Pine Gap in the NT could become a nuclear target for America’s enemies if international tensions continue to rise, a leading defence strategist has warned.

The highly secretive Pine Gap US military base near Alice Springs serves as a key hub for US global intelligence interception. It is also utilized for satellite surveillance operations for military and nuclear missile threats in the region.

The installation is a prospective priority target for a missile strike by US enemies in the case of a major conflict, says Professor Paul Dibb, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University and former director of Australia’s Joint Intelligence Organisation.

Prof Dibb, in a paper released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute last week, stated that Pine Gap is a “fundamentally important element” in US warfare and deterrence of conflict and warned that Australia should not consider itself far removed from conflicts in Asia and Europe.

“We need to plan on the basis that Pine Gap continues to be a nuclear target, and not only for Russia. If China attacks Taiwan, Pine Gap is likely to be heavily involved,” Prof Dibb said.

The secretive US-Australian military installation is also an isolated ground station for early warning satellites in the Defence Support Program and space-based infra-red satellite system. It also serves as a command, control, downlink, and processing facility for the US signals intelligence satellites in geostationary orbit.

“The risk of nuclear war is now higher than at any time since the Cold War. There’s a real risk that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could escalate to a wider major war in Europe, and perhaps the use of nuclear weapons,” Prof Dibb said.

Prof Dibb said allegiances on the international stage could put Australia in the line of fire of nuclear weapons.

“The current Russian invasion of Ukraine carried potential global nuclear consequences, with the possibility of a defeated and humiliated Russia pushed closer to China in a grand coalition … united not by ideology but by complementary grievances,” he told The Guardian.

“Once we enter the slippery slope of even limited nuclear exchanges, the end result will be escalation to mutual annihilation – something about which both Putin and Xi Jinping may need reminding.”

A 1980 joint Office of National Assessments and Joint Intelligence Organisation study – kept under Top Secret seal until declassified in 2012 – stated the following on the possibility of a nuclear war and Pine Gap as a potential target:

“In the early and uncertain stages of a developing nuclear war involving the use of strategic (i.e.inter-continental) nuclear weapons, both sides might still consider that nuclear escalation could be contained and controlled. In this case, even though strategic nuclear weapons had begun to be used to a limited degree, each superpower could see reciprocal advantages to the retention of facilities such as the North West cape, Pine Gap and Nurrungar. We cannot, however, discount the possibility, given Soviet war-fighting doctrine – which places a high value on pre-emption – that the US facilities in Australia might be targeted relatively early in a strategic nuclear war.”

In 2000, the Nurrungar facility was closed and replaced by the installation at Pine Gap.

In the 1980s, the North West Cape facility was no longer required for US purposes after the US Navy swapped its Polaris missile submarines with larger subs which can carry missiles with much greater range.