With Australians still adjusting to the new AUKUS military agreement, the United States has been quietly expanding and refocussing its satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap, preparing it to fight a nuclear war against China.

by Peter Cronau 

Under construction in July 2021 at the US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap - in this previously unpublished photograph, we get a rare glimpse of one of the new OPIR satellite dishes seen inside its partially completed radome (upper left).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)

The rapid expansion of the Pine Gap satellite surveillance base near Alice Springs, from 35 to 45 satellite dishes, is designed to give the US 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 US’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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US 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 be 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 US has no present infallible defence against hypersonic missiles, which can reach speeds of 12,500 kph and carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.

The US has no present infallible defence against hypersonic missiles – developing new surveillance satellites therefore became urgent. 

It became evident to US military planners that the older SBIRS 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.”