![]() Pine Gap’s role is to downlink the data indicating a probable launch and compute its probable trajectory. and Japanese missile defence systems on land and sea aimed at defeating a North Korean missile attack. Today, this technology originally aimed at providing early warning of possible attack on the United States has been extended to contribute to the rapidly evolving U.S. Powerful infrared telescopes on geostationary satellites detect the thermal signature of ballistic missile launches. base at Nurrungar in 1999, Pine Gap has hosted a remote ground station for several generations of U.S. There is a second aspect of Pine Gap’s activities, which was never envisaged by the government that allowed its establishment. drone attacks in countries with which the United States nor Australia are at war, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. This has provided the technical basis for Pine Gap to provide data enabling the targeting of illegal U.S. However, in the half century since it was first built, Pine Gap and the systems of which it is a part have undergone extraordinary technical development, greatly increasing the sensitivity and breadth of its of its signals intelligence capacities – most notably in the interception of cell phones and satellite communications. Pine Gap continues this activity today, monitoring the testing of missiles by a wide variety of countries, including North Korea. That data was then processed into usable signals intelligence about the performance and capacities of new Soviet missiles. satellites in geo-stationary orbit sitting above the earth intercepted this missile telemetry, and downlinked the data to Pine Gap and other ground stations. During missile tests, information on the performance of various parts of the missile in flight is sent by radio signal to the test base. When first established by the United States in 1966 (becoming operational by 1970, and in part by early 1969) the original purpose of Pine Gap was to collect information on the testing of Soviet missiles. From strategic intelligence to warfighting A Torus multi-beam antenna was installed at Pine Gap in 2008. Two 23-metre dishes suitable for COMSAT SIGINT Development (Sigdev) were installed inside 30-metre radomes in 1999-2000. This was probably presaged with the arrival of Service Cryptological Agency (SCA) elements at the end of the 1990s. ![]() Missile Defense Agency’s Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS).įinally, Pine Gap appears to have acquired a FORNSAT/COMSAT (foreign satellite / communications satellite) interception function in the early 2000s. Another three radomes are probably associated with the U.S. Six of the satellite terminals at Pine Gap (four in radomes and two unshielded) belong to the RGS. missile launch detection/early warning satellites/Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) – formerly the Defense Support Program (DSP) but now including the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) – to both U.S. Secondly, since late 1999 Pine Gap has hosted a Relay Ground Station (RGS), which relays data from U.S. Most are still concerned with the core function of controlling geosynchronous SIGINT satellites and processing and analysing the intercepted intelligence. ![]() There are now 38 satellite dishes/radomes at Pine Gap. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) it probably remains the CIA’s most important technical intelligence collection station in the world. Its original and still principal purpose is to serve as the ground control station for geosynchronous signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites developed by the U.S. Pine Gap today houses three distinct functions and operational systems. Pine Gap is perhaps the most important United States intelligence facility outside that country, playing a vital role in the collection of a very wide range of signals intelligence, providing early warning ballistic missile launches, targetting of nuclear weapons, providing battlefield intelligence data for United States armed forces operating in Afghanistan and elsewhere (including previously in Iraq), critically supporting United States and Japanese missile defence, supporting arms control verification, and contributing targetting data to United States drone attacks. Desmond Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter, The Pine Gap Project.Possibilities and effects of a nuclear missile attack on Pine Gap.Table and photokey of antennas at Pine Gap.Resources – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap.
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