Longbank considered still an ‘involvement’

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32521, 3 February 1971, Page 1

Longbank considered still an ‘involvement’

The Longbank Committee, which combines groups objecting to the United States Air Force research unit at Woodbourne, has reaffirmed its opposition to what it says is New Zealand’s unwitting involvement with a system supporting America’s “world-wide nuclear warfare capability.”

A spokesman for the committee, Mr Owen Wilkes, said in Christchurch yesterday: “We are quite sure that the network of which Longbank is a part is the operational system that developed out of research projects of the early 1960 s under the code names Project V.E.LA., Project Defender, the Advanced Research Projects Agency order 183, Project Rand and others.” The committee, he said, was certain that the network of bases was gathering information on Chinese and French nuclear tests and could detemine, in the event

of war, whether American warheads were exploding on target. ■ The equipment and information gathered at Longbank was identical with descriptions in publications sponsored by the U.S.A.F. of projects concerned with detecting nuclear explosions and with the development of over-the-horizon radar for missile detection. “Some success”

“The committee feels that its efforts have met with some success in that the Government, on Saturday, lifted the shroud of secrecy, even if only briefly, when it allowed nine reporters and three students within the base,” said Mr Wilkes. “However, our objections to the presence of this base are still valid since, despite Saturday’s brief peep, Longbank is still a secret base; and what we learned only confirmed our previous claim that its function is closely related to America’s nuclear capability.” The committee felt that the presence of “truck-loads of police and hundreds of military guards, helicopter patrols and vehicles and individuals being shadowed” showed that secrecy was even more thorough than was previously thought. Mr Wilkes said: “Our examination means that some of the fanciful theories of the past—interrogating spy satellites, submarine communication, and so on—can now be confidently abandoned. “What we saw inside more or less confirmed what we had already deduced from a study of the antennas outside. The three items of receiving equipment we were shown all measure what Sir Keith Holyoake calls ‘aerospace disturbances and their effect on radio communications.’ “The sferics receiver (not

‘spherics’ as printed in many newspapers) appeared to be the most important piece of equipment. Sferics are a form of static resulting from such natural disturbances as thunderstorms and, as the base commander admitted, nuclear explosions.” Clear sky The very low frequency monitor listened to signals from military transmitters round the world, said Mr Wilkes; nuclear explosions, as well as solar flares and sun spots, caused changes in the ionosphere, measured by this equipment. “The photometer is, according to Colonel Bain, the base commander, the equipment responsible for Blenheim’s being chosen as the site for Longbank. The clear sky is ideal for the observation of aurora and air-glow—-natural and man-made.

“The brightest aurora yet seen in New Zealand was caused by an American nuclear explosion, codenamed ‘Starfish,’ in 1962,” he said. “This research certainly has relevance to radio communications and similar research is being done all over the world by universities and such bodies and the D.S.I.R. “Most U.S.A.F. communications research is available in unclassified N.A.T.O. publications and is carried out by the U.S.A.F. Geophysics Research Directorate and the U.S.A.F. Electronics Command.

“Project Longbank, however, was described by Colonel Bain as Detachment 430 of the U.S.A.F. Headquarters Command and all its data, he said, is sent by Telex directly to this command. This strongly suggests that Longbank’s output is intelligence data, not scientific data, and that Longbank is an operational unit rather than a research one.”