In Australia, the U.S. has been quietly expanding and refocussing its “most important surveillance base in the world,” preparing it to fight a nuclear war against China, writes Peter Cronau.
Under construction in July 2021 at the U.S. satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap — in this previously unpublished photograph, we get a rare glimpse of one of the new OPIR satellite dishes seen inside the partially completed radome, at upper left. The top half of the dome can be seen resting beside the open radome on the ground, with two cranes visible ready to lift the top half into place. The white 4WD vehicle on the road near one of the cranes gives an indication of scale. (Declassified Australia’s original image: Maxar Technologies; Google Earth)
By Peter Cronau
Declassified Australia
The rapid expansion of the Pine Gap satellite surveillance base near Alice Springs, Australia from 35 to 45 satellite dishes, is designed to give the U.S. the edge in a potential nuclear war with China.
Where desert oaks and spinifex tufts once baked in the Central Australian sun, three new white domes have mushroomed in a 14 hectare clearing along the western edge of the U.S.’ “most important surveillance base” in the world.
Under huge plastic radomes, three of Pine Gap’s new satellite dishes have been built to receive information from a new generation of U.S. spy satellites that bring a heightened level of surveillance of China’s nuclear missile launch sites at a time of increasing confrontation between China and the U.S. and its allies.
Thermal imaging satellites presently used by the Pine Gap base are able to detect rocket and missile launches in the battlefields of Gaza and Ukraine, as I have earlier reported, but the greatest interest of the new satellite dishes at the base are missile launches from China.
A new generation of “eyes-in-the-sky,” known as Overhead Persistent InfraRed (OPIR) satellites, will soon be launched by the U.S. military to augment the existing satellites of the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS). These satellites are designed to detect the thermal signatures of rocket and missile launches, using immensely sensitive infra-red sensors.
The Rush to Catch Up
The U.S. Defense Department’s “Space Force” is poised to launch five new ballistic missile early warning infra-red sensor tracking satellites. The first launch had been planned for 2025, but technical difficulties have seen it delayed until 2026. Three of the five new OPIR satellites will go into geostationary orbit at 35,000 kms altitude over the equator, and two will orbit the poles.
The new Pine Gap dishes will use these OPIR satellites acting as “spotters” to better detect heat signatures from ballistic missiles at the earliest stages of launch, to then send this data to low orbit tracking satellites which aim then to guide the targeting of the launch locations and of the incoming missiles.
They will aim to defeat the latest hi-tech manoeuvrable ballistic and hypersonic missiles which have been developed by China and Russia. As Declassified Australia reported in depth in 2022, the U.S. has no present infallible defence against hypersonic missiles, which can reach speeds of 12,500 kph and carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
It became evident to U.S. military planners that the older Space-Based Infrared System satellites were not up to dealing with the advanced hypersonic missiles — developing new surveillance satellites therefore became urgent. As the new satellites were being developed to face the new hypersonic threat, new satellite dishes and electronics on the ground were also needed. That’s why they need to upgrade Pine Gap.
Satellite constructor Northrop Grumman’s vice president of OPIR and Geospatial Systems said, “What we want to make sure of is that as threats evolve and as hypersonic missiles come onboard, we are able to evolve our capability.”
So Begins the New Arms Race
A Kh-47M2 Kinzhal being carried by a Mikoyan MiG-31K interceptor on display in 2018 Moscow Victory Day Parades. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
U.S. planning to counter new generation hypersonic missiles gained impetus when in 2017 Russia announced their nuclear capable hypersonic aero-ballistic air-to-surface missile, the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal. These missiles saw their first use in a battlefield when Russia fired two into western Ukraine in March 2022.
China began testing its DF-ZF hypersonic glide missile in 2013. Missile defence experts had predicted it would not be able to be deployed until at least 2036, but China introduced the DF-ZF into service in 2020.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has been rushing to develop its own hypersonic missiles. The Pentagon’s 2025 budget request for hypersonic research is U.S.$6.9 billion, up from U.S.$4.7 billion in 2023.
Australia’s Defence Department allocated $9.3-billion in 2020 for high-speed long-range strike and missile defence including for hypersonic development, test and evaluation. Development of hypersonic technology with the U.S. has also been made a priority in 2023 under Pillar Two of the controversial AUKU.S. military agreement.
The accelerating arms race in hypersonic missiles and anti-hypersonic defensive technology was unleashed upon the world following the U.S. unilateral decision in 2002 under George W. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Soviet Union and U.S.
