Carrier for MX tests?

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 8

Carrier for MX tests?

PA Wellington The United States may use an aircraft carrier for MX missile testing in the Tasman Sea if Australia cancels permission for support facilities, according to an American peace researcher. The researcher, Peter Hayes, of Massachusetts, said in a telephone interview from the United States with the “Dominion” newspaper that Congress and Defence Department sources had disclosed that an Australian reversal would not foreclose all United States options. The United States had apparently already invested big sums installing monitoring equipment on the seafloor and it could decide to redeploy an aircraft carrier

to do the long-range MX missile tests.

However, Mr Hayes said political responses from Australia and New Zealand could affect any American plans unilaterally to test the missile in international waters.

If there was “clear and strong revulsion” from Australia and New Zealand, the United States might “look twice before destabilising the alliance further,” he said.

State Department officials were described by *Mr Hayes as “close to paranoid” on the issue and he said there did not appear to be any coherent response yet. He believed carrier aircraft could be used as substitutes for the aircraft usually used to monitor the missile tests.

SH3 Sea King helicopters could be used to drop sonar buoys instead of the PC3 Orion. A variety of reconnaissance, communications, and early warning aircraft — Vigilante, Prowler, and Hawkeye — could be used to receive the ultra and very high frequency transmissions from re-entry vehicles.

Mr Hayes said the main reason for the MX tests was to study its 1300 km capability. However, the dangerous aspect was the tests’ use to change perceptions that a nuclear war could be fought and won. It also contributed to the arms race rather than arms control.

The Australian Opposition leader, Mr Andrew Peacock, said a simple head count in the Australian Labour Party caucus had caused the most

significant realignment in Australia’s relations with the United States since World War 11. Mr Peacock said since the war Australia’s relationship with the United States and its obligations under the A.N.Z.U.S. Treaty had been regarded by both A.L.P. and Liberal Governments as fundamental.

“Mr Hawke, without any assessment of what is in the national interest, but rather a simple head count in the caucus, has changed all that. That to me is weakness,” said Mr Peacock. His comment was in response to Mr Hawke’s apparent decision to withdraw his Government’s promise of co-operation in the monitoring of American MX nuclear missile tests.