Tracking UFOs by Satellite
By Simon Harvey-Wilson

For most of the cold war the superpowers' ground and satellite
early warning systems would have needed to be able to track UFOs
in order to distinguish them from nuclear missiles. It would
have been in neither side's interests to start World War III
because for example NATO mistook a flight of five UFOs flying
westwards from Russia for the first salvo of a nuclear strike
against the West. Detailed information on these early warning
systems remains classified despite the end of the cold war. This
may be one reason why Western nations have been reluctant to
acknowledge the reality of UFOs. If they did admit their
existence, the scientific community and those who had swallowed
the 'They don't exist' line might demand to see the radar
evidence. 

But how could the Pentagon provide such proof and
still keep the extraordinary capabilities of such surveillance
infrastructure secret? Yet without providing such evidence their
claims would be no more convincing than those of the UFO
community who likewise cannot produce any radar tapes. The
worldwide amateur UFO research community probably does not own a
single radar set, air traffic control computer, jet fighter, or
satellite between them. All such hardware is in the hands of
governments who so far have refused to use them to settle the
UFO question.

I believe that Western governments would rather that the public
knew as little as possible about their tracking systems, firstly
for national security reasons and secondly because, once the
public knew how extensive and sophisticated they were, they
would realise that they were almost certainly capable of proving
whether UFOs exist or not within little more than twenty-four
hours. Instead we are being asked to believe that such
governments have apparently discovered nothing conclusive in
this field for fifty years. Where are these early warning
systems, what can they do and where does information about them
come from? The first thing to point out is that all the
information in this article comes from open sources. Anyone can
look it up in the library or on the Internet, provided you know
where to look. Writers and scholars who specialise in this
subject call it 'Strategic Studies'. My first source is a book
called An Illustrated Guide To Space Warfare by David Hobbs, who
was a researcher at Aberdeen University's Centre for Defence
Studies. Three other sources are The Ties That Bind:
Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries by Jeffrey
T. Richelson & Desmond Ball; Pine Gap by Des Ball; and A Base
For Debate: The US Satellite Station at Nurrungar also by Des
Ball. Professor Desmond Ball has been the head of the Strategic
and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National
University, and Dr Richelson has been a consultant and Senior
Fellow at the National Security Archive in the USA. I assume
therefore that they know what they are talking about. It should
also be emphasised that none of these books mentions UFOs.

But why, you might ask, haven't these writers had their knuckles
rapped for releasing classified information? As far as I can
gather the answer is because all the information they discuss is
derived from open sources and is either out of date or
sufficiently vague so as not to be of any threat to national
security. Nevertheless, out of date information is still
relevant to the UFO debate. If it can be shown that the world's
superpowers had the equipment to track and therefore research
UFOs thirty or more years ago, then it is most unlikely that
today's equipment is any less capable, which suggests that they
have been concealing their knowledge of the UFO phenomenon for
all that time. How would you track UFOs if you had an almost
unlimited budget? We know that some UFOs can be picked up by
radar. There are numerous reports available which attest to
that. Most civilian airport radars have a limited range and it
is not the job of civilian air traffic controllers to keep a
look out for UFOs. Thankfully they devote their time to stopping
passenger jets from crashing into each other, and most of us
would prefer that they kept doing precisely that. However
military radar plays a different role. In theory any nation's
air force is supposed to be interested in identifying everything
that flies into its air space in case it turns out to be
hostile. Despite government protestations to the contrary, this
would definitely include UFOs.

BALLISTIC MISSILE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM.

The United States BMEWS system is vast, complex, and has a
degree of redundancy built into it so that, if one part fails or
is damaged, another part can take over. Let us deal with the
ground-based systems first. Nuclear weapons can be fired from
submarines, from underground silos, from the air, and perhaps
even from space. To protect the North American continent, the
USA and Canada cooperate in maintaining a huge radar shield over
their combined land mass which can detect incoming missiles or
craft from any direction. Because land-based missiles from the
old USSR would have probably come by the shortest route, which
is over the North Pole, this early warning system, now called
the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), is
especially strong in that direction. The NORAD operations centre
is inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs in the Rocky
Mountains. NORAD is answerable both to the Canadian Prime
Minister and the US President.

