundeswehr tender or award for launch services in 2025 or 2026. The 2027 defence budget draft has no line for launch; its line for complex space services, contract models for satellites, ground stations and similar services, rises from EUR 106 million this year to EUR 597 million in 2027. The German Space Agency surveyed the market in July for a demonstration launch from a sea platform in 2029, noting that Andøya and SaxaVord lie outside the EU and at high northern latitudes; it names Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse as candidates.

In its 2025 annual report, Andøya Space, 90 per cent owned by the trade ministry and 10 per cent by Kongsberg, sets the aim of offering launch from European soil "for both commercial and military launches". Its defence subsidiary serves military authorities in Norway and "allied nations", and eight exercises and tests there last year involved Norwegian and allied units. The government proposes a state-owned second pad for NOK 646 million in all, to be built by the defence estates agency and due in 2028; of the NOK 323 million proposed for next year, NOK 224 million is defence money, and the armed forces are to secure the area. Tore O. Sandvik, the defence minister, calls it a spaceport "under Norwegian, national control".

On a separate subject at the same Ottobrunn panel, Lieutenant General Holger Neumann, chief of the Luftwaffe, said the Bundeswehr is developing offensive space capabilities, with effects in all orbits up to geostationary, and against ground stations and transmission links; asked about kinetic effects in orbit, he said: "We are looking at all options." He named GISMO, the German Inspector Satellite for Multiple Operations, a training test vehicle with limited operational capability, which the Luftwaffe hopes to have by the end of 2027. Space forces with a four-figure headcount are to be built inside the Luftwaffe; one unit is to handle responsive launch.

Federal Criminal Police officers arrested Vadym Y., a Ukrainian citizen, in the Oder-Spree district of Brandenburg on Thursday morning, on a warrant an investigating judge issued on 15 October, Germany's federal prosecutor's office said. "Vadym Y. had been in contact with a Russian intelligence service through an intermediary since at least July 2025," its statement says, and "he gathered military-sensitive information in Germany for this intelligence service." By the prosecutors' account the information concerned the production of armoured vehicles, ammunition and explosives, and military personnel and facilities in the areas designated to protect NATO's eastern flank. The prosecutors say he also deliberately approached people working in Europe's defence industry. Der Spiegel, which first reported the arrest, says he was interested in a German army brigade due to deploy to Lithuania next year. The tip came from the domestic intelligence service, the BfV.

The suspect is 53, comes from the Russian-occupied Luhansk region and lived in Eisenhüttenstadt, ARD reports; he is to be brought before the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice on Friday. In the investigators' view, the broadcaster says, he acted "in a very targeted way and on assignment", whereas the suspect in a similar case in April had collected material "rather indiscriminately". The prosecutors have not named the Russian service.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution on the attacks on Black Sea shipping on Thursday, by 432 votes to 52 with 88 abstentions. It says the EU and its member states should consider deploying an EU naval operation in the Black Sea, asks NATO to consider a Black Sea initiative "building on existing discussions on the possibility of a 'Black Sea Sentry'", and wants unspent SAFE defence-loan funds used to help Romania and Bulgaria. It urges Sofia to confirm by 30 October that it will join NATO's initiative against lower-level air threats. Rumen Radev, Bulgaria's prime minister, rejected the deadline on Thursday: Bulgarian MEPs, he said in BTA's account, were using the Parliament for a national election campaign, and the defence minister had made clear when Bulgaria would join.