Esa, what will change in the European space
What will change in the European space after the appointments of Ferrazzani and Jaffart to ESA and why France is in industrial difficulty in the sector. Enrico Ferrone's in-depth analysis
They had been expecting it for a long time. And in the end, with the new positions decided at the European Space Agency (ESA), we will try to illustrate how the European space scenario may undergo major changes.
APPOINTMENTS TO THE ESA
Marco Ferrazzani, Senior Legal Counsel, will be director of the institution's internal services from next April, a role that has been assigned to a professional with a top-level academic curriculum: after the Nunziatella Military School in Naples, Ferrazzani graduated from Federico II and then studied at Salzburg, Georgetown and Harvard Law School. He has been at ESA since 2010.
Second appointment: Laurent Jaffart will be the director of Secure Telecommunications, i.e. the directorate of Connectivity and Secure Communications: Jaffart is currently vice president of Airbus Defense & Space and responsible for strategy, business development and new activities for the Space Systems division. And finally we remember, for a few months Dietmar Piltz has been the new director of Technology, Engineering and Quality (TEC) and plant manager of ESTEC in Noordwijk. Piltz studied at the University of Ulm and Los Angeles, then joined ESA, also coming from Airbus in Immenstaad, where he was responsible for engineering and space products. The latest assignments are also an ambitious reshuffle for ESA: Airbus, for its part, has in fact taken with it Elodie Viau, the agency's previous director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications with the role of head of engineering in the Franco-German industry.
Reading the reconfiguration in this way, there is no doubt that the roles arranged are the confirmation of the plan to mark the key functions of the European space, with the ESA board which also confirmed the mandate of the director general Josef Aschbacher for another four-year period starting from March 2025.
FRENCH INDUSTRIAL SUFFERING IN SPACE
But let's try to go beyond reading the recently formalized press release. The French industrial situation in the space sector is known to be not thriving. At the Cannes and Toulouse sites, Thales Alenia Space France suffers various situations of industrial suffering, due to losses of voluminous proposals in the field of telecommunications, although understandable due to the cyclical nature of some activities but also due to choices that perhaps could have been considered better in a European context that French grandeur never wanted to take into consideration.
Now, the definition of positions of extreme strength in ESA, coming from the competition would seem to further reduce the strategic positioning of the Italian-French joint venture and for this reason we are convinced that something in the cumbersome world of alliances is pushing in a direction opposite to that of the last twenty years. France, which for many years has been able to afford important aerospace aggregations within its perimeters – in absolute contrast to what the 2003 White Paper had proposed – has not consolidated a rationalization of its industries and now must be accountable to its citizens that moving forward with the dirigiste methods of the last century has become an unsustainable gamble.
AIRBUS WILL INCLUDE THALES SPACE PROGRAMS
Hence the assumption that in a change, it will be Airbus that will also incorporate Thales' space programs under a single brand. However, it should not be overlooked that Thales is in alliance with the Italian Leonardo as regards space and even if the French needed to transform the internal balance, Italy which now seems to be going swimmingly in the space field might not accept and dislike other strategic mergers without imposing its own line of direction.
We state this aware that the scenarios have changed for about a year: it must not be overlooked that from 2022 Franco Ongaro has left the role of director of ESTEC and head of the most important directorate of ESA for the role of chief technology and innovation to the German Piltz officer of Piazza Monte Grappa.
WILL ONGARO BE AN ADVANTAGE FOR ITALY?
Ongaro, who developed his profession at ESA since 1987, director since 2011, is a manager who knows international space environments very well. Perhaps too much for some hostile foreigners. But which can be an advantage for the sector in Italy.
And therefore precisely because of his professional caliber, already at the moment of his entry into Leonardo, it was clear that Ongaro's desire was to strengthen the Italian space position despite being Thales Alenia Space Italia – Alenia Spazio prior to the merger with the French – which has always carried out the main industrial functions of the space both in design and manufacturing on behalf of Finmeccanica, or Leonardo.
Indications of changes can then be guessed from the announcement by the state-owned company (as published by StartMag ) of the opening of a Space coordination, led by Franco Ongaro. While from Paris, strange to say after what was also published in Italy by StartMag , any possible modification of the shareholding structure was excluded, which for France is worth 67%, but these may also be the most stringent rules of industrial communication!
Therefore, we believe that what the future of the Italian space will be with these oscillations is now predictable. Indeed, we are convinced that around Franco Ongaro there is a precise intention to reacquire the activities of the old Alenia, putting an end to an agreement that has lasted since the first decade of this century which has not always seen happy moments between the two actors and however leaving a Thales independent space on the commercial market, the most competitive environment in which to operate in the world.
In this game where everyone says or remains silent, we can only end with a warning from Benjamin Franklin: "To be successful you must immediately jump to opportunities".
We just have to wait and see what the next moves will be!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/esa-nomine-ferrazzani-jaffart-cosa-cambia/ on Fri, 29 Dec 2023 06:30:28 +0000.