To complete the radar 
shield there are also huge radar beams facing West, South and
East from the North American coast, so that nothing that is
detectable by radar can fly into Canada or the USA from any
direction without tripping this system. This means that any
radar-detectable UFO that is seen by the public anywhere within
Canada or the USA must fall into one of these four categories.

It must have been detected by the radar system as it flew past
the coastline, or in from space, or It must have somehow got
through the system undetected by using stealth,
inter-dimensional travel or something of that nature, or It must
have come from an underground or underwater alien base located
within Canada or the USA, or It must be a craft owned by either
the US or Canadian government or a member of the public such as
a well financed inventor. This may be one reason why Western air
forces these days do not seem very interested in UFO reports
from the public. They probably already have all the details they
need on a tracking computer somewhere. The US military also has
its own missile tracking system separate from its NORAD
cooperation with Canada. This system extends into space and
around the planet.

The US Air Force Space Command runs something called
SPACETRACK which provides data on satellites and missiles
from its network of sensors around the world, including NASA's
tracking systems. SPACETRACK also gets information from the US
Navy Space Surveillance System (NAVSPASUR) which operates a line
of radar stations running from Georgia to California that
transmit a fan-shaped radar beam into space to a height of about
fourteen thousand kilometres. This system can detect and
calculate the orbital characteristics of any satellite or other
object breaking the beam. (Hobbs, p.76) SPACETRACK is also
linked to something called the Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep
Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) which consists of a
world-wide network of 100 centimetre telescopes linked to
low-light-level television cameras which are powerful enough to
provide real-time pictures of an object as small as a football
in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the ground.

By now these cameras may be even more sensitive and include
infra-red sensors. I assume that this means that, if a UFO or
mother-ship is detected by radar somewhere in orbit around the
planet, one of the GEODSS telescopes somewhere on the planet can
be asked to film it within minutes. There are GEODSS telescopes
in New Mexico, South Korea, Hawaii, Diego Garcia in the Indian
Ocean, Portugal (Hobbs, p.80) and probably several other places.
This would suggest that someone within the US
military-intelligence community by now has a whole video library
of state-of-the-art UFO footage.

To show how coordinated the US military's early warning systems
are, it is interesting to read a 19th August 1998 press release from the
US Air Force News Service which detailed the retirement of General
Howell M. Estes III after thirty-three years in the US Air Force. Before
his retirement General Estes simultaneously held three positions. He
was the commander in chief of NORAD (CINCNORAD) which meant that
he "was responsible for the air sovereignty of the United States
and Canada, as well as providing tactical warning and attack
assessment." He was also the commander in chief of US Space
Command (USCINCSPACE) which meant that "he commanded the unified
command responsible for directing space control and support
operations." And finally, he was commander of US Air Force Space
Command (COMAFSPC). In that job "he directed satellite control,
warning, space launch and ballistic missile operations through a
worldwide network of support facilities and bases."

General Estes it seems had a very responsible position, but the press
release neglected to say whether tracking UFOs was also a part
of his job brief. His replacement is General Richard B. Myers.
The US early warning system is not limited to the North American
continent. They have installations on friendly territory around
the planet, occasionally in places one has never heard of. Some
of them have remarkable capabilities, for example the Cobra Dane
radar system, located on the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, "is
sensitive enough to detect a grapefruit-sized metallic object at
a distance in excess of 2,200 miles [3,500km]. In its tracking
mode it can simultaneously handle up to 200 objects at ranges of
up to about 1,250 miles [2,000km]." (Hobbs, p.76) I wonder how
many UFOs they have tracked over the last twenty-five years and
who got to look at the radar tapes. There is little point in
having such marvellous technology if an intelligence analyst
somewhere does not get to see the data it produces.

What evidence is there that such US radar systems are actually
used to track UFOs? In an article called 'The Roswell Incident:
Fragments of Evidence' by Linda Moulton Howe she quotes an
anonymous informant's recollections of what his grandfather, who
claimed to have been on the Roswell crash retrieval team in
1947, had told him about the military's concern about UFOs
entering US airspace. The grandfather claimed they had
"recommended to the President that a Space Program be set into
motion and that a system of satellites be placed into orbit by
1957, and this satellite system be patched into the DEW Line
system (Distant Early Warning radar stations at 70th parallel
across North America) which later became NORAD (North America
Radar Defence).

