What you need to know about Pine Gap
It is now generally accepted that Pine Gap, a military/intelligence facility just outside of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has played a crucial role in the Palestinian genocide and other US-supported wars in west Asia. In response to the targeting of Iran’s nuclear facilities and defences against Houthi drones and missiles, more and more people are becoming aware of and questioning the facility’s operations.
Since it became operational in 1970, the stated purpose of Pine Gap has changed several times. Initially, the government said it was a space research facility. When its military use could no longer be hidden, the site was then said to be used for the verification of arms control treaties and to provide early warning of missiles launched from the Soviet Union and, subsequently, China. With every new revelation of the true nature of the facility, the Australian and US governments have changed their line as to precisely what Pine Gap’s purpose is.
In 2013, CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden released a trove of classified documents covering covert US military activities. Some were directly related to Pine Gap; others were about broader programs that Pine Gap may be involved in. In a publicity campaign aimed at increasing transparency about Pine Gap, a former technician, David Rosenberg, wrote a book claiming to be an exposé. But the book, Pine Gap: The Inside Story of the NSA in Australia, was vetted and cleared by the US National Security Agency before it was released. As was the ABC mini-series Pine Gap.
So although we now know a fair bit about what Pine Gap does, we still do not know the whole truth. As more and more of the US military’s operations are conducted by remote control through communications satellites, Pine Gap’s importance is growing. This is reflected in the physical growth of the base itself. New radomes (the dome-shaped structures housing and protecting sensitive antennas and radars) have been built in the last few years, and more personnel have been based there. Much of this new information comes from the excellent work of Declassified Australia’s Peter Cronau.
What we do know is that Pine Gap is the most important US communications base outside of the continental US. This is primarily due to its location. The shooting down of a US U2 spy plane during a reconnaissance flight over the Soviet Union in 1960, coupled with the launch of the first communications satellites in 1962, led to the development of a rudimentary satellite-based communications and spy system by the Ramo-Woolridge Corporation (which later merged with Thompson to become TRW, which has since been acquired by Northrop Grumman—the third largest aerospace and arms manufacturer in the world).
At least three ground stations were needed to control geosynchronous satellites around the globe at an altitude of about 35,000 kilometres. (They are called geosynchronous because their movement is synchronised with the Earth’s rotation and they are therefore fixed above the same geographic point.) The first was to be in the US, and the second in Western Europe. The third would be equidistant from those and preferably in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia was, therefore, the obvious choice. In addition, the base needed to be far from the coast to avoid ship-based spying and in a remote location to keep it as secret as possible from the civilian population.
While Pine Gap is just one of the three geographical points needed, the US and Western European bases have nearby alternatives should they go offline for any reason. Pine Gap has the distinction of being the only facility of its kind in the region: it is irreplaceable and therefore one of the most important pieces of real estate to US military interests, in Australia or anywhere. Without Pine Gap, the US cannot control the satellite operations that are now essential to the execution of war.
To our knowledge, these operations include things like the early warning systems of the US Defense Support Program (which detects missile launches), a task previously performed by the Nurrungar base near Woomera, South Australia, until taken over by Pine Gap in 1999. This forms a part of the US missile defence shield and that of US allies such as Japan and Israel. Satellites tracking heat signatures would have formed a part of the defences against Iranian missiles aimed at Israel.
Pine Gap’s 45 satellite dishes control at least four geosynchronous satellites positioned above the Indian Ocean that monitor a vast range from the Pacific to Africa, their central focus being the area from China to West Asia. These satellites are the backbone of US signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the region. They intercept and download electronic signals across all bands, from radio to mobile phone and internet communications, which are then analysed at Pine Gap. They also control military communications between the US and its military in the dozens of bases and fleet deployments from Guam to Egypt.
Modern communications satellites are not geosynchronous and constantly travel around the globe at a much closer altitude of about 400 kilometres. These are the ones we can often see in the sky and are generally used for commercial communications. So while most of the satellite dishes at Pine Gap communicate with geosynchronous satellites, in the last decade or so, a new type of satellite dish has appeared: torus dishes. These are designed to intercept and download communications from low-orbit satellites as they pass through the region, sucking up every bit of data for analysis by the US National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
In short, Pine Gap has the capacity to control US military satellites, track missile launches, control military communications—including those to and from autonomous drones—provide all battlefield communications and intercept all satellite communications in the region. In about one-fifth of a second, information gathered from the ground in West Asia can be transmitted up to a satellite and back down to Pine Gap, where all these communications can be analysed. US military and intelligence agencies can then use the information to obtain targets, among other things.
Which brings us to Palestine.
Palestine is not Pine Gap’s primary focus, which has always been about gathering intelligence to help the US maintain global supremacy. Nonetheless, the US is providing support to Israel, including providing signals intelligence. This is not a new development. For example, we know that signals intelligence gathered and analysed at Pine Gap was passed on to the Israeli military during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden released classified documents showing that the agency has an agreement with the Israeli military’s signals intelligence, the notorious Unit 8200, to pass on all raw intelligence data collected, including data collected in third-party countries—like Australia. The agreement began in 1999, but earlier information-sharing arrangements have existed since 1968. A top-secret memorandum advised that the intelligence sharing had been broadened from Unit 8200 and the NSA to include the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad. It is noteworthy that this specifically includes information gathered on Australians and citizens from other Five Eyes intelligence alliance countries: Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
The Israeli military obviously does not rely entirely on the US for electronic communications surveillance; it has its own satellite and surveillance capabilities. It is therefore impossible to judge where and how any particular piece of targeting information was sourced. But it would be naive to believe that, over the last two years of relentless attacks, no information from the Australian facility was used.
Pine Gap is classified as a Joint Defence Facility, but the US military, through the National Reconnaissance Office, fully funds and controls it. The Australian government’s policy is that Pine Gap operates with its “full knowledge and concurrence”, though there is no official definition of those terms.
Along with Australia’s weapons sales, both directly and hidden as “transfers” through the US, the use of intelligence gathered by Pine Gap makes Australia complicit in Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
Jacob Grech is a member of Renegade Activists.
