The radar of the company LeoLabs Argentina SRL , installed very close to the city of Tolhuin, (in the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego) , returns to the journalistic scene through the recent confirmation that the parent company in California has formalized a new and multimillion dollar space surveillance contract with the United States government, explicitly intended to "track adversary spacecraft" .

This announcement , revealed by the specialized magazine SpaceNews on December 9, 2025 , undeniably confirms the dual-use capability—civilian and military—of the radar stations that the company operates globally. This fact has been systematically denied by LeoLabs' Argentine subsidiary and, for two years, by the government of Tierra del Fuego itself, led by Gustavo Melella.

From scrap metal to espionage

According to the publication, LeoLabs obtained an interagency contract to provide space surveillance data to the U.S. government , feeding the TraCSS (Traffic Coordination System for Space) platform and, crucially, being used by the Space Force's Joint Commercial Operations Cell to "assess threats" and "monitor adversary spacecraft."

This service goes far beyond tracking space debris — the original and sole objective declared by the company when it settled in Argentina — and is part of a US national security strategy that was already exposed in September 2025, when LeoLabs demonstrated its ability to track hypersonic missiles, rockets and drones in joint exercises, seeking a place in Donald Trump 's "Golden Dome" defense project.

A British company in the province of Tierra del Fuego

The confirmation of the military nature of the technology becomes critical due to the corporate architecture of LeoLabs Argentina SRL, which is controlled by capital based in Dublin (95%) and London (5%).

This shareholding structure, added to the alliance formalized in July 2024 between LeoLabs Inc. and the UK Ministry of Defense for Project Tyche (aimed at developing a constellation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites), legitimized the historic warning of the Argentine State.

The Ministry of Defense, under the leadership of Jorge Taiana , had already issued a damning report in August 2023, which culminated in the complete cancellation of the radar's provisional authorization . That report was unequivocal:

1.    Violation of National Security: It would allow the United Kingdom, the power that illegally occupies the Malvina Islands, to monitor Argentine civilian and military satellite activity, intercept data and observe land and sea targets.

2.    Incompatibility with National Defense: The installation is "totally incompatible" with the National Defense Policy Directive, which requires maintaining control and strategic military intelligence in aerospace in the face of the "persistent, illegitimate and illegal military presence of the United Kingdom" in the South Atlantic.

3.    Intelligence Capability: Tolhuin's geographical location is strategic, granting privileged access to obtaining spatial data globally and the possibility of being used by US intelligence systems and, consequently, being disseminated to the United Kingdom.

Pressure from Washington

Although the radar is apparently inoperative (no expert assessment has confirmed this), pressure from NATO partners to reactivate it continues . In September 2025, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Holsey, publicly requested the radar's reopening as part of a strategy to consolidate the U.S. military presence in the region and to provide technological support to the Atlantic Alliance.

This request has been analyzed by various Argentine media outlets, which point to LeoLabs' confidence in the military and diplomatic alignment of Javier Milei's current government with the United States as a factor that could force the reopening of the satellite facility.

The most recent evidence regarding LeoLabs' global military surveillance function not only dispels doubts about the Tolhuin radar, but also underscores the ongoing risk to Argentine sovereignty and national security as long as this space control asset, with capital linked to an occupying power, remains in our territory.

Thus, through this new information published by Space News , the trail of lies spun by the current administration of Gustavo Melella is erased by the company itself. This exposes, once again, the need for the definitive dismantling of the antenna array that constitutes the radar.