Grandad stated that it was his opinion that NORAD was
formed not only to track possible ICBMs from hostile
nations, but as an established detection system for UFO craft."
Although this claim does not constitute concrete evidence, it
would be very puzzling, if not irresponsible, if the US military
was not doing their best to track UFOs. After all, it's not as
if they are short of (taxpayers') money. Further evidence that
NORAD may be involved in tracking UFOs is to be found in an
article called The 'Colorado Connection' by Graham Conway in
Flying Saucer Review. Conway gives several examples of Canadian
residents who had rung their local air force base to report
seeing a UFO, only to find themselves patched through to someone
in NORAD, Colorado who took the details.

SATELLITE SYSTEMS.

So far we have only discussed ground-based tracking systems
which are limited by their inability to see beyond the horizon,
although over-the-horizon radar can see further. However nothing
compares to the view from space. In my opinion using satellites
to detect and/or track UFOs would be the most cost-effective
method because such systems are already paid for, are already
there watching out for nuclear missiles, and are already
classified. Any extra work they did would go unnoticed. But
their most important advantage is that satellites can see a huge
area of the planet at one time. Most surveillance, communication
and weather satellites are 'parked' in what is called
geosynchronous or geostationary orbit.

This means that the speed at which they naturally orbit the
planet matches exactly the speed at which the planet rotates.
That means that, when seen through a telescope from the ground,
the satellite appears to be stationary. This illusion occurs because
the ground that the viewer is standing on is actually moving at the
same speed as the satellite. Therefore, if you want your surveillance
satellite to monitor a particular area of the planet you just
park it in a geostationary orbit above your target area, and it
effectively just sits there looking down. One of the
disadvantages of this system is that everyone else who can
afford it is doing the same thing. The geostationary orbit above
the equator is by now so crowded with satellites that they will
soon have to install parking meters up there. Another
disadvantage is that geostationary orbit is about 36,000
kilometres above the ground which means that getting a clear
picture isn't easy. Add that to the fact that the ground beneath
the satellite may be covered by clouds, and spends half the day
in darkness as the planet revolves, and one begins to see why
the spy satellite business is so expensive. The field of view or
'footprint' of a geostationary surveillance satellite covers an
enormous area of the planet. For example a satellite parked over
the equator near Singapore would be able to see a circle beneath
it that extended from above the Arctic circle in the north to
below the Antarctic circle in the south and from a line roughly
joining Cairo to Moscow to the west to well past New Zealand to
the east. This is a vast area that includes most of Russia, the
whole of Asia, the Indian Ocean and Australia. With this kind of
coverage one only needs to maintain three such satellites evenly
spaced around the equator to be able to view the entire planet
except the North and South poles. To function effectively, a
surveillance satellite must transmit the data it has recorded to
a receiving station on the ground that is in line of sight
beneath it, because electromagnetic radiation will only go in
straight lines. That is why the receiving stations for any
geostationary satellites that are looking at Russia, Iraq,
Pakistan, India or China must be on the same side of the planet
as those countries. And from a geopolitical perspective, the
most suitable place to locate such satellite bases is in
Australia.

PINE GAP.

