Russia’s Antarctic posture provokes – but don’t invoke

American and European analysts believe Russia has managed to briefly jam US GPS and the Chinese equivalent, Beidou, over continental-sized areas during the past seven years, apparently using a constellation of early warning satellites (Opens in new window). These satellites fly in a Molniya orbit, coming closer to Earth over the southern hemisphere and higher over the north to maximise time over Russia and the United States.

Russia has also announced it will deploy a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-28 Sarmat – dubbed “Satan-II” in the West – by the end of this year. It is designed to fly long range, including over southern polar regions to attack from a direction less defended by the US. It reportedly has a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that can put a nuclear weapon in low orbit before it glides quietly to the target.

Both the missile and the early warning satellites could get confirmation or refinement of their location and timing information from Russian ground stations in Antarctica.

Does that mean that the Antarctic Treaty’s non-militarisation provisions should be invoked? After all, the Treaty says (Opens in new window) – reflecting its Cold War origins – that “Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only” and expressly prohibits “any measures of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military manoeuvres, as well as the testing of any type of weapons”.

The support that some Russian Antarctic ground stations provide is real. The Deputy Director of the Russian Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Research has said (Opens in new window)that Russia needs “a spot in the Russkaya station’s area as when one of our satellites fly over there it’s not visible” when announcing last year that Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, would upgrade the old Russian station in the unclaimed part of Antarctica.

But the Treaty provisions are not being violated, for three reasons.

The first is that the Treaty is silent on space overflight – and aerial observation for Treaty inspections is allowed – even though the first polar orbiting satellite (Opens in new window) was launched by the United States the same year the Treaty was signed.

The second is that the support provided by Antarctic facilities to these two capabilities would be modest and not unique, potentially falling under the de minimis principle that the law does not concern itself with small things. The timing and positioning information from Antarctica improves Russian missile or other capabilities very little: its GPS-like GLONASS system has several ground stations in Latin America and one in South Africa that could probably provide location and timing information to the Satan-II and the early warning satellites. Several Russian naval vessels could also do the job.

The third reason is that were these Antarctic ground station operations to be called out, it could easily damage the entire Antarctic Treaty System. The cost would outweigh any benefit. With it might go not only a regime of non-militarisation, but also the right of any state to inspect stations, vessels and aircraft to verify non-militarisation – to say nothing of the Treaty system’s environmental rules.

The Treaty does allow military equipment and personnel to be used in Antarctica for peaceful purposes and scientific research. The problem is that there is no bright line between scientific and military uses, as the Treaty implies. Information from civilian scientific facilities, such as telescopes tracking space debris, is relevant to protection of both civilian and military satellites. Civil and scientific information, such as weather reports or hydrographic mapping, can suddenly become militarily valuable in a crisis or war.

Re-opening debate about the non-militarisation and verification provisions of the Antarctic Treaty to try to itemise what is science and what is military data or communication would be fruitless. At its last meeting the Antarctic community could not even agree to make the charismatic Emperor penguin a “specially protected species (Opens in new window)”.

If any action is to be taken, the trick would be to look at potential military uses of Antarctic equipment in light of each states’ capabilities beyond Antarctica. Is the Antarctic facility unique in a global architecture? How quickly and securely can information be sent to the offending state? Does the facility in Antarctica much improve military capability?

Many of these issues can be fully assessed only with classified information. But governments could do more to explain why they are not concerned by dual-use technology in Antarctica, partly to avoid unnecessary securitisation of Antarctic narratives (Opens in new window). Otherwise, a security lens on policy might further reduce the scope for cooperation and diplomacy on more pressing issues such as the regulation of krill-taking and the re-examination in 2048 of whether mining in Antarctica should be accepted.