Rivada claims IRIS2 is “dead in the water”
March 25, 2025
Declan Ganley, CEO at Rivada Space Networks, told delegates at the recent Satellite 2025 show in Washinton, that in his view the European IRIS2 scheme to build a super-secure satellite constellation is – in effect – “dead in the water”.
Ganley was speaking on an expert panel which included Eutelsat’s CEO Eva Berneke. Ganley praised Eutelsat’s OneWeb, but amplified his statement that IRIS2 was “dead”, saying: “It’s just a matter of when we issue the death certificate. It is a massive, a giant boondoggle. It is the usual suspects – present company very much accepted — at the European taxpayer trough. We can’t do this stuff anymore.”
He continued: “Mario Draghi’s report talked about the lack of innovation and competitiveness in Europe. That is because we keep on doing stupid things. Iris2 is a stupid idea whose time came and went. [It] needs to be ditched. We can’t play these games anymore. For the first time since the 13th Century we have a Far Eastern army at division strength in combat on European soil. We can’t play these corporatist, regulatory-capture games anymore.”
“If anybody thinks IRIS2 is some kind of answer to Starlink, they are smoking something very, very strong,” Ganley argued.
IRIS2 is now underway with the key satellite consortium members (SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat) preparing their budgets for end-of-year approval by the EU, but it is not expected to be functional until the end of this decade.
Ganley argued that IRIS2 will likely be over budget and late. However, appealing as the Rivada powerpoints might be, the fact remains that Rivada has yet to come up with any meaningful cash to build out its own mega-constellation scheme.
He followed up these initial comments on March 24th, saying on X: “With all the announcements and reporting on increasing European defense budgets and planned spending. We are in real danger zone here in case we fall into the trap of thinking throwing stacks of cash at it delivers the best results in capability. We should not be throwing money at legacy systems and preparing for the war before the last one.”
Other posts by :
- Russian satellite tumbling out of control
- FCC boss praises AST SpaceMobile
- Rakuten makes historic satellite video call
- Rocket Lab confirms D2C ambitions
- Turkey establishes satellite production ecosystem
- Italy joins Germany in IRIS2 alternate thoughts
- Kazakhstan to create museum at Yuri Gagarin launch site
- AST SpaceMobile gets $42 or $1500 price target
- Analyst: GEO bloodbath taking place