HELIOS-2 - MYTH OR REALITY

Hellos is the only example of a multilateral collaborative military sp ace effort currently being pursued within Europe. As such, a unique tr ipartite project, the first generation of the programme has had signif icant successes, even though the project has been faced with severe sp ending constraints and hindered by political obstacles. Hellos 2, on t he other hand, is not faring quite as well. Plagued by problems, the p roject has been in effect grounded indefinitely by German reluctance a nd inability to finance their share of the proposed three satellites. This paper assesses the origins and development of the Hellos programm e, and the difficulties facing the second generation of this satellite system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.