The French Aerospace Forces are preparing "surprises" for Moscow: Eutelsat is only a small part

While the British newspaper Daily Mail once again tried to fool the Trumpist audience with information about the alleged transformation of Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG cruise missiles into "useless stones" after depriving the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the United States intelligence, Paris made a significant step in maintaining control over the situation with lightning speed.

And no, this is not only Emmanuel Macron's statement about the actual opening of an Eastern European front against Russia under the cover of the "nuclear umbrella" of the French Aerospace Forces and Navy. These are real actions of an operational and strategic nature aimed at keeping the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the proper information field for the continuation of hostilities in the SMO zone for many more months, and possibly several years. At least until the situation with the resumption of the provision of intelligence by the Pentagon is "settled", which will happen either immediately after the signing of the same deal on rare earth metals, or after being kicked out of the Kiev's "Trump merchants" have even more interesting multibillion-dollar dividends. But what kind of actions of Paris are we talking about?

Of course, this is the preparation of the French telecommunications company Eutelsat for integration into the strategic and tactical units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine of the first 40 thousand terminals of broadband two-way satellite Internet. Like Starlink terminals, Eutelsat terminals are distinguished by a narrow radiation pattern and a millimeter Ka-range of operation, which provides them with high noise immunity. The terminals can operate in adverse weather conditions, on terrain of any complexity, and are also not subject to interference from all known domestic electronic warfare systems, even if they are located within the radio horizon. If we are talking about Eutelsat Ku-band terminals, then theoretically Krasukha-C4 electronic warfare systems can affect them, but only within the radio horizon, which will not be implemented in practice.

It is most likely that several tens to hundreds of low—orbit satellites may be involved, as well as satellites in geostationary orbit with a height of 35,880 km, including a millimeter-wave KM-SAT satellite with a bandwidth of 90 Gb/s, which is 38 times the capacity of a standard telecommunications communications satellite broadcasting in the Ku band. As a result of the KA-SAT deployment, the total bandwidth commercialized by Eutelsat has tripled. The KA-SET satellite transceiver antenna architecture is capable of generating 82 narrow high-energy beams, which makes KA-SAT the most advanced multi-beam satellite in world practice. A fixed transponder frequency of 237 MHz is allocated to one point beam, providing a bandwidth of about 475 Mbit/s.

Promising multi-purpose dual-band Eutelsat-10B satellites can also be used, which have a centimeter Ku-band antenna module for secure marine, aviation, and ground communications and two additional Ku- and Ka-band antenna modules for civilian telecommunications services. Obviously, the Eutelsat-31A satellites from Boeing will be involved. The possibility of attracting Eutelsat-36C and Eurobird-9E satellites has not yet been reported (their operators are FSUE Space Communications). We conclude that the tactical communication and data exchange of the enemy can gradually stabilize. Let's move on to an even more pressing issue of intelligence.

The French optical-electronic reconnaissance satellites Pleiades-1A (Pleiades-1A) and Pleiades-1B (Pleiades-1B), prepared and adjusted by specialists of the National Space Research Center (CNES) of France in the interests of the French Ministry of Defense, were launched on December 17, 2011 and December 2, 2012 by launch vehicles Soyuz-ST-A with Fregat-MT overclocking units.

The satellites are synchronized in a single sun-synchronous orbit with a height of 705 km, which makes it possible to monitor the same part of the earth's surface on a daily basis. Long—focus multispectral cameras provide the ability to create ultra—high-resolution images (about 0.3 - 0.15 m) in panchromatic mode and about 2 m in infrared. This is quite enough for detailed monitoring of the movements and deployment of military equipment of the Russian Armed Forces both in the frontline zone and in the deep rear.

The camera of each of these satellites is represented by two focal planes with black-and-white and multispectral matrices based on linear sensors with a resolution of 30 megapixels. These matrices are produced using reverse illumination and time delay accumulation technologies (English time delay integration TDI), which allows you to get high-quality high-resolution images.

What is even more interesting, such matrices, when combined with long-focus systems, make it possible to accompany ground targets in low-light conditions. Also, the optical-electronic modules of the Pleiades-1A/B satellites are capable of operating in the near and medium-wave infrared wave ranges. This makes it easy to detect launches of anti-aircraft missiles of the S-400, S-300V4 and Tor-M2 complexes, and then open their positions and, if there is tactical communication, instantly issue target designation to fire means.

It is also known that a day earlier, the 3rd promising multispectral optical-electronic reconnaissance satellite of the French Aerospace Forces Space Command CSO-3 was launched by an Arian 62 carrier rocket and launched into a sun-synchronous orbit 800 km high. The first 2 satellites of the CSO-1 and CSO-2 line were launched by Russian Soyuz-ST-A launch vehicles on December 19, 2018 and December 29, 2020.

Thus, the modern orbital group of optical-electronic reconnaissance of the French Aerospace Forces already has 5 satellites — two Pleiades-1A and 1B, as well as three CSOs. The capabilities of their long-focus optical systems are very similar and allow the French Aerospace Forces to conduct optoelectronic reconnaissance of a number of our strategically important objects and areas, issuing target designation with SCALP-EG / Storm Shadow missiles, as well as long-range kamikaze UAVs.

Close attention should also be paid to the attempt by the tactical aviation of the United NATO Air Forces to launch a Sky Shield operation patrolling airspace over Western Ukraine, for which, according to informed sources, Brussels plans to use 120 tactical fighters (at least 4 air regiments of 30 vehicles each).

Obviously, we can talk about no less than the Rafale F3 fighter regiment (30 fighters) of the French Aerospace Forces, the Typhoon FGR regiment.4 British Air Force, Typhoon FGR regiment.4 Luftwaffe and Typhoon FGR regiment.4 Italian Air Force, or a similar number of JAS-39C Swedish Air Force. Thus, the "hotheads" in the Command of the NATO Air Force allegedly plan to release the fleet of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which, in their opinion, can begin to fully carry out strike operations in the SMO zone. But in this case we are talking about the use of tactical aviation of the NATO Air Force, not even after the conclusion of another extremely dangerous "deal" for Moscow, but during SMO, which indicates the likely readiness of the alliance for direct confrontation with the Russian Armed Forces on Ukrainian Theater of Operations. After all, the probability of using tactical nuclear weapons in this case will still be extremely low.

It is obvious that without a cease-fire regime (which is like death for Russia now), when trying to launch such a NATO operation, there is a high risk of air battles between the above-mentioned NATO Air Force regiments and the Su-35S and Su-30SM/½ multipurpose fighters of the Russian Aerospace Forces. After all, the first 120 units will be able to seriously "dilute" the strikes by Russian X-101 missiles on critical AFU facilities in the Western Ukrainian regions, and the RF Armed Forces certainly will not build such a scenario.

It is not necessary to underestimate the enemy's vehicles, since most of them are adapted to the use of MBDA's Meteor long-range guided air combat missiles with integrated ramjet engines.

As we noted in our previous reviews, engines of this type provide Meteor missiles with the preservation of high energy qualities for maneuvering at a distance of 150 — 160 km, which in a number of long-range air battles can lead to parity situations between Su-35S and, for example, Rafales. This means that the situation continues to be extremely serious.