Battle drone fear for NT

Battle drone fear for NT

“A FORMER military intelligence officer fears
the United States will use the NT as a launchpad for war-fighting drones.
Academic researcher Kate Reid-Smith said the Alice Springs airplane boneyard
was the perfect spot to launch orbiting satellites and other military
weapons.

Ms Reid-Smith said she was concerned the US
military would use the boneyard to keep a close watch on Southeast Asia and
China.
She said the boneyard could also be strategically used to deploy for US
military aircraft involved in war-like operations.

But Ms Reid-Smith feared any US militarisation
of the boneyard would fail to protect Australians’ self-interests.
She said the boneyard was conveniently located near the US military’s
satellite tracking station outside Alice Springs, Pine Gap.

“The boneyard alike Pine Gap has
everything going for it,” she said in an essay published in On Line Opinion.

“Just outside twenty degrees latitude south of the equator, arid desert
location, isolated in an area of low electromagnetic radiation, relatively
low population, an easily controlled-access site, and potential area-denial
strategies including no-fly zones.”

Ms Reid-Smith added the boneyard was being
built by the same company that built Australia’s new Defence Headquarters in
Canberra, Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage. She said the new boneyard was the
second largest in the world and the only facility of its kind in the Southern
Hemisphere.

“Being built practically next door to
Pine Gap, it raises questions as to whether such facilities are in danger of
becoming forward staging platforms for US interests into Southeast Asia in
light of the rise of China threat thesis,” she said.

Ms Reid-Smith said the Territory’s relatively
unpopulated and remoteness, within the near-equatorial orbital zone south of
the equator, made it one of the most desirable places on Earth to launch a
satellite into geostationary orbit.

“As the USA launches it’s revitalised
Look East policy, the NT provides a stable and reliable platform from where
potential American satellites, space or drone war-fighting capabilities that
rely heavily on equatorial orbiting satellites, can be safely and securely
launched,” she said.

She said the boneyard could be used as a base
for remotely controlled drones and other types of unmanned aerial warfare.
“Questions that are just the tip of the iceberg in regional geostrategic
terms with no answers forthcoming,” she said.
A US Marine Corps general told News Ltd more than 1000 troops would be based
in Darwin next year.”

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2013/07/12/322774_ntnews.html

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