The ensuing weapons competition has pushed aside risk-mitigation measures, such as expanding the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, negotiating new multilateral arms control agreements, undertaking transparency and confidence-building measures, and puts in jeopardy a cornerstone of world peace, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Amplifying Risk of Nuclear War
Chinese DF-17 glider launcher on exhibit in Beijing in 2022. (Yiyuanju, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The OPIR infrared detection satellites that Pine Gap will soon be using, will detect missile launches far more rapidly and accurately than at present, allowing more reliable U.S. targeting of launch locations and potentially in-flight missiles. The aim would be to reduce retaliatory strikes by China should such a nuclear war be started.
This ability may encourage the U.S. military planners to think they could win a nuclear war, if they think they could destroy most of China’s nuclear missiles.
This may sound good to them, but it has an immense downside. It may increase the likelihood of China, if it feels existentially threatened, making its first nuclear response its biggest, because it may not have a chance for a second. Escalation from a limited nuclear exchange may rapidly spin out of control.
Unlike the U.S.A’s most recent Nuclear Posture Review which asserted its right to a “first nuclear strike” in “extreme circumstances,” China has a “no first strike” nuclear weapon policy.
However there are indications that China has upped its nuclear attack defence preparations, by moving to a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture.
This LOW defence posture involves China relying on space and ground sensors to give early warning of an attack, to allow a counter-attack before its defences are destroyed.
One of Australia’s leading researchers on Pine Gap has been at the ANU’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the late Professor Des Ball. In an interview before he died he saw U.S. surveillance bases like Pine Gap as particularly vulnerable in a potential nuclear conflict with China.
“There is no way that the Chinese can win… unless they take out command and control systems, unless they can degrade the surveillance capabilities that link the sensors with the aircraft carriers for example.”
“That’s the very first step, to make those American platforms blind, deaf and dumb. It’s the only way that those relatively primitive Chinese capabilities would have any hope against American carrier battle groups.”
Though rarely in the public consciousness, the prospect of the U.S. base at Pine Gap being targeted early in any conflict between the U.S.A and China is high.
A secret intelligence assessment reported in the Defence Department’s 2009 Force Posture Review made clear the official view:
“Defence [Department] thinking is that in the event of a conflict with the United States, China would attempt to destroy Pine Gap.”
Professor Richard Tanter, Australia’s key Pine Gap researcher, has pointed out China’s targeting of Pine Gap in a potential conflict involving the U.S., due in great part to the base’s use of infra-red detection satellites to monitor Chinese missile launches:
“Pine Gap… remains a likely priority target for a Chinese missile strike in the event of a major China-United States conflict, both because of its role as a remote ground station for early warning satellites in the Defence Support Program and Space Based Infra Red Satellite systems, and its larger role as a command, control, downlink, and processing facility for U.S. signals intelligence satellites in geo-stationary orbit.”
Alice Springs, Australia, 2005. (Johannes Püller, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Updated details on the capabilities of the satellite radomes of Pine Gap have been published in March by Prof Tanter and Bill Robinson, for the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability.
Paul Dibb, a former head of Defence intelligence and now a respected senior defence strategist, is even more certain. He now states that in a war between the U.S.A and China, Pine Gap will be China’s most important early nuclear target:
“[This is] because of its ability to give the U.S. instant, real-time warning of a Chinese nuclear attack, the precise number of missiles, their trajectory and their likely targets.”
There are other surveillance and communication bases in Australia used by the U.S. that are also most likely to be targeted in a nuclear exchange. These are the surveillance and communication bases at Kojarina near Geraldton and at North West Cape near Exmouth — some also suggest the new U.S. AirForce B-52 nuclear bomber squadron base under-construction in Darwin will join these, as the four prime Australian targets in any war-planning by China.
Bringing the Risk Back Home
In an environment of threat and escalation, of fear and suspicion, the prospect of war breaking out between the U.S. and China could rise rapidly to the point of a counter-strike by China on U.S. assets in Australia.
A hypersonic nuclear missile, if fired at Pine Gap from a Chinese submarine in international waters off the west coast, flying at up to 15,000 km/h, would reach its target in a matter of a few minutes from launch.
