To refresh our memory a little, in mid-March of this year, we Argentines had breakfast through the US Ambassador to Argentina, Marc Stanley, about the installation of a radar in the city of Tolhuin. It was presented as a radar which would serve to track and monitor space debris in low orbit. It was also said that the radar was installed by the North American company Leolabs.
A day earlier, Leolabs CEO Dan Ceperley had made the announcement: “This location will greatly improve our ability to track objects and monitor high-risk events in low Earth orbit.” So, “when completed By the end of 2023, Argentine Space Radar will expand the LeoLabs global network to include seven operational centers with plans to expand further in the coming year.” [1]
The Leolabs announcement, celebrated by the American ambassador Marc Stanley, was also celebrated by the Argentine Embassy in the US, to the point that Ceperley was allowed to record an announcement from the diplomatic residence itself, with the national flag in the background and without it appearing at no time did the Argentine ambassador Jorge Arguello.
There were no statements from the government of Tierra del Fuego in this regard, despite the importance it had in both diplomatic headquarters. Not even when Ambassador Stanley had been in Ushuaia days before, meeting with Governor Gustavo Melella.
At that time we assumed that “a large part of the installation has already been completed or is in an advanced stage of construction. This is what long-time residents of Tolhuin estimate, who confided to Agenda Malvinas that, for several months, they have been hearing that , to the north of the town, at km 2946 of National Route No. 3, some antennas or a radar were being assembled. That the Provincial Directorate of Energy made an extension of the electrical network to that sector and that the Land Police of the Fire, provides security permanently, assigning a patrol car every night, at the entrance to the El Relincho ranch, where they say, “those devices” could be located. “They put in backhoes, they dug a trench for the underground wiring that It reaches the first line of the mountain; and behind the mountain is the construction,” they said this Saturday, on a tour of the sector.” [2]
As the investigation progressed, the Agenda Malvinas colleagues were able to corroborate that the approval of the registration process in the General Inspection of Justice of Tierra del Fuego was published in the Official Gazette of the Province, on March 4, 2022 under two names: LEOLABS SPACE HOLDINGS LIMITED and LEOLABS LIMITED; the latter coinciding with its name in the United Kingdom.
This confirmation dispelled all doubts in this regard and opened our eyes. Because it made it possible to verify that at least a year before the registration of the signatures that would provide the basis and support for the company Leolabs Argentina SRL, which was registered as the Argentine subsidiary, had begun. of this group.
The murmur that the news began to cause increased. To the point that, at the request of the Minister of Defense itself, Jorge Taiana, the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications and Connectivity of the Nation, suspended the precarious authorization that at the time was granted to the company LEOLABS ARGENTINA SRL, “which allowed, through its British subsidiaries based in Ushuaia, to operate a system ground-based radars with which they could track objects and monitor activities in low Earth orbit, such as space junk; but also provide information of a military nature to the US, the United Kingdom and therefore to NATO.” [3]
But the biggest noise would occur on 07/09/23, just when Argentines commemorate the anniversary of our Independence. That day, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, Lieutenant General Juan Martín Paleo ; explained - through an opinion piece published in national media - about the seriousness of the existence of a radar by British companies in the heart of the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego, to the point of not hiding that the article has as “ purpose” is to “alert from the Military Strategic level, the serious threat to national security posed by the commissioning of the installation of radar antennas for the monitoring of low orbit satellites, by the British capital company LEOLABS in the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands.” He states that, in the decision made by the Head of the Cabinet of Ministers, “there was no intervention by the competent ministries for this purpose (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Worship and the Ministry of Defense)", and that their opinion or public complaint aims to make "manifest the need to have an early warning that allows countermeasures to be adopted in time to avoid affecting our sovereign interests." [4]
From here on, the complaint took on a volume that was difficult to conceal. It was Lt. Gen. Juan Martín Paleo himself who warned us, among many other things, that: “Such is the dual profile of the company (that is, civil and military) that the composition of the LEOLABS board includes former members of the US Department of Defense and the intelligence community of that country as well as the Royal Australian Air Force.In fact, the 6 LEOLABS radar stations are located in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Costa Rica.
