In recent summers, Greece has learned what it means to move slower than fire and flood: evacuations in Attica, washed-out roads in Thessaly, municipalities waiting for maps that arrive after the hardest calls are made. For Greek and European policymakers, the question is no longer whether to invest in space, but how to turn it into a service that works at the speed of crisis and daily governance.
Greece is treating space as leverage, not ornament, in a contested neighborhood. The country is shifting from individual platforms to networked systems that can change outcomes on the ground and at sea. With a space-enabled picture, officials see their territory and waters on their own terms; without it, they accept slower decisions, weaker deterrence, and dependence on others in moments that matter. The logic is practical and strategic: sovereign collection that shortens decision cycles, alliance integration that multiplies effect, and an industrial base that can sustain both.
The first priority is data autonomy. Greece is building a national Earth observation capacity, with initial services targeted by 2026, pairing an optical microsatellite constellation with synthetic aperture radar for persistent, all-weather coverage. A governmental geospatial hub will turn raw data into finished products for civilian and security agencies, so responders can share a common picture. The aim is routine revisits over national territory and approaches, not episodic access to foreign queues.
Two concrete examples give this policy weight. Open Cosmos is executing the optical segment in Greece, hiring Greek engineers for manufacturing, operations, and software, placing the learning curve in-country and building a team able to iterate the next generation. Planetek Hellas is building the governmental hub, the downstream system that turns pixels into tasks and alerts for public services and security users. It is jobs and code on Greek soil, foreign investment paired with Greek primes so capacity and competence grow together.
Now the hard part: operations must match hardware if these investments are to matter when it counts. This is where satellites become services, not symbols. Build tasking, processing, and dissemination around a short list of priority needs: movements at sea, wildfires, floods, and sanctions evasion. National satellites should work in concert with coastal radar, UAVs, and Copernicus feeds, then push standardized products to civil protection, the coast guard, and regional authorities. Measure success by revisit rates, decision speed, reliance on national sources, and alert speed on high-risk days.
Deterrence requires persistence. Greece is integrating with an allied “virtual constellation” (a shared pool of national and commercial satellites treated as a single, coordinated system), widening access to fused intelligence over the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean while contributing Greek data to the common picture. In parallel, a homegrown radar-imaging satellite is being initiated for independent, taskable collection when allied priorities diverge. Government communications should be assured through protected satellite links, with priority paths for crisis coordination and civil protection. This dual track, sovereign and allied, creates freedom of action while reinforcing burden sharing.
Industrial policy must anchor capability at home. ICEYE Hellas is establishing a radar-satellite assembly and a center of excellence in Athens, embedding skills and supply chains locally. The Hellenic Aerospace Industry is upgrading facilities so teams trained on the first generation can build the second. Structure contracts to reward performance and product quality, not only delivery milestones, and tie universities and small manufacturers into operations and upgrades so innovation flows directly into service. Every euro should buy expertise as well as hardware.
(ΚΩΣΤΑΣ ΤΖΟΥΜΑΣ / EUROKINISSI)
Security of the space-to-ground chain is a requirement, not a luxury. Links need encryption, anti-spoofing, and assured time. Ground stations and processing centers require cyber hardening, segmentation, and rehearsed recovery plans. Satellites should be designed for tasking agility, rapid retargeting, and priority overrides, with interference monitoring to detect jamming. Build in red-teaming and legal workflows from the start, since sovereign pixels only shift narratives if they are trusted and admissible.
Governance will determine outcomes. Institutionalize a joint tasking board that includes civil protection, maritime affairs, defense, and interior, with authority to set priorities. Favor operations, maintenance, and integration over headline acquisitions; satellites that fly are valuable only if they are tasked and exploited. Avoid capability sprawl; every new sensor must have a defined consumer and a rehearsed concept of operations. Greece should now lock this model into law and budgets so space services become a predictable part of statecraft, not a series of disconnected projects.
The near-term horizon is concrete. By 2026, routine optical coverage, initial radar capacity, and a live governmental hub can deliver a nationally owned common operating picture. Practical effects follow: ignition alerts that reach Attica before the fire jumps the road, earlier map-based evacuation triggers for river-basin floods in Thessaly, a fuller account of gray-zone activity at sea and stronger evidence in diplomacy. Done right, space becomes a daily instrument of state for Greece, a way to see first, decide faster, and stand on firmer ground: precise, persistent, interoperable, and built to last.
Dimitris Kollias
Research Fellow, ELIAMEP
