SES closed a $3.1 billion acquisition of Intelsat in 2025. The combined entity is now the largest satellite operator in the world by fleet size. The person responsible for selling that capacity to European defense customers is coming to SmallSat Europe.
Philippe Glaesener is the Senior Vice President in charge of SES’s Space & Defence activities, focusing on institutional, governmental, and defense stakeholders globally, outside of the United States. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of GovSat, the public-private partnership established between the Luxembourg government and SES to meet institutional demand for defense and security networks. Glaesener’s career spans decades in the satellite communications industry across sales, business development, and strategic planning, with a focus on large-scale government initiatives and sovereign telecommunications services.
The operational context is shifting rapidly. SES’s O3b mPOWER MEO constellation reached its 10-satellite operational milestone in March 2026, expanding high-throughput, low-latency capacity for government and defense users. The same month, ALL.SPACE achieved the first multi-orbit terminal certification for O3b mPOWER, a capability designed to let tactical terminals connect simultaneously across GEO and MEO orbits. Meanwhile, SES is a founding member of the SpaceRISE consortium driving IRIS², Europe’s sovereign connectivity infrastructure. SatNews reported in May 2026 that SES had extended its internal review of the IRIS² program even as the consortium reached its initial project milestone.
The European defense satcom market is Glaesener’s central thesis. As he noted publicly, the geopolitical environment has driven European nations to look at sovereign elements when addressing satellite communications and services. The SES-Intelsat combination positions the company to serve that demand across orbits, but the procurement frameworks and security accreditation pathways in Europe remain fragmented across 27 member states.
At SmallSat Europe, Glaesener joins the panel “Quantum-Ready Constellations: Optical Comms and QKD for Unhackable Links,” alongside Cailabs CEO Jean-François Morizur, Odysseus Space CEO Jordan Vannitsen, and Thierry Draus. The session addresses how optical communications and Quantum Key Distribution must converge to secure Europe’s orbital infrastructure against future quantum computing threats.
The fleet is the largest in history. The question is whether European defense procurement can move fast enough to use it.
