Protection from space: OHB and the European Commission signed the grant agreement for ODIN'S EYE II

Bremen, 22 December 2023 - With a space-based early warning system that detects and tracks ballistic and hypersonic missiles, Europe will defend itself against security threats in the future.  The project is called ODIN'S EYE II and the European Commission has selected OHB System AG, a subsidiary of the space and technology group OHB SE, as the project coordinator. The grant agreement has now been signed. The project will receive EU funding of EUR 90 million from the European Defense Fund (EDF) and additional member States’ co-financing. The industrial consortium comprises 43 companies from 14 European member states under the lead of Bremen's space experts.

"Europe's sovereignty and defence capability will also be decided in space, and a dedicated early warning capability is essential in regard of the current geopolitical state of the world. OHB has invested for many years in building up expertise in the field of space-based early warning, so we are proud that we have once again won the trust of the EU Commission and will be coordinating and shaping ODIN’S EYE II as consortium leader. In this way, we also make a leading contribution to the implementation of national development strategies," said Sabine von der Recke, the responsible board member at OHB System AG, on the signing of the grant agreement.

ODIN’S EYE stands for the multinational development initiative for a space-based missile early-warning architecture. The OHB System AG is already responsible for collecting and harmonizing the requirements, for the system of systems architecture and for the individual components of the space segment as part of ODIN'S EYE I.

In the follow-up project ODIN'S EYE II, which has now been signed, OHB will also be responsible for defining, developing, integrating, and verifying the entire mission and system simulator. OHB Digital Connect and OHB Hellas are also part of the industrial team and are responsible for the ground segment and data analysis as well as on-board processing.

The ODIN'S EYE early warning system is a pillar of the TWISTER (Timely Warning and Interception with Space-based TheatER surveillance) project within the EU defense initiative for Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and will provide an architecture that is coherent, complementary, and interoperable with other systems, including non-EU systems such as NATO systems.