Friday 23 January 2015 6R The Australian Financial Review | www.afr.com AFR From page 1 Home base

American technological system, then in real world terms, it is an American facility to which Australia has greater or lesser degrees of access. These days Pine Gap has twice as many antennas as it did at the end of the Cold War, in a compound double its original size. Most importantly, far beyond its original mission, Pine Gap makes critical contributions to planning for nuclear war, missile defence of the US and Japan, US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and CIA targeted- killing operations by drone.

Pine Gap has twice as many antennas as it did at the end of the Cold War, in a compound double its original size.

Some important ADF facilities are becoming joint bases: the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station near Geraldton in Western Australia, long a critical spying station for the Australian Sig- nals Directorate, has three completely new elements for advanced US military satellite communications systems. North West Cape, once an essential part of US nuclear missile submarine command, was subsequently rendered redundant by increased missile range, and handed back to Japanese missile defence is not only North Australia. It is once again a joint facility, this Getting bigger Korea, but also China’s own small but time critical in America’s quest for what is Location of US military bases Darwin potent nuclear deterrence capacities. In called full-spectrum dominance in space. Chinese eyes, missile defence turns out to have a highly offensive role which under- Pine Gap SHOAL BAY mines what little strategic stability there is NORTH WEST CAPE Listens to satellites over Indonesia. For the US, the jewel in the Australian Used for submarine Military communications, military in the dangerous world of nuclear crown is the Joint Defence Facility at Pine communication. Being radio and mobile phone. Strong deterrence. Gap outside Alice Springs. Originally built upgraded for space NT Indonesian language listening capacity. China fears, with some justification, that in the 1960s as a ground station for signals surveillance. In event of US and Japanese missile defence dependent war could identify Chinese intelligence satellites capturing telemetry satellites for destruction. Alice Springs on Pine Gap may be able to destroy most, if from Soviet missile testing, Pine Gap is now Learmonth not all, of China’s nuclear missiles in flight, a much larger facility, serving two sets of thereby vitiating China’s nuclear deterrent WA intelligence collection satellites, one that PINE GAP force, and leaving the country vulnerable to captures electronic transmissions from Doubled in size Brisbane nuclear blackmail by the US. space, and the other detecting the heat since end of Cold Unsurprisingly, after decades of minimal GERALDTON blooms of missile launches. War. Critical to SA missile development, China is rapidly mod- Listening base. Intercepts missile defence of Pine Gap produces data from both sys- satellite communications US. Active in Iraq NSW ernising and upgrading its strategic nuclear Perth tems which is mashed with other forms of over Indian Ocean and SE and Afghan missile capacities in response to what it sees operations, drone Sydney imagery and human intelligence, and Asia. Assists in US global Adelaide as the offensive consequences of American pumped out to all levels of the US military in operational communications strikes, early missile defence. warning. Iraq and Afghanistan and for the CIA’s Vic targeted-killing drone operations. Melbourne North West Cape The larger part of Pine Gap is a signals SOURCE: RICHARD TANTER North West Cape is a peninsula in the north- intelligence ground station for intelligence west of Western Australia. It has been home satellites in geostationary orbit over the tion requires the adversary to have compar- planning. In the event of nuclear war, who- Above: Pine Gap’s for more than five decades to the US-built Pacific and Indian oceans, sucking up huge able verification facilities – which they don’t ever should fire first, DSP and SBIRS satel- role in US nuclear Naval Communication Station Harold E amounts of electronic data from air, sea and in China’s case. lites will warn the US of an incoming attack. missile defence Holt, and was crucial for communicating ground transmissions of missile tests Most controversially, Pine Gap’s signals But they will also provide the information as strategies and drone firing instructions to Polaris nuclear missile (including those of North Korea, China, Rus- intelligence capacity provides telephone to which enemy missile silos are now assassinations submarines until the 1980s. Once newer sia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, intercepts and location intelligence for empty, and which should be targets in a US makes it more submarines with greater nuclear missile Pakistan, Singapore, and South Korea), and drone assassinations – extra-judicial killings second strike. controversial than range made that requirement redundant, from military radars, microwave transmis- in legal language – in countries with which However, even short of that doomsday ever as a potential the base was turned over to Australia. All sions, mobile phones and satellite phones. neither the US nor Australia are at war, scenario, Pine Gap plays an indispensable target and risk for that is changing again, albeit in the name of Pine Gap is one of three control and com- including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. role in the protection of Japan and its US residents in nearby the global public good of protecting the mand stations for the geostationary signals These mixed blessings are also inherent bases from attack by North Korea or China Alice Springs. satellites we depend on from collisions with intelligence satellites – the others being at in Pine Gap’s second role as a ground sta- by cueing the US-Japan ballistic missile space junk – as in the film Gravity. Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado and tion for thermal imaging satellites in defence system in the western Pacific. The The latest advanced US high-tech space Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, Britain. The Pine geostationary orbit, following the closure of satellites detect the initial launch of missiles, surveillance telescope is being deployed to Gap station downloads and processes large the South Australian base at Nurrungar for send the data to Pine Gap, and then cue US North West Cape. So too is a space radar amounts of data from satellites hovering US early warning satellites in 1999. For the and Japanese missile defence radars to from an island on the Cape Canaveral over the equator above south-east Asia and past decade and a half, the antennas of the search a very small and specific part of the launch range. Their task is to find, identify the Indian Ocean, covering the areas of Pine Gap remote ground station have been sky over the Pacific. With that data, the and track unknown objects in orbit, espe- greatest US military interest in China, growing as a new constellation of vastly American and Japanese Aegis-class des- cially those in geostationary orbits over the Afghanistan and the Middle East. more powerful thermal imaging satellites troyers and their powerful radars, plus their equator, and particularly those only visible Labor and Coalition governments since comes on line. Essentially extraordinarily land equivalents, have a reasonable chance from the southern hemisphere. The Austra- the 1980s have justified the risks of hosting powerful infra-red telescopes on satellites of guiding their own missiles onto the lian operators of the American radar and Pine Gap because of its signals intelligence 36,000 kilometres above the earth’s surface, incoming enemy missiles hurtling through telescope send their data, on both space contribution to arms control verification: these Defense Support Program (DSP) and the upper atmosphere or the edge of space junk and Chinese and Russian military only the ability of Pine Gap to monitor Space-based Infra-red System (SBIRS) satel- at tremendous speeds. Without Pine Gap’s satellites alike, to the US Joint Space Opera- Soviet missile telemetry allowed the US to lites not only instantaneously detect the contribution, those chances diminish rap- tions Centre within the United States Stra- be certain the other side was not cheating. heat blooms of missiles that might be idly. tegic Command, or USSTRATCOM. ‘‘No Pine Gap, no arms control,’’ was a man- launched against the US, but also detect the The problem with this missile defence If major war should break out between tra first spelt out by Bob Hawke. Of course, launch of ship-to-ship missiles at sea, the system protecting the US and Japan orig- the US and China, blinding China’s space these days there is precious little arms con- engine plumes of jets in flight, and explo- inates from the topsy-turvy logic of the and air surveillance assets is a fundamental trol negotiation to be monitored. In any sions and fires on the ground. world of nuclear strategy. China has long US task if US Navy carrier task groups are to event , the logic of the arms control verifica- These satellites tie Australia to US nuclear been concerned that the object of US and operate in the East and South China seas AFRGA1 W006