Why There's a CIA Base in the Center of Australia

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Special thanks to MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3

Sources listed below:

[somethinglikethat]

As an Australian I would like to express my deepest sympathy to any American who had the misfortune to be stationed in the outback.

[TheRealMjbk]

Funny story about the Alice Springs base. I was in the outback to see Uluru and our guide was like to me (the only American) that there was a secret US base near Alice Springs (where he lived), and he could tell who worked there because they’d always say they work in hospitality (which there is none in Alice Springs). So anyway, after he told me that I didn’t believe him as I thought he was pulling my leg. Turns out, after I told my grandfather about this he goes and says “yeah I used to do work at a facility near Alice Springs, did you visit there?”, and I was pretty shocked to hear that. Not even my mom knew her dad did work in Australia. He didn’t tell me anything they do there, basically what you hear is from people who don’t know much, because the people who do know what’s going on would never tell since that pool is so small.

[peterlovett]

I spent a few years flying general aviation aircraft out of Alice Springs. There was a prohibited zone around the base (I think it was 2.5 nautical miles radius and 15, 000' over the top) and it was a game to see how close you could go without infringing the zone. There are about 600 US citizens working at the base, mostly software engineers on 3 year contracts; they can bring their US registered vehicles with them. They are under very strict instructions not to cause any disturbances or disruptions in Alice Springs or it is an immediate return to the US. There is a first class baseball diamond in Alice Springs courtesy of the US residents and the present airport owes its existence to the base as the previous airport (which is still there) was not long enough to take the military jets when the base was being constructed (the altitude above sea level is just under 2, 000' and mid-summer temps. often exceeds 45 deg. C which absolutely wrecks takeoff performance for a jet) so they lengthened one of the runways which is the one jets use today. Every Tuesday a US military jet flies in with supplies for the base (it's all wrapped in plastic sheeting so you can't see what's on the pallets but the joke was that it was Hershey Bars and real Coke). The base is not quite located on the geographic centre of Australia, that is few hundred kilometres further east and it is plainly to be seen on Google Earth a few kilometres to the south west of Alice Springs. While it is claimed it is a joint US/Australian base and the deputy commander is an Australian, the only other Australians working there are maintenance staff, visible security (there is supposedly a Marine detachment there but I never saw any evidence) and power and water supply staff.

[Viking-cz]

Its so top secret that we know the exact longitude and latitude of the base, the shape, the amount of buildings, its purpose, when it was built, why it was built, who runs it, and not to mention its "Official codename 'RAINFALL'"

[mopippenger]

While geostationary orbits are a type of geosynchronous orbit, you might want to specify that the type that stays fixed above a point is geostationary while most geosynchronous orbits are at an angle to the equator and therefore return to the same locations every day but move north and south relative to the equator

[Goodstahh]

I've lived in Alice for almost 10 years now, there's so many running jokes and theories behind the base. One of the wilder ones is a theory that it's for refuelling submarines that use a secret tunnel that's supposedly near Darwin. If you work there, you're either a chef, gardener or janitor.

Literally the only interesting part of the town is the base, never gets boring theorizing about it.

[rastan]

It’s pretty common knowledge here in Australia.
Commercial flights fly near it and you can see it from the air.

[schoolForAnts]

The most surprising take away- there’s a lot more people in North Korea than I previously thought.

[beardymcbeardface]

It's amazing how many people in the comments are trying to refute the "secret" aspect of the Pine Gap base, on the basis that every man and his dog knows it exists.

The existence of the base is not the secret, what goes on there is the secret.

[MrDlt]

I did a special assignment there in the 90s while in the U.S. Air Force. All of the really cool things you think about when you want to visit Oz pretty much dont exist in Alice Springs. Its a world unto itself. But I grew up in rural East Texas, so the isolation didnt affect me as much as someone who grew up in Queens or L.A. Alice is a cool town though, and the people were pretty friendly. I can only imagine its a 1000 percent better with Internet access. My replacement arrived a few days before I left, thinking he was just going to drive to Sydney in 3 or 4 hours. This was pre-Internet, so unless you bought an Atlas, you wouldnt necessarily know how deep in BFE you were.

[Numendil_The_First]

As an Australian I can say it’s kind of like our version of area 51

[darylcheshire]

In the late ‘80s it was not possible for Australians to see the large US base at Exmouth, but the cash stapped Soviet Union started selling aerial photographs and The Bulletin magazine acquired some aerial photographs of the Exmouth base and published them.
The cover illustration had a Russian officer showing an aerial photo with a pointer as if he was delivering a briefing.

[NoImDirtyDan]

My physics professor was doing gamma ray research for UCR near Alice Springs and needed an atomic clock set. Only atomic clock available to set his was at Pine Gap. He got in contact with them somehow and they told him to leave it on the dirt road and come back later and it will be set. Few hours later it was sitting on the dirt road set with no one in sight.

[economath]

The location, being toward the middle of the Australian tectonic plate, also means it's a good, stable location for seismological measurement, as it is far from major seismic fault lines; the goal of which is to pinpoint earthquakes caused by banned underground nuclear weapons tests. And since that involves intel about nukes, you can expect such a facility to be equally well-guarded.

[tonymccarthy]

When I was relocating to a remote weather station named Giles, which was located about 850km to the WSW of Alice Springs, (just avcross the WA border) we had to fly just to the S of Pine Gap. My colleague was able to get some amazing photos of the base. Interesting.

[andyturbo]

As a previous SIGINT analyst there (For DSD, now known as ASD) There is so much wrong with this information unfortunately. Just briefly, it is not a US base which is a big misconception.

It's a Joint Defense Facility staffed and equally by both the US Government and Australian government.

You mentioned personnel from the CIA, NSA and NRO which is correct. There roughly equal the ammount of Australian Intelligence personnel from:
ASD (Australian Signals Directorate)
AGO (Australian Geospatial Intelligence
Organization)
D.I.O Defense Intelligence Organization
and a few from ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service)

The facility is absolutely critical in th collection of SIGINT, ELINT, GEOINT and FISINT across all of Asia, Russia and most of the middle east.

The current chief of the facility is a CIA director and the 2IC (acting chief of facility when the COF is away) Is an Australian director from ASD.

It is completely transparent and both countries share every bit of Intelligence gathered from the facility.

[cracklingvoice]

I was an Army intelligence analyst, had heard of the facility at Alice Springs. Never heard what they did there, but it was a prestigious assignment that a few of my colleagues wanted to get but never did.

[casbot]

I heard about Pine Gap when I was a small child, it's *very well known* in Australia.
And for a while it was very controversial.

[JoeyJoJoJrShabbado]

I live relatively near to Pine Gap, place gives me the creeps day and night and I can’t explain why.

[shecravesit]

The names of many CIA "projects" throughout history always fascinate me... "Project Rainfall" in the middle of the Australian desert. Lol. Nice