The direct effects of a nuclear weapon attack on the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap are estimated to extend to Alice Springs. This was the conclusion of a 1985 report, prepared by a medical doctor, titled “What will happen to Alice when the bomb goes off?” Some may think that’s a fair question to ask today. (Image from Medical Association for the Prevention of War; Sourced R Tanter)
A nuclear ground blast at Pine Gap would cause a gigantic cloud of super-heated dust and earth to rapidly rise above the destroyed base. The dust from this huge mushroom cloud would contaminate huge expanses of the Australian inland, and would likely spread for thousands of kilometres.
A local Alice Springs doctor, concerned at the lack of emergency medical preparations by the town’s hospital and the lack of emergency evacuation plans by local authorities in the case of a nuclear war, prepared a report in 1985 for the Medical Association for the Prevention of War.
At the time of preparing his report, the Cold War was in its last desperate stages and the very real threat to the American base then was if a nuclear broke out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The doctor, using research done at the time by Prof Des Ball and others, assessed the catastrophic effects that a nuclear attack on the Pine Gap base would have on his town and its population.
His conclusions are worth bearing in mind today in responding to the acknowledged risks of hosting U.S. bases.
“If on the day [of a nuclear strike] it was blowing from anywhere in the southwest quarter, Alice Springs would be enveloped in the plume of radiation at greater than the lethal dose,” he wrote.
“Most people not evacuated within one hour would receive fatal radiation doses.”
Peter Cronau is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentaries have appeared on ABC TV’s Four Corners and Radio National’s Background Briefing. He is an editor and cofounder of DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA. He is co-editor of the recent book A Secret Australia – Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposés. View all posts by Peter Cronau
This article is from Declassified Australia.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Endless wars, bloated military budget, corrupt politicians, uninformed, moronic cowards for citizens. men who think they’re women, women who think they’re men, etc…. Welcome to the land of the free where you can be thrown in jail at the whim of a corrupt legal system and not even know what you’re being charged with. And to top it off you have insane, madmen, who think a nuclear exchange is winnable. Stick a fork in it America, you’re finished.
What is a “manouverable balistic missile”?
Is it kind of like opaque stealth enhancement?
No. A normal ballistic missile follows the (ballistic) trajectory it’s given at launch, hence its path is predictable. A steerable ballistic missile can change its trajectory during flight, hence its target is not predictable. Russia has them, probably China too. The US is decades behind in both hypersonic and ballistic technology, and, judging by its recent technological fiascos, likely to fall even further behind.
The US is just the front for the globalists running the show. The insanity of “free trade” has come home to roost. The idiot politicians who have bought into it, have off-shored manufacturing to Asia with China being the biggest recipient. They gambled that Japan, South Korea and China would be compliant, but lost that gamble, as China played its own game has become what they stripped out of their own countries. The move to “capitalizing” India has hit a snag – BRICS, which is a competing globalist construct. All wars are banker wars, and have been for over 200 years.
The US (and the rest of the (((Western liberal democracies))) ) is imploding. It’s going to do anything it can to survive, or try to take everyone down with it. Over 30 years ago, Pat Robertson declared the US Congress was Israeli occupied territory. It’s no coincidence that they have a much bigger “Samson Option”.
Just because we don’t know what and why they are doing this , does not mean that they don’t know what they are doing.
I say give them all the money they want. Just don’t kill anyone or thing…
Australian Politicians of the War Mongering (suck up to the uSA) Variety, are thick on the ground & backed by the MSM. Australians have been denied access to News outlets that will print their opposition to War with China & Russia. It is obvious that those locations mentioned will be the First targets in any war started by the out of control uSA war machine. Left out of targets is Garden Island Submarine base just out of Perth. It also will be a Target. Fuck these Politicians – they must be opposed & stopped – –
Humanity is too stupid to exist, and soon it won’t. What a crime against God ( if you believe in him/her) and the universe. After years of working trying to bring the truth about nuclear weapons and climate change I just feel a great sorrow.
Anyone living within a few hundred kilometres of Pine Gap should consider moving elsewhere. Undoubtedly, both Russia and China have plenty of missiles aimed at it.
They want to “track hypersonic weapons”?
In the unlikely event that they can actually track an object approaching at 22,000 mph, there is no chance they’ll stop it. The Five Eyes have no effective AAAM defense–and certainly not in salvoes of 10,000–while Russia and China have the world-beating S-500.
Besides, China’s Hainan-based anti-ship ballistic missiles can track and sink carriers steaming off in Darwin Port.
This is just security theater.
The paranoid high technological military industrial male dominance protection racket is attempting to hijack the entire world economy for their professional profit motives.
