A group of Christian activists on trial in the Northern Territory Supreme Court for entering the top-secret facility are arguing they did it to defend possible victims of drone strikes.

Timothy Webb, Andrew Paine, Margaret Pestorius and James Dowling are all charged with entering the prohibited area without a permit, while Mr Webb is also charged with filming while on the base, on September 29, 2016.

They have all admitted to climbing through a 1.2-metre high barbed-wire perimeter fence, but are seeking a defence based on self-defence and the defence of others.

The accused face a maximum of seven years in jail if found guilty.

Professor Richard Tanter, from the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, has written extensively about the secretive base and was called as a witness by the accused.

He told the court Pine Gap was "perhaps the most important US intelligence facility outside the US".

He said Pine Gap was "an essential part" of US drone strikes, as it could intercept signals such as mobile and satellite phones and radio communications, and help locate the source of them.

This information is then passed onto the US National Security Agency (NSA), which can then pass it on to the military or other agencies for possible drone strikes, Professor Tanter said.

The group had plans to enter the base three nights before they were arrested, but were discovered by police when they stopped for a rest outside the perimeter fence.

Leading politicians in South Korea and Japan are talking up the need for their own nuclear weapons, and Donald Trump is not saying no.

So, it’s hardly surprising that 122 countries voted at the United Nations in July to pass the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.

Rather more surprisingly, but gratifyingly, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Melbourne-born International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work leading to the nuclear ban treaty.

At root, building more nuclear weapons and banning nuclear weapons are the two logical opposite responses to the fact that there are still thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

With sober-minded experts putting the chances of war in Korea at 50/50, any thought of war with 75 million Koreans living in an area the size of Victoria is horrific, even if, by sheer dumb luck we avoid escalation to nuclear war.

Pine Gap will be central to US planning and operations for a Korean war, nuclear or ‘conventional’.

Here in Australia, the next task is to get the ALP to pledge to sign the ban treaty as soon as it takes office. And then, before we can ratify the treaty, the two struggles to bring Australia into compliance will begin. The first is to abandon the bipartisan commitment in our defence policy to reliance on US nuclear protection – the extended nuclear deterrence policy. The second, of course, is the reform of Pine Gap to require the removal of all nuclear-related activities from the base’s operations.

K. This is top secret. Pine Gap is turning 50 and will be celebrating the occasion with a stealth party.

As of course they would.

When? According to Donald Trump’s contacts in Moscow it will be this weekend.

It will be big.

There will be a dinner on Saturday at the Convention Centre and there will be something at the spy base – best guess it will be just outside the gates.

The local A-list of movers and shakers have been invited the the dinner which – according to our sources, well informed as they are, will include Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Local VIPs will include Minister Dale Wakefield and Councillor Jamie de Brenni.

Not that the Convention Centre will let anything slip: “Unfortunately the details of this weekend’s event are not available for public release,” is what we were told.

According to the Australian head of the base (she introduced herself as Barbara) there will be no media passes.

Chansey Paech, the Member of Parliament in which Pine Gap operates, did not score an invitation.

THE Territory’s Pine Gap military intelligence base just outside Alice Springs is reportedly on standby as North Korea warns it is ready for “war” amid escalating tensions with the US.

The NT News understands the US has notified Australia that it is prepared to shoot down any missiles launched, potentially putting the Central Australian spy base in the firing line as a target in the event of a major conflict.

The top secret military facility plays a key role in US intelligence and military operations throughout the world.

It plays a vital role in collecting a wide range of signals intelligence as well as providing information on early warning of ballistic missile launches.

America announced on Monday that the USS Carl Vinson, loaded with fighter jets, had been pulled from its planned military exercises in Australia and ordered towards the Korean Peninsula.

Three guided-missile destroyers and cruisers joined the armada, which left from Singapore on Saturday.

In its response to America’s naval movements, the North Korean foreign ministry said the US’s “reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase,” and issued the warning that it was ready for war, AFP reported.

Professor Richard Tanter from the School of Political and Social Studies at the University of Melbourne has conducted years of research into the facility and says Pine Gap’s importance to the US military is enough to make Australia a target in any major war our American ally is involved in.

At a recent conference in Alice Springs he said rather than protecting the town from a potential enemy attack, Pine Gap’s existence makes it an ideal target.

He said in recent years Pine Gap had taken on a far more strategic role, including forming part of the controversial US missile defence system.

He says the early warning defence system was vital in detecting a potential North Korean missile “Pine Gap is used for nuclear war planning,” he said. “Today it is used for signals intelligence and as an early warning system.

“I’m not saying Pine Gap has no benefit. But when the benefits are far outweighed by dangerous consequences then that has implications for us.”

North korea hints, USA threatens.

THE US is strengthening a network of secretive military bases across Australia that could be used for waging wars against our interests, it was claimed at a weekend summit.

Instead of fostering crucial relationships, we are allowing the US to create enemies for us with its growing strategic presence on our soil, say the academics, politicians and campaigners who gathered for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) conference attended by news.com.au in Alice Springs this weekend.
Under a burning hot sun in the red centre, experts and citizens shared their fears over what is happening in the most remote parts of the country. These mysterious bases may be invisible to the majority of us living in the most populated regions along the coast, but could threaten the fabric of all our lives. Here’s what you need to know:

NORTH WEST CAPE — SPACE WARFARE
Perhaps the most frightening of all the bases, North West Cape is at the cutting edge of warfare — in space.
The monstrous structure sits on the northwest coast of Australia, where kilometres of wire surround a soaring central tower and others fanning off it, sucking up huge amounts of electricity.

DARWIN — TROOPS ON THE GROUND
In 2011, President Barack Obama visited Darwin to announce US troops would begin making regular visits to the Northern Territory as part of the country’s “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region.
The Gillard government agreed to the “permanent rotation of US marines and US air force aircraft”, meaning we have a constant flow of US soldiers on the ground in Australia. There are currently 1500, but this could rise to 2500.
It was this development that triggered the establishment of IPAN in 2012 as onlookers became alarmed at the move from “the invasion of nerd and computer freaks” to actual “troops in uniform with rifles”

PINE GAP — ‘THE POISONED HEART OF AUSTRALIA’
Pine Gap was established in Alice Springs in 1966 when the CIA came up with the idea of putting satellites 36,000 kilometres above the earth’s surface. These had giant antennae that could listen to very weak signals from Soviet missiles testing, allowing the agency to work out the capability of enemy weapons.
The spy base was placed in isolated Alice in the NT because at the time, the massive amount of data had to be collected over 130km of land.

OTHER BASES
The Defence Satellite Communication Station at Geraldton in Western Australia, along with Kojarena 20km inland, was one of Australia’s spy bases. It is now shared with two large American operational military communication systems that pull down information on Indonesian and Chinese satellites from the sky. This is part of the Five Eyes surveillance system used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kojarena is creating “battlefield conditions”, says Mr Doherty, providing data a soldier in Iraq can use to ascertain what’s behind a hill — the visual, weather and so on — making it “an American war fighting base”.
Australia paid $800 million for one of the satellites used by this system. But if America does not approve of an operation the Australian Defence Force requests, for example in Timor, it can turn off our access, says Prof Tanter.

So why is the US using our bases a problem? Well, we aren’t just passive bystanders. “Australia is very, very deeply involved,” says Prof Tanter. “At least we’re not locked out the way we were before, but with that comes culpability. The government seems to lack the ability to ask the question, ‘When do Australian and American interests coincide, and when do they not?’”