[wkat4242]

US spy sats cost an order of magnitude more. Like a billion. And you don't spy from 22000km. That's a GNSS orbit. You do that from low earth orbit. It makes no sense being 40x as far away than you need to, needing that much more magnification (if optical) or signal strength (if EM espionage)

I'm pretty sure this is just Galileo. Yeah it's just timing but Galileo has high accuracy and does SAR reception too. And it's government so the price goes up :)

Also, the EU as an entity does not have a military or espionage agency. If someone does that in Europe it's coming from a country, not the whole EU.

[tialaramex]

Right, Europe's GNSS birds have the same extra carrier as the current US GPS birds, but whereas the US can say "That's for military use" the EU can't because it does not have a military, so it says that's a "Public safety" feature.