Deal reached for US to deploy radar in Western Australia

Deal reached for US to deploy radar in Western Australia

www.abc.net.au

The United States military will station a powerful radar and a space telescope in Australia as part of a major refocusing of priorities towards Asia.

The deal calls for the first deployment of a US Air Force C-band radar in the southern hemisphere, allowing the Americans to better track space debris.

It was built by the Pentagon's hi-tech research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), and Australia was chosen as an ideal spot for the cutting-edge device, officials said.

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Related News Links:
au.news.yahoo.com
www.stripes.com

(Check the other links i've provided for further details.)

And so the war on 'space debris' begins.

It gets better. There may be up to two and a half thousand Marines stationed in Australia, And The USAF could end up having shared air space over certain military bases. I'm glad that we'll have all these marines around to protect us from the 'space debris'.

Oh i forgot to mention the radar can monitor missile and satellite launches from China. How convenient!







www.abc.net.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


That's not good if the US is focussing their attentions on this side of the world. Next thing you know they'll be creating some false flag event in Aussie and then invading, war on terror (blahblah), take the country over and declare Martial Law - about sums up their modus operandi (hidden agenda).

Hopefully some onto it Aussie's go and destroy the radar machines or satellite dishes, like 3 of our Kiwi blokes did a few years back over here in New Zealand. Now those 3 blokes should be recognized as heroes, not charged with destroying property as they were. The 'system' does not like being stopped or interfered with.

The yanks spend well. Good for the economy. Well, ours, not theirs.

We can teach those marines how to fight properly. Send them up against some drop bears and crocks. WE do like the sailors, they spend heaps.

It all happened because our red headed twit fell all over herself when that Barrak guy came a'callin. She was just like a 15 year old school girlie. Come to think of it, will she ever grow up? Well, she is a bit embarrassing, still, we don't take polies too seriously down here. With what we are given to choose from how could we.

P

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


it seems odd that they would also move one from New Mexico for the same purpose ...why have two ??

Mr Smith, the Defence Minister, says the two countries have been discussing space issues at the AUSMIN meetings for several years. He says the radar "will add considerably to surveillance of space debris in our part of the world". "We'll set that up in the north west of WA at our Exmouth facility," he said. "We're also in discussions about the possibility of transferring from New Mexico to Australia a space surveillance telescope for use for the same purpose." The C-band is currently in Antigua at a US Air Force facility.

snoopyuk

Hey, why not? We've already got military support installations all over northwest and central Australia now. What's a radar or two?

The US was asked by about every country in that region, including Japan and India, to come there. Austrailia included, and offered up a bunk.

The reason being, is China is making noise and claiming some islands along a very traversed oil shipping route, is theirs. It is known as the SCS, south Chinese Sea dispute.

6 Trillion dollars in shipping passes through that sea. It is in the interest of every nation involved, that it remain open, internationally.

The lesser but no less important reason, is that it is much cheaper to launch ships from there, then to have to keep circling them around the globe.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


BTW, look at the light pollution map, and the reason a telescope is being moved there is pretty obvious.

Originally posted by kiwitina948
reply to post by Thecakeisalie

 

That's not good if the US is focussing their attentions on this side of the world. Next thing you know they'll be creating some false flag event in Aussie and then invading, war on terror (blahblah), take the country over and declare Martial Law - about sums up their modus operandi (hidden agenda).

modus operandi
method of operation

NOT "hidden agenda"

reply to post by snoopyuk


You put one in the Northern Hemisphere, and one in the Southern. That way you can monitor a lot more in space than if you just have one. And you put a telescope in Australia because there is so little light down there at night. Once you're out of the major metropolitan areas, it's almost pitch black on the light pollution maps. Perfect for a telescope.

"Tracking Space Debirs"...?

WTF? since when was that so dangerous and worthy of investing so much money?

More like - "Tracking those nasty evil incoming alien spaceships!".....

reply to post by Melbourne_Militia


Since we have a manned outpost up there now. Have you seen how much space debris there is in orbit? It really is going to end up looking like in Wall-E at the rate we're going. In 2009, there were 19,000 pieces of debris in orbit, from centimeter size, up to extremely large. Those were only the tracked pieces. It's estimated that there are currently 600,000 pieces of debris larger than 1cm in orbit.

Fan-f*****-tastic!, I joked the other day when Hillary Clinton was to arrived in Perth that we were about to be invaded by US/NATO forces, in the same vein as Lybia, Iraq et al. I do want to see Colin Barnett assassinated but not by the seppos, hes our problem and we should have the responsibility of dragging his decapitated corpse down Sterling Hwy.

In my reading it's a radio-telescope not a regular optical-telescope. In other words, a radar. Light pollution is irrelevant.

reply to post by C0bzz


No, the SST is a three mirror optical system with a wide field view. It's a very impressive telescope that can search an area the size of the US every few seconds.

DARPA’s ground-based Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) may soon head to Australia. An agreement reached this week with Australia’s Department of Defense will allow DARPA to take the 180,000 lb. three-mirror Mersenne-Schmidt telescope to Australia to track and catalogues space debris and objects unique to the space above that region of the world that could threaten DoD satellites. In the joint agreement, the U.S. and Australia have decided to work towards the establishment of the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) on Australian soil.

SST was developed to detect and track previously unseen small objects at the deep space altitudes associated with geosynchronous orbits (roughly 22,000 miles high). Begun in 2002, SST achieved many technical firsts and advances. Able to search an area in space the size of the United States in seconds, SST uses the first large curved charge coupled device focal array. It currently possesses the steepest primary mirror ever polished allowing the telescope to have the fastest optics of this aperture class. The system is capable of detecting a small laser pointer on top of New York City’s Empire State Building from a distance equal to Miami, Florida. These features combine to provide orders of magnitude improvements in field of view and scanning for deep space surveillance.

www.darpa.mil...

AFSST PDF

www.engadget.com...