OHB likes to describe itself as Germany’s scrappy independent satellite builder, the agile alternative to Airbus. In reality it’s the aerospace equivalent of a boutique consultancy that lucked into defense contracts and never stopped cashing them. It made its name on small- and medium-class satellites, won a few high-profile ESA competitions by underbidding Airbus, and then spent years proving that “cheap” and “on time” are not the same thing.

The poster child is Galileo. OHB beat Airbus and Thales for the contract to build Europe’s GNSS birds, which was sold as proof that a mid-tier German firm could outmaneuver the primes. What Europe actually got was a constellation delivered late, over budget, and with embarrassing clock failures that turned the whole program into a punchline. ESA stuck with OHB anyway because switching horses midstream would have been worse, which tells you everything you need to know about how procurement in Europe really works.

Since then, OHB has tried to brand itself as the nimble innovator in a sea of bloated primes. In practice it’s just another subsidy magnet. Its Earth observation satellites are fine, its science missions technically competent, and its comms projects minor footnotes compared to SES or Airbus. The company was also linked to spaceplane fantasies and micro-launcher ventures, because every European mid-cap aerospace firm thinks it needs a launcher slide in its investor deck. None of it has come close to commercial credibility.

The real story now is ownership. In 2023, investment firm KKR swooped in and took OHB private. That should have been the moment for restructuring and focus, but in practice it just means OHB is now a portfolio asset being groomed for resale or IPO once the defense and space subsidy cycle fattens the books. Independence was the brand, but private equity doesn’t buy independence, it buys cash flow.

OHB today is not Airbus’s challenger, not Germany’s SpaceX, not even a credible standalone global player. It’s a mid-sized contractor whose survival depends on ESA workshare politics and Berlin’s insistence on having a “national space champion” alongside Airbus. It will keep getting contracts, it will keep missing deadlines, and it will keep telling investors it’s lean and innovative while living off the same subsidy drip as everyone else.