Rabat has reportedly approved the purchase of two Ofek 13s, reconnaissance spacecraft used by the IDF and which could replace those acquired from France in 2013.
The information has not been officially communicated, but according to the Israeli newspaper Calcalist, Morocco has ordered two copies of the Ofek 13 satellite, designed by the public company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). Valued at $1 billion (nearly €920 million), this defense contract is presented as the largest ever signed by the Cherifian kingdom with the Hebrew state, the two countries normalized their relations in 2020.
Although it was revealed in March by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the sale was not finalized until June, according to our information, after IAI President and former Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz traveled to Morocco on a private plane from Tel Aviv, with direct commercial air links between the two countries having been suspended since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023.
Described as an “intelligence satellite” by NASA, the Ofek 13 is the latest in a family of eleven light surveillance satellites in low orbit, developed and built in Israel in 1988. Scheduled to be delivered to Morocco within five years, it could replace the Mohammed VI-A and Mohammed VI-B satellites, which Morocco acquired from France in 2013, on the sidelines of a state visit by President François Hollande.
Manufactured by Airbus and Thales, these reconnaissance satellites, derived from the high-resolution Pléiades space imaging satellites, were placed in orbit in 2017 and 2018 for an estimated lifespan of ten years. The program, which included launches, ground reception, and image processing systems, as well as training for Moroccan engineers, had been estimated by SIPRI at between 500 and 585 million euros.
Twice as high, the cost of the Ofek 13 satellites can be explained in particular by the technologies on board. Not the optical sensors that French satellites are equipped with, but synthetic aperture radar sensors, which can be used day and night, regardless of weather conditions. When it was launched in March 2023, the Ofek 13 was described by the Israeli Ministry of Defense as “the most advanced satellite in its category. ” “It will make it possible to collect information in all weather and visibility conditions, improving the quality of our strategic intelligence,” added the IAI presidency.
Terrorist threat
Operated by the special intelligence unit 9900, which is tasked, according to the IDF, with “selecting visual materials to enable those planning a mission to obtain the best data from the areas concerned,” the Ofek 13 has been used in recent months to identify tunnels and weapons caches in the Gaza Strip, with the resulting images being modeled in 3D to allow the most realistic understanding possible of the environment.
The predecessor of the Ofek 13, launched in 2020 and which offers a resolution of up to 50 cm for a picture taken at a height of 600 km, was used in Syria. “There is almost no operation of the Israeli Air Force, special units, and intelligence services that do not receive images from these satellites,” Shlomi Sudri, director of IAI’s aerospace division, said in 2020.
The use of the Ofek 13 satellites by Morocco will be mainly civilian, qualifies Abdelhamid Harifi, administrator of the FAR-Maroc military forum, who specifies that their financing will be taken directly from the budget of the National Agency for Land Conservation, Cadastre and Cartography (ANCFCC).
But an application in the field of defense is being considered given the “threats” weighing on the south of Morocco, warns the analyst. The attack by the Polisario Front in Smara, a town in the north of Western Sahara, which left one dead and three injured after shelling on the night of October 28 to 29, 2023, had raised questions about the Moroccan army’s ability to identify the movements of the pro-independence forces.
As was done with the Mohammed VI-A and Mohammed VI-B satellites through the provision of intelligence to other countries, whether in Central Africa or the Sahel – Nigeria having received information on the positions and movements of Boko Haram –, Abdelhamid Harifi anticipates that Rabat will continue with Ofek 13 the sharing of information on the terrorist threat with its African “partners”.
Slump
The choice of a satellite built by the Hebrew state has not failed to be commented on, while the Israeli army continues the siege of Gaza, arousing the opposition of a large number of Moroccan citizens. Over the period 2020-2023, Israel rose to third place among arms exporters to Morocco, behind the United States and France, according to SIPRI. If confirmed, this new contract would therefore take military cooperation between the two countries to an unprecedented level.
The fate reserved for Airbus and Thales has in this context been interpreted as the consequence of the very long lull in Franco-Moroccan relations in 2022 and 2023, even though the Quai d’Orsay played an “active role” in the attempt to renew the contract with the two French companies, says a source close to the matter.
The French daily La Tribune indicates that they did participate in the competition but that they lost, with the Moroccan authorities going so far as to refuse to receive the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA). Rabat did not base its decision solely on technical criteria but was guided by “political considerations”, reports our source, for whom the poor quality of the bilateral relationship was a “critical” element.
