Joint Committee on Treaties: Pine Gap: Discussion Source: THE KEITH BASTERFIELD NETWORK August 9, 1999
Committee: Joint Committee on Treaties Senator Brett Mason from the state of Queensland and Senator Tchen from the state of Victoria.
I now declare open the public hearing we are convening today in relation to the agreement between Australia and the United States of America on the joint defence facility at Pine Gap. Accordingly, I welcome Professor Des Ball who we have invited today as one of two witnesses to give evidence. Although we are not going to require you to give any evidence under oath, I should formally advise you that the hearings are legal proceedings of the parliament and they warrant the same respect as proceedings of the House and the Senate. Hence, the
giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament.
The committee prefers that all the evidence be presented in public. We are aware that some of the issues raised today will relate, of course, to sensitive matters. If you wish to provide any additional information in camera on particular matters that you believe are relevant to the inquiry, please bring this to the committee's attention. Before we proceed to questions, I invite you to make some introductory remarks.
Prof. Ball --Thank you very much for inviting me to appear before this committee. It is now a third of a century since the first Pine Gap agreement back on 9 December 1966, the progenitor of the one which you are currently considering. Over that third of a century Pine Gap has grown enormously. The first two antennas for controlling and communicating with satellites were constructed in 1966-67. By 1997, a decade later, there had already been a threefold expansion there with six satellite control antennae. There were eight in 1985. The tenth and eleventh went up in 1990-91. There are now about a dozen and a
half there, making it one of the largest satellite ground control
stations in the world.
The computer room at Pine Gap when it was first constructed back in 1966-67 was at that time also one of the biggest computer rooms in the world. It has approximately tripled in size also during the subsequent 30 years.
There has also been quite substantial growth in personnel at Pine Gap. Back in the 1970s, there were about 400 people at Pine Gap--the figure varied from year to year--of whom about half were Americans and half were Australians. In the 1980s, that figure grew into the 500s. By the beginning of the 1990s, there were more than 600 people there. Through the last decade that number has also increased. It is about 800 or 850
these days, with projections taking it, by the early part of the next century, to over 1,000. So you have seen an increase of a factor of about 2.5; since it was built.
Notwithstanding this very significant expansion of the facility, it has only ever had one essential function, and that is to serve as the ground control and processing station for a series of satellites which are parked in geostationary orbits--in other words, in fixed orbits--above the equator and whose sole purpose is signals intelligence collection. In other words, these satellites pick up electronic emissions of various sorts from the earth's surface and process and analyse the signals which are so monitored. Those satellites have had various names over the last 30 years. The original version were called Rhyolite satellites. Within the informed community, the classified community, they are still commonly known as Rhyolites even though, strictly speaking, only the ones launched in the 1970s were Rhyolites. There were subsequent satellites called
Aquacade, Magnum andOrion.
These satellites have also grown very substantially in size. The principal intercept antenna on the satellites back in the 1970s was about 20 metres in diameter. The intercept antenna on the most recent satellites is of the order of 100 metres in diameter, or about 300 feet. In other words, they are large enough for you to go out at night and actually have a look at these satellites by the enormous parabolic dish which is sitting up there.
These satellites intercept signals in the very high frequency, VHF, ultra high frequency, UHF, and millimetre wave frequency bands. Within that frequency spectrum there are four principal categories of signals which are monitored by those satellites controlled from Pine Gap. The first category, which was its original rationale, concerns telemetry. Telemetry refers to the signals w hich are transmittedin the course of
advanced weapons development, and most particularly the development of ballistic missiles. Originally, when the Soviet Union was developing its ballistic missiles in the 1960s and 1970s, those missiles which are test fired from within the heartland of the Soviet Union, now Russia, to splash down around Kamchatka in the Sea of Okhotsk and the northern Pacific, transmitted a lot of telemetry about their own performance back to Soviet Russian scientists on the ground about the vibrations, temperature and stage peparations of those missiles which were used by Soviet missile technicians in their missile development
programs. The first Rhyolites were wholly concerned with monitoring this telemetry.
This is really what the government is referring to when it talks about the arms control verification function of Pine Gap. It is the telemetry interception because, by intercepting that telemetry, it gives Western intelligence analysts--in this case, primarily US, but the intelligence is shared--a good picture of missile developments in, over the years, not just the former Soviet Union but also China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and elsewhere in an area that stretches
from the Middle East across to the western Pacific.
The second category of signals which are monitored by those Pine Gap satellites are the signals which are emitted from large radars. They include the radars which are associated with anti-ballistic missile fields in Russia, air defence radars, radars on ships--a whole family of radars which are emitting signals--and those signals are being picked up by these satellites. Analysis of the radar emissions tells you a lot about the capabilities of those anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems in the various air defence fields--again, no longer in the former Soviet Union, but also through many other countries as well.
Thirdly, those satellites are able to intercept the communications of other satellite systems--in other words, communications which are going up from the ground to communication satellites which are also based up in geostationary orbits. As those signals are being sent up to the satellites which they are transmitting to, they are also being
listened to by the listening satellites which are parked very close to the communications satellites.