Human civilization cannot allow them to control the world economy with more terrible play toys just when civilization has to get beyond dominance and convert to the cooperative world family feminine mode of sexual freedom from herd dominance to sharing and caring.
When oh when will humanity evolve beyond greed and lust for power? If this is the best we can do, our time here on earth has been an utter failure.
We’re allied (submissive) to a country whose recent Nuclear Posture Review asserted its right to a “first nuclear strike” in “extreme circumstances”? It has a “right” to attack others – who have not attacked it? It defines the “circumstances” in which it has a “right” to start a nuclear war? I can’t see a reason to speak to such people, let alone submit to their “right”. And yet that’s bi-partisan policy for Australia’s two major parties, The LNP USA Party and the ALP USA Party. Any choice as long as it’s Nuclear War.
I was researching A-Bomb testing down under and it revealled that there were a least 12 above ground tests in Central Australia bt the British in the 1950s.According to reports wind conditions ensured that the major City of Melbourne was subject to radioactive fallout at the time.The West coast was also subject to additioaal fallout from other A Bomb tests in Western Australia
Seems the British and the US have always considered this Country some sort of Colonial outpost.
Apparently this is not the only US base in this Country and B52’s regulary fly in and out of US Bases there.( We known what B52’s carry) . US troops are also stationed permanently in the North of Australia and Nuclear armed US gunboats are regulary ‘visitors’.
Now the US will be providing Nuclear Submarines to the Australian Navy which means that this Country will be permanently absorbed into the US military network.This certainly ensures loss of sovereignty for Australia.
As the US is preparing for War against China this means Australia becomes a first strike target.
As China is Australia’s economic lifeline it leaves me perplexed why this Country allows itself to be used in this manner.
There is a social cost to hosting these installations which is evident on the periphery of every US military base in the world. Drugs, prostitution and every sort of parasitism thrives amongst the human misery that they attract. Alice Springs is no exception to this and most Australians would readily agree.
The gradual occupation of Australia by USA has, for decades, been willingly accepted by Australia, purely for the benefit of USA’s military complex with no plausible benefit for Australia. The Global South is under no threat from any nation. However, USA’s constant belligerent stance wants to involve the whole world with “perceived” enemies everywhere in order to bolster it’s failing hegemony.
The question becomes: who is the instigating challenger, and how is the one being challenged expected to respond?
Doesn’t Newton’s third law of motion: “Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction” apply here? This law states that when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. For example, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B exerts an equal amount of force on object A in the opposite direction”. AI Overview
But….you exclaim indignantly, in defense of Humanity. Human beings are not mere objects.
We are critically conscious beings, whose subjective reasoning skills, when applied objectively, with discerment, are capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood.
Could’ve fooled me!
This sounds too much like a decoy, to distract an enemy from real surveillance assets, most of which are satellites.
It is a case of the insane ordering the sane to do insane things for them. Oh, the game of life, nobody gets out of it alive. Especially when the sun explodes many years earlier than expected, it shall be game over for all anyhow. So get some popcorn and watch the show, will the sane stand up and stop the insane, can the red button kept strictly out of reach of the insane. What a sick joke it all is!? Or will the exploding sun be the only final solution, the end, my only friend!?
Pine Gap was the Rubicon that resulted in 1976 CIA coup under Whitlam.. sad times!
hxxps://jaraparilla.blogspot.com/2012/08/lessons-of-history-cia-in-australia.html
This is another depressing analysis of the current state of US thinking. It is utter madness to think a nuclear war can be won. And the USA is too broke and too far behind technically to win a conventional war ever again. So they are, instead of employing diplomacy, preparing for a nuclear war that cannot be won. Insane thinking from the craziest people on earth.
Don’t these insane warmongers realize that none of will survive a nuclear war? Even if there are underground bunkers for the elite, Plutonium has a half life of 26 thousand years!
It is so depressing to read stories like this. The world is ‘run’ by lunatics and psychopaths in my opinion. Anyway, keep up the good work CN; I don’t think we will see much of this sort of reporting and context in the mainstream media. But you never know.
Unfortunately the insane don’t think rationally.
Susan, l think they have the MAD ( Mutual Assured Destruction) Policy firmly fixed in their minds.
A group of ageing dysfunctional whitey’s planning a “Orgasmic” farewell for all of us.
Maybe its a deep primodial desire to return to our origins and the the big bang.
One things for certain its going to be one hell of a show.