In a note written by the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic , and published by Infobae last year on this date, under the title: “July 9: sovereignty, military strategy and space scope” ; Lieutenant General Juan Martín Paleo exposed the seriousness that the existence of a British company radar in the heart of the Big Island of Tierra del Fuego possessed (and continues to possess). Alerting “ 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 Islands of the South Atlantic .
The opinion of the highest military authority of Argentina regarding the management of Alberto Fernández constituted the most serious warning known regarding foreign intervention and espionage in the country and from within the country itself, since the Malvinas war of 1982. And the ratification of both the June 15 publication of the Radar International website and the subsequent publication of Agenda Malvinas on the 26th of the same month, reporting the existence and registration of two companies with British and Irish capital in the General Inspection of Justice of Tierra del Fuego in the name of LeoLabs Space Holding & Limited and LeoLabs Limited ; They were correct.
But the truth is that in his writing, Paleo also confirmed what was said unofficially; regarding the fact that in the authorization given by the Head of the Cabinet of Ministers in November 2022 to LEOLABS, “there was no intervention by the competent ministries for this purpose (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Worship and the Ministry of Defense)” . Although with one more component, the objective of his public denunciation was to “make manifest the need to have an early warning that allows countermeasures to be adopted in time to avoid affecting our sovereign interests.”
And this is how the highest authorities of Argentina described it without anyone denying or correcting the soldier: “LEOLABS is based in California (USA)”, but the company based in Argentina “is made up of British capital belonging to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (RUGB).” It is “the main global service provider company” , and its roles include: “A) Monitoring and situational awareness of military utility (LEOGUARD); B) Monitoring the orbital position of satellites (LEOTRACK); C) Identification and warning of collision risks in space (LEOSAFE); D) Assistance for the location, tracking and recovery of contact with payloads recently launched into low Earth orbit (LEOLAUNCH); E) Assessment of satellite collision risks; F) vector release monitoring.”
The Lieutenant General 's statements did not stop there, but he also gave precision about the “dual” nature of the LEOLABS radar “(that is, civil and military)”, and identifying that among the members of its board, “there are former members of the Department of Defense and the intelligence community of that country, as well as the Royal Australian Air Force .
Delving into the strictly military aspects, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces listed in what consists of “the threat to our national security” indicated, from the installation of this English radar on Fuegian and Argentine soil:
1- Provide early warning and situational awareness of the space battle space in low orbit in Argentina. This specifically means that the RUGB will be able to monitor our civil and military satellite activity (whose projects are precisely low orbit satellites) from our own territory in Tierra del Fuego.
2- The operating band (S band) declared by the company coincides with the operating band of the earth stations for transmitting and receiving data in S band, reception in X and Ka band of Argentine satellites. This means that they could intercept data and consequently observe land or sea targets or detect aircraft.
3- Monitoring of trajectories and launch of vectors such as those being developed by Argentina from the CONAE (Tronador family of vectors).
One year later, on the 208th anniversary of the Declaration of Argentine Independence, and despite the warnings of Lieutenant General Juan Mártín Paleo on July 9, 2023; The LeoLabs radar is still installed at Estancia El Relincho de Tolhuin , without knowing with verifiable and demonstrable information that the antenna field is not operational, because presumably it does not receive electrical power.
Thus, Alberto Fernández left the government , as did his responsible ministers ( Agustín Rossi Chief of Staff; Jorge Taina, Defense; and Santiago Cafiero, Chancellor ); without removing the radar, despite what the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces himself denounced. Meanwhile, in Tierra del Fuego , Governor Gustavo Melella entered his second term, without responding to the accusations of his friends from the national government of the Frente de Todos , regarding the intervention that his officials had in the importation and entry into the Country of the 15 containers in which the radar arrived disassembled, and without allowing the Malvinas ex-combatants to verify that the radar was indeed not working, despite the express request made by the President of the Malvinas Argentinas Ex-combatants Center of the city of Ushuaia, Juan Carlos Parodi ; on April 2, in the central event for the 42 years of the war.
Meanwhile, LeoLabs Argentina SRL ; The national subsidiary of the foreign company is waiting for a response from the Fuegian government to accept a corporate change, to remove the British actors and incorporate Americans in their place - to change so that nothing changes -; and the Argentines in general and the Fuegians in particular have like a sword of Damocles , “ the serious threat to national security”, denounced by the now retired Lieutenant General Juan Martín Paleo.
“It would be unacceptable innocence at this level of Driving to consider what happened (the installation of the LEOLABS radar in Tolhuin) as a mere coincidence.” “The aerospace domain is of vital interest to the nation in regards to the production of military strategic intelligence. Within the framework of our Multilayer Military Area Restriction Strategy, the aerospace domain constitutes our first layer of defense in order to monitor and be in a position to anticipate, through the use of satellites, the maneuvers of possible External State Military Threats (AEME). Being vulnerable in this first line of defense would leave us without situational awareness to monitor the exercise of our sovereignty in our territory and jurisdictional space and we would be left without the ability to anticipate an attack from one," said the former military chief.
Read here in full the unmissable note from Lt. General Juan Martín Paleo of July 9, 2023
