The government of Tierra del Fuego announced that the company LeoLabs Argentina SRL was notified “the beginning of the process of disarmament of electronic systems and other measures aimed at guaranteeing the inoperability of the radar installed near the municipality of Tolhuin, which the Ministry of Defense said constituted a “violation of national security”.

Although the Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Connectivity, who is dependent on the Chief of Staff, categorically canceled the operating license for the device in August, the company formed in the country with a British partner gave no indication of withdrawing the facility.

The Ministry of Defense noted that the radar is in a “strategic location for national defense policy”

Now the Fuegian government has reported a letter addressed to Governor Gustavo Melella in which the company confirms that it will remove “certain electronic components”, and requesting the termination of electricity supply services in the El Relincho livestock areawhere the radar is located in the geographic center of Tierra del Fuego.

The province’s Secretary of Malvinas and International Affairs, Andrés Dachary, explained that Leolabs would take these steps to “dispel doubts in society and prevent damage to the facilities by third parties,” according to the letter signed by representatives of the province. firm in Argentina, Ushuaia-based lawyer Pablo Bilbao.

Through his statement, Dachary stated that in the note the company confirmed this Radar has been “out of service since June 26” and this has been confirmed by national officials who traveled to Tierra del Fuego.

At the same time, he announced that “after the removal of the radar electronic devices is completed, among other things, he will ask the Provincial Energy Directorate to completely cut off the electricity supply, he will change the structure of the company and he will ask that the Ministry of Production and Environment will postpone the deadline of the procedure until the proposal that has been made at the national level, regarding the cancellation of the operating permit, is definitively resolved.”

national security

Last August, the Ministry of Defense deemed the installation of the radar a “violation of national security”, and called for the “definitive cancellation and suspension” of the initiative.

The military portfolio presented a report with technical data stating that, based on the sensor characteristics of the LeoLabs AGRS Radar Station, it “can be confirmed” that this technology can “offer analyzed information for military use.”

For the Ministry of Defense, the services offered by the British company can play an important role in the early warning and space activity monitoring systems of other countries, such as the UK.

“It is impossible to avoid considering the geopolitical connotations contained in the aforementioned installations and start-ups, by companies such as LeoLabs Argentina SRL with legal domicile in the United Kingdom, given the dual nature of the data obtained at its facilities“, stated the report and recalled the “illegal occupation” of the Malvinas Islands carried out by the British.

He also mentioned that although “LeoLabs’ purported AGSR Station installation objects are commercial in nature, considering the characteristics of the installed radar sensors, it is certain that they can also provide analyzed information for military use.”

“Most likely a service offered by the company plays an important role in early warning and monitoring systems for space activities in other countries such as the UKbecause the AGSR Station is capable of detecting and tracking objects in low orbit, whose data is the raw material for the information the company markets,” the document expands.

It states that AGRS “has the potential to be used for listening and signaling intelligence, even when the radar is not operational.”

In addition, it is analyzed that the British company could have installed this technology “in the south of Chile or on the Malvinas Islands” but “decided to do it in the Fuegian town of Tolhuin”, which is located in a “strategic location for the country’s defense policy”.

This geographic location gives companies privileged access to obtain spatial data at the global level, which is the raw material for compiling spatial information for commercial use, but also intelligence, with possible use by the United States intelligence system and, ultimately, disseminated to the UK,” the report said.

And he also drew attention to the fact that “only in our country was founded the company of LeoLabs Ltd. with management in England and the capital of England.”