There are two US satellite bases in Australia that are known to
the public: the first is called Pine Gap and is located near
Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, while the second,
called Nurrungar, is in South Australia, five hundred kilometres
north-west of Adelaide. There exist several conspiracy theories
about these bases, especially Pine Gap, that are beyond the
scope of this article. However it should be pointed out that UFO
researchers who publish conspiracy theories about these bases
who have not read the previously mentioned well documented books
about them are not doing very much for their credibility.
Admittedly these books do not mention UFOs, but they are still
important starting points for serious research. According to
Professor Ball the satellites that report down to Pine Gap are
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) ones. SIGINT can be broken up into
Communications Intelligence (COMINT), "the interception of
foreign communications transmitted by radio or other
electromagnetic means", and Electronic Intelligence (ELINT)
which "consists of information derived from monitoring foreign
non-communications electromagnetic radiation". ELINT can further
be broken up into Telemetry Intelligence (TELINT) which is
"concerned with monitoring of foreign telemetry signals such as
those produced in missile tests" and Radar Intelligence (RADINT)
"which involves the monitoring of foreign radar emissions."
(Ball, 1988, p.2) SIGINT satellites also listen to foreign
satellite communications. More details of what all this means
are in Ball's book Pine Gap. Processing and analysis of the huge
volume of information produced by these satellites are handled
by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National
Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Because its SIGINT satellites operate as giant vacuum cleaners
in the sky, sucking up electromagnetic data, rather than as
tracking satellites, it would seem unlikely that Pine Gap has
anything to do with tracking UFOs. This does not preclude the
possibility that Pine Gap may have some sort of black UFO
related mission(s) hidden behind the classified missions already
discussed. Professor Ball is a little vague as to whether Pine
Gap also has a Photographic Intelligence (PHOTINT) mission.
However an article in The West Australian newspaper (Saturday,
7th September 1996) claimed that Pine Gap "is reportedly one of
the earth stations for orbiting US photographic reconnaissance
and electronic intelligence satellites." So, do any Pine Gap
satellites take photos of UFOs? There is a significant technical
difference between taking satellite photographs of fixed ground
locations and taking them of small fast moving aerial objects
like UFOs. If the Pine Gap satellites do have PHOTINT capability
they could probably only take photographs of UFOs if they
received appropriate real-time tracking information about their
location, unless they had actually landed on the ground. As far
as we know, providing tracking information is not what Pine Gap
does, but it is what Nurrungar does.

NURRUNGAR.

The United States satellite station at Nurrungar is a ground
station for the US Defence Support Program (DSP) whose
geostationary satellites provide the US Air Force Space Command
with its first warning of the launch of any nuclear missiles in
the event of nuclear war. During the Gulf war they were also
used to detect the launching of Iraqi Scud missiles. In other
words DSP satellites are designed to detect and track flying
objects. To do this they are equipped with 3.63 metre Schmidt
infrared telescopes, visible light and ultraviolet sensors, and
nuclear detonation detection (NUDET) sensors. The infrared
detectors are designed to sense the radiation emitted by nuclear
missile booster rockets after they have been launched . The
ultraviolet sensors are designed to detect fluorescing gases
around the booster rockets or missile nose cones during their
flight. Visible light television cameras on the satellites are
also able to transmit pictures to the ground station when
necessary. UFO researchers will be interested to note that
Professor Ball quotes Philip Klass as an expert on the equipment
carried on these satellites. (Ball, 1987, p.22) The NUDET
sensors can detect certain nuclear particles, gamma-rays and
x-rays from nuclear explosions. (The Joint Defence Facility
Nurrungar home-page can be found at
www.roxby.net.au/~gumby/JDFN/index.html