Fourthly, these satellites monitor a wide range of other microwave emissions on the earth's surface. That includes a lot of the telecommunications such as long distance telephone calls which are transmitted via terrestrial microwave circuits around the ground around the earth enabling them to monitor military microwave circuits as well as the key microwave channels used by political and government agencies and even private communications if they wish. When Pine Gap was first conceived back in the 1964-65 period, and when its first and
pretty much sole mission for the first few satellites was telemetry interception, the focus was entirely on the former Soviet Union. As the number of listening satellites that were parked up at this altitude--about 36,000 kilometres--increased, the older of those satellites were taken off the telemetry monitoring function and used to monitor signals coming from China in the first instance and then Vietnam--the Vietnam War was still going on during this period--the Middle East, and the subcontinent, south Asia, India and Pakistan. The newer satellites as they went up were given the primary mission of
monitoring the Soviet Union. The older ones were then taken over for the secondary missions.
With regard to some of the signals which have been collected by this satellite system, you have to remember that the signals intelligence systems which the United States and its allies deploy are very wide-ranging. They include ground stations, they include airborne systems, they include intercept systems which are on ships and submarines and things like that. Those which are on satellites only monitor one segment of thiswhole signals intelligence picture, but included in that segment that they monitor is some quite unique intelligence which cannot be picked up by ground stations or by aircraft or by ships operating around national borders. Because you can actually park a satellite over the interior of a country and
intercept the microwave emissions coming out of the interior of that country, you are able to get a lot of intelligence which simply cannot be intercepted by any other means.
The best example of this unique intelligence is, indeed, the telemetry that I was referring to at the outset of describing these missions, because that telemetry, as I said before, really is quite critical for monitoring various arms control agreements. There simply is no other way of collecting that intelligence about particular weapons developments, including, today, intelligence about missiles such as the Agni which are being developed by India, and missiles such as the
Taepodong being developed by North Korea. The only way you can follow those missile developments and work out how those missiles work is by telemetry interception using these satellites parked overhead.
I want to say a few words about Australian participation and control of activities at Pine Gap. Within the operational area, the central operations building, there are three areas. There is the Satellite Station Keeping Section, and the job of those people is to keep the satellite and its antenna focused on a particular source of signals that they want to intercept. That is the first operational job at Pine Gap: keeping the satellite in its appropriate station. In addition to
that there is a Signals Processing Station. Essentially, that is the main computer room. Its job is to process the enormous volume of intercepted signals which are being sent down to Pine Gap from these listening satellites. Thirdly, there is the Signals Analysis Section, whose job it is to analyse, to actually extract the intelligence from these signals that are processed in the Signals Processing Station.
Up until 1980, Australians were excluded from the Signals Analysis Section. That is the genesis of a lot of claims that go back to the 1970s about Australians not having access to certain intelligence collected at Pine Gap and not being able to see, in particular, the voice intercepts which are coming down directly to that Signals Analysis Section. In 1980, Australians were allowed into that section. Since 1980, Australians have had full access to all areas at Pine Gap except for the National Cryptographic Room, which is the Americans' own coding room. We have a similar one, an Australian Cryptographic Room, where we do our own coding and from which Americans are officially excluded. In fact, as I understand it from people who have
worked there over the years, the relationship at the working level is such that Australians do go into the Americans' National Cryptographic Room and Americans do come into our room. It is an informal arrangement but, officially, we are able to exclude them and they are able to exclude us from our respective cryptographic rooms if necessary.
In terms of control of the satellites--that is, determining what those satellites listen to, which is really the essential single function at Pine Gap--there is a group called the Joint Reconnaissance Schedule Committee. That committee meets each morning and decides what is going to be listened to in the ensuing 24 hours--in other words, what the big antennas on these listening satellites will be focused on. There are criteria which set out what that schedule should be, the sorts of
things which should be listened to.
For example, if there is other intelligence to the effect that the North Koreans are gearing up for a missile test, it is pretty clear that at the top of the day's listening for these listening satellites will be monitoring the launch facilities in North Korea so that they pick up the signals which are being generated by that launch; or if there is a political crisis in Jakarta, then it is a pretty good guess that those satellites are going to be focused on microwave communications within the Jakarta urban area; or if there is a crisis in Iran-Iraq relations, then they will be focused over there. Since
1980 Australian personnel at Pine Gap have chaired that Joint
Reconnaissance Schedule Committee. In other words, Australians are not just right in there, but literally chairing the determination of the day's listening activities.
In the last several years, since the end of the Cold War, Pine Gap has probably grown even faster than it did during the seventies and eighties, which I sketched out for you at the outset of my presentation. That is pretty consonant with the general expansion of signals intelligence activities right around the world since the end of the Cold War. With the breakdown of the bipolar system and its replacement by some as yet undetermined multipolar system, each particular country that is involved in advanced signals intelligence collection, such as the United States and Australia but also other countries, has found that they need to collect intelligence on a greater number of countries and from a wider variety of perspectives. They are not just collecting strategic intelligence or intelligence about weapons systems; they are finding it necessary to collect more
political intelligence and even more economic intelligence, and not just about the former Soviet Union, or Russia, but also about China and even about countries which are allies--in other words, political development.
Regards Diane Harrison
tkbnetw@powerup.com.au
ufologist@powerup.com.au
http://www.powerup.com.au/~tkbnetw
Reference: Pine Gap Place: CANBERRA
Responder: Prof. Ball
Database: Joint Committees
Director Of The Keith Basterfield Network Australasia
Co Director of The Australian UFO Research Network
Australian Skywatch Director