Romanian Defence Minister Gabriel Les said on Tuesday that the acquisition of a telecommunication satellite is under discussion, which would greatly reduce the costs of the ministry, Xinhua reports.
"It is a very bold and interesting project, because, at present, a few million euro per year are being paid for such satellite services that the ministry needs, so the costs would be greatly reduced," the minister said at a launch of a new defence systems production unit in Magurele town, southwest of Bucharest.
According to a press release of the Defence Ministry last week, Les had a meeting with head of the Romanian Space Agency Marius-Ioan Piso and an expert delegation of the European Space Agency, on the theme of the development of the country's own telecommunications satellite system.
The development of a telecommunications satellite system will meet the mission needs of the Defence Ministry and the other governmental institutions at peacetime, crisis and wartime situations, reducing dependence on the satellite services suppliers.
The move will also consolidate Romania's role within NATO and EU, providing satellite services in the Balkans area and the South-Eastern frontier of NATO.
The acquisition procedure will be run in the near future, making the most of the offset solutions and going through the launching, testing, acceptance, rendering the system operational and exploiting steps.
The implementation timeline of the first stage will be the first semester of 2022.