MUOS Sparks a New Australian Flap Almost lost among the Pentagon's plans for broadband communications and intelligence from space platforms -- Transformational Satellite, Future Imagery Architecture, Integrated Overhead SIGINT Architecture -- has been a plan to improve voiceband military communications to 3G-type capabilities. The Mobile User Objective System, or MUOS, has been on the drawing boards as a geostationary satellite system for several years. But it raised a new flap in Australia this week when the U.S. Defense Department signed a deal to build a communication base for MUOS at the existing Defence Signals Directorate base in Geraldton, Australia, north of Perth.	Loring Wirbel Communications Editor
US space bases are a touchy subject in Australia. A massive intelligence base at Pine Gap, in the outback near Alice Springs, sparked a furor that eventually caused the quasi-legal removal of Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam in November 1975. The story on how this base was used by the US CIA and NSA became the basis for the popular book and movie, The Falcon and the Snowman. In the 30 years hence, Pine Gap has continued to raise controversy, both because of the global protests over the NSA Echelon intelligence system, and because of Pine Gap's assumption of some missile-defense duties. In several locations around the globe, the Pentagon has incurred the wrath of locals by combining functions of space-based intelligence, space-based communications, and "Star Wars" missile defense at single bases. MUOS might have avoided the problem by keeping to its mobile 3G mission, since the network is largely unclassified. But the desire to share existing real estate could end up hurting the Pentagon. Defence Signals Directorate is Australia's equivalent to the NSA, and New Zealand author Nicky Hager already dug up some dirt about the Geraldton base in his 1998 book on Echelon, Secret Power. By electing to put a MUOS base at Geraldton, the U.S. is working with tainted real estate, and risking stirring up a hornet's nest similar to the Pine Gap furor. Posted by Loring Wirbel on Feb 15, 2007 11:36 AM in Communications

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