Joint Defense Facility Nurrungar

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A member of the United States Air Force conducts maintenance at Nurrungar in December 1996
A member of the United States Air Force conducts maintenance at Nurrungar in December 1996

Joint Defence Facility Nurrungar (JDFN), located on the edge of Island Lagoon, approximately 15 km south of Woomera, South Australia was a facility operated jointly by the Australian Department of Defence and the United States Air Force from 1969 through 1999. Its official area of emphasis was space-based surveillance, in particular the early detection of missile launches and nuclear detonations using U.S. Defense Support Program satellites in geostationary orbits. The name Nurrungar derives from an aboriginal term meaning "listen".

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[edit] Cold War uses

During the Cold War the site was crucially important to America's defenses, being at the time the only facility for providing "launch on warning" surveillance of possible ICBM launches.[citation needed] Not surprisingly, it was also regarded as one of the Soviets' top ten targets in the event that such an attack would actually take place.[citation needed]

Politically it was both a symbol of U.S.-Australian relations, and highly controversial; this was mainly due to fears that the site could prompt a nuclear attack on Australian soil, and antipathy towards the US alliance amongst the Australian political left.[1] Political demonstrations were staged at the facility in 1989, 1991 and 1993. [2] Despite allegations to the contrary, Australian military personnel were fully integrated into the site's operations.[3] The public in general was not even aware of its existence until November of 1970, a full year after it had been in operation (its precise location did not leak out until sometime later.)

[edit] Vietnam War

Leaked Department of Defence documents have revealed that satellites controlled by the Pine Gap and Nurrungar facilities were used to pinpoint targets for bombings in Cambodia.[4]

[edit] Persian Gulf War

During the Persian Gulf War it managed to score a few positive publicity notes for detecting early launches of Iraqi Scud missile attacks; years later, a USAF assessment would emerge revealing that in fact oversights at the bases were responsible for one of the worst disasters for Coalition forces during the war, on February 26, 1991 when an Iraqi Scud missile broke up above Dhahran and fell into a warehouse housing U.S. soldiers, killing 28 and injuring more than 100.

The report found that ground operators at Nurrungar played a part in the tragedy, which the Air Force described as a "worst case combination of events"; these were in turn compounded by failures in the MIM-104 Patriot intercept system deployed near the Dhahran base itself.[citation needed]

[edit] ECHELON

It was also one of the facilities most widely suspected as belonging to the so-called ECHELON network of listening stations devoted to non-military electronic communications surveillance.[citation needed]

[edit] Decommissioned in 1999

After September, 1999 its operations were moved to the Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, and ownership of the premises were transferred to the Village of Woomera.

Since then the village has been seeking a new tenant for the premises; with "remaining buildings offer a combined floor space of over 5,000 square metres, and could be refurbished to support activities that take advantage of the geographic and physical attributes. The site is surrounded by a high security perimeter fence and includes a large radome structure."[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Catley, Bob and Mosler, David: America and Americans in Australia, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998, pp. 36-37
  2. ^ History of the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition
  3. ^ Nurrungar History
  4. ^ John Pilger, 'The Coup', in 'A Secret Country', 1989
  5. ^ Nurrungar brochure site on the Woomera web site.

Coordinates: 31.323809° S 136.776942° E