How clearly a satellite that is thirty-six thousand kilometres
away can see what is happening down near the ground is highly
classified, but one has to assume that DSP satellites, and any
more recent versions, have the capability to see things that are
as small and fast moving as nuclear missiles, otherwise they
would be ineffective. It seems therefore that these satellites
would be ideal for tracking UFOs. They wouldn't even need to be
told to do it, they would track them automatically because of
UFOs' resemblance to various missiles. We know that UFOs
sometimes radiate very brightly. It is suspected that this is
caused by plasma (fluorescing atmospheric gases) surrounding the
craft. We also know that UFOs often interfere with radios and
televisions which suggests that they do emit some sort of
radiation. Given all the different electromagnetic frequencies
that DSP satellites can detect, it would probably be safe to
assume that they are able to detect and track at least some UFOs
and have been doing so for some time. The tracking and film
recordings of these craft from such satellites would surely by
now have revealed some interesting intelligence. For example, by
correlating this tracking data with geographical locations one
could perhaps get a better idea of what UFOs are actually doing.
A single sighting from a witness on the ground may not tell us
very much, but the cumulative data from say ten years of
satellite tracking in Australia or anywhere else, including the
large proportion of the planet that is covered in water, would
present a very different statistical picture. Some questions to
be asked would be, are there more sightings near population
centres, do they follow power lines, are they following some
sort of grid pattern, do they revisit the same locations at
fixed intervals, are they looking at known mineral deposits, or
magnetic anomalies, or military bases, or is there no
discernible pattern in the sightings? As more data is
accumulated, the more revealing and sophisticated such an
analysis could become. Different radar signatures for different
types of craft could be gathered as well as technical data on
acceleration and speed characteristics. Such tracking data might
help us discover whether some UFOs have underground or
underwater bases. Unfortunately we must assume that whoever or
whatever is operating UFOs isn't stupid. They may have very
capable stealth or deception techniques that enable UFOs to pop
in and out of view all over the place in a manner that
completely befuddles any unfortunate intelligence analyst trying
to find a pattern in the sightings. An example of evasive action
taken by aliens can be found in an article called 'Another
Astonishing South American Report' by Flying Saucer Review
consultant Jane Guma. It describes the case of Orlando Jorge
Ferraudi who in August 1965 was taken, fully conscious, into a
UFO while fishing by a river on the coast of Brazil. The UFO
then set off under water. Using telepathy, an alien explained
that this was to avoid radar. After a while they emerged from
the sea and flew at a low altitude to the coast of Uruguay,
before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Africa from where they
flew upwards into space. The alien supposedly explained that "We
must take these precautions so that we can thus avoid being
regarded as invaders or conquerors. We want your people to get
used to us slowly, to see us just as like anybody else, because
we are not strangers in this part of the Universe." (Guma, p.7)
It does however seem strange that the aliens would take such
elaborate measures to avoid detection while explaining them to a
human so that they eventually get published in a UFO magazine
for everyone to read.

Being able to detect and track UFOs in real time would also
enable the military to see at once if any of them had crashed.
The nearest rapid-deployment recovery team could then be alerted
to ensure that any live aliens were apprehended, the UFO debris
cleared up, and an appropriate cover story concocted before the
media and local authorities got in on the act. By ensuring fast
and efficient crash retrieval such a tracking system would
contribute to depriving the public of irrefutable evidence of
the reality of UFOs, and facilitate the reverse engineering of
recovered debris before anyone else got their hands on it.

BLACK PROJECTS

How likely is it that a satellite station such as Nurrungar is
tracking UFOs in addition to its other classified duties? In an
article to advertise his book Above Black: Project Preserve
Destiny Insider Account of Alien Contact and Government
Cover-Up, retired Staff Sergeant Dan Sherman, who claims to have
worked for the National Security Agency as an Intuitive
Communicator with aliens, explains how US government
extraterrestrial programs are hidden. He claims that behind the
usual categories of Secret and Top Secret exist what are called
'Unacknowledged Special Access Programs' (USAPs) otherwise known
as 'black' programs. These tightly compartmentalised programs
operate on a need-to-know basis. Behind them exist the most
highly classified programs which are the extraterrestrial
related ones. This ensures that every alien project is carefully
camouflaged behind another black project. This classification
system makes good sense and could easily operate at Pine Gap or
Nurrungar. Even those personnel with above Top Secret clearances
might not know that a few of their colleagues spend some of
their time accessing a highly restricted part of the computer
system that receives and analyses UFO tracking data. It is a
common requirement in such work environments to activate a
password controlled screen-saver on your computer terminal every
time you get up from your desk. It might be claimed that, quite
apart from stealth technology to prevent satellites from
tracking them, UFOs might not emit sufficient electromagnetic
radiation to be detected by DSP satellites. However in a
detailed technical article in the MUFON UFO Journal called 'Do
Our Satellites See UFOs', Ronald S. Regehr addresses this
question and concludes that the electromagnetic intensity of at
least some UFOs "is certainly detectable by today's technology
satellites, thus effectively proving that at last one of our spy
satellites could detect UFOs." (Regher, p.18) While this article
has only discussed information about US radar and satellite
systems that has almost certainly been superseded by more
advanced technology, it must be remembered that an increasing
number of other countries are launching sophisticated satellites
that may be able to track UFOs as part of their surveillance
missions. Such countries include Great Britain, France, Japan
and China, with several others in the pipeline. This fact alone
may provide some pressure on the United States to come clean
about the UFO phenomenon rather than suffer the possible
embarrassment of another country releasing such information
before they do.