A high-tech facility is being built on Western Australia's remote north-west coast under AUKUS efforts to improve "deep-space object tracking", as militaries across the world focus on future warfare involving satellites.
The site near Exmouth is the location for a new ground-based radar in the American-led Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) program, with construction work well underway.
Sources with knowledge of the yet-to-be-completed West Australian facility say it covers a vast area of land and will be an important capability alongside a suite of other existing international sensors, including from the commercial sector.
The ABC has confirmed Australia's contribution to the DARC program is estimated to be almost $2 billion over more than 20 years, to operate and sustain the WA site.
In February last year, American defence company Northrop Grumman was awarded a $510 million contract by the US Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command (SSC) to develop, test and deliver the DARC system for space domain awareness.
The DARC program was begun in 2017 by the US Air Force, which has already spent $2.25 billion on the "Space Fence" surveillance radar network to track objects in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Under DARC, objects in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) will be tracked, and it will augment existing sensor facilities such as the Space Fence site in the Marshall Islands, as well as the proliferation of commercial sensors entering the market from numerous providers.
Over the weekend 2-3 December 2023, AUKUS defence ministers confirmed they were "accelerating capabilities that provide trilateral partners with advanced technology to identify emerging threats in space".
"AUKUS played a critical role in advancing trilateral collaboration on the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability program," Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a joint statement with his US and UK counterparts Lloyd Austin and Grant Shapps.
According to the statement, DARC will "provide 24-hour continuous, all-weather global coverage to detect, track, and identify objects in deep space and increase space domain awareness".
"This capability will contribute to the security, safety, and responsible use of space. Sites will be in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia."
While the program is done in the name of ensuring “responsible use of space,” such facilities would be indispensable in the targeting of Chinese surveillance, communication and military satellites in the event of war.
Shapps told the media that the facilities would be able to detect, identify and track “threats” in space up to 36,000km away. “[It will be] more sensitive, more accurate, more powerful and agile than anything that has gone before, giving us the ability to see beyond the clouds,” he said.
Space is considered an increasingly contested military domain, where geopolitical tensions are playing out as particularly Russia and China host ever-more-advanced capabilities in orbit.
AUKUS partners expect the first radar site at Exmouth to be operational in 2026, with the other locations in the United States and United Kingdom to also be in service by the end of the decade.
The first evidence of Australia's involvement in the DARC program emerged at a US congressional hearing earlier this year, although the precise cost and size of the Exmouth facility are not yet publicly known, or how many ADF personnel will work there.
Appearing at the US Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces in May, the Assistant Secretary of the US Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration Frank Calvelli, and General David D Thompson from the USSF revealed Australia's role.
"We are adding three new radar sites (United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom) with the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability to enhance our deep-space object tracking," they said in a written submission.
In March last year the head of the USSF, General John W "Jay" Raymond, flew into the Western Australian town of Exmouth with US Consul David Gainer to inspect space cooperation efforts between both nations firsthand.
"The United States continues to be impressed by Western Australia's space capabilities, including our multiple partnerships in Exmouth where Americans and Australians work side by side to benefit our people and our region," Mr Gainer said at the time.
But not everyone has been as quick to celebrate the investment in the region.
Protect Ningaloo director Paul Gamblin said more information was needed to assess whether there were any environmental concerns for the project.
"Defence is operating in this environment that is incredibly fragile and already showing quite significant pressure from contemporary human use," he said.
"Its obligation is to manage down its environmental impact while achieving its own goals.
"Hearing about this new project means the obligation on it is even greater and at the very least we would expect it to confirm its support in conservation of Exmouth Gulf, which the WA government has identified as being of global importance."
It did not take long for Australia to feature prominently in the strategic thinking of the Pentagon as an ideal site for Washington’s tilt at imperial space supremacy. “When you look at a place like Australia as a landmass, you have a lot of opportunity to contribute to that space picture,” Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, head of US Space Forces Indo-Pacific, told Breaking Defense in April this year. “The Australians, the defense Space Command folks and the acquisition arms, they absolutely understand that, so they’re moving aggressively to embrace some of these opportunities and bring systems like DARC […] here on the continent.”
Mastalir is earnestly refreshing in a way no Australian military official or politician ever is on why they are loaning tracts of land to the US war machine. For one thing, he is clear who Washington’s targets are, and why Australia’s surrogacy is indispensable to focusing on them. He considers Russia “a dominant space power” which lost its edge during the Ukraine War. But it is “China’s use of space to complete the kill chain necessary to generate long-range precision strikes against the maritime and air components scheme of manoeuvre. That’s what concerns me the most.” The US had to “have the ability to deny China in this situation, as a potential adversary”.
As a vassal’s privilege of hosting the site, the Australian Commonwealth will be paying the US government some A$2 billion over 20 years to operate and sustain it. Irrelevantly, almost comically so, Australia’s own Defence Minister, Richard Marles could actually call this effort one of “trilateral collaboration” regarding the DARC program. But no figures have been offered on the Exmouth radar site, be it in terms of Australian personnel, size or cost.
Scandalously – at least for Australia’s hoodwinked citizens – the revelation that Canberra was involved in this US imperial stab at space dominance only arose in a US Congressional hearing. In May, Frank Calvelli, Assistant Secretary of the US Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, told the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that three new radar sites with a DARC capability would be built in the US, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Australian news outlets have shown little to no inclination in reporting these efforts, leaving it to such fora as Inside Defense and Global Security to reveal that DARC sites will feature a prominent Australian role. At least the ABC was alert enough to pick up on remarks made by the USSF General John W. “Jay” Raymond on his visit to Exmouth in May 2022 on the site’s potential in “space cooperation”. “The United States continues to be impressed by Western Australia’s space capabilities, including our multiplate partnerships at Exmouth where Americans work side by side to benefit our people and our region.”
In broader discussions about Australia’s footnoted, spectral sovereignty, it is worth considering how such pro-Washington mouthpieces as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) are becoming increasingly frank on the matter. More pieces are enthusiastically wishing away any pretence of equal cooperation or collaboration between satellite states and the US imperium.
In a piece authored by Nishank Motwani of the Harvard Kennedy School and published by APSI’s The Strategist in October, we receive a sharp, candid assessment: “Because of the power imbalance between the US and Australia, some American analysts view Australia’s sovereignty as ‘relative and negotiable’ when it comes to safeguarding American strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.” Certainly relative, and already negotiated away in a manner verging on treason.
And don't think for one moment that this is actually only about defence of either Australian or US citizenry. While on the one hand it's about promoting US private investor interests in the Indo-Pacific region, it's also clearly the result of the military industrial complex (MIC) and its private contractors (and their "Big Three" investors) who have a stranglehold on Department of Defense (DOD) spending through their domination of strategic policy think tanks, lobbyists and straight out monetary contributions to politicians' re-elections.
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