Webinars

Keeping the Space above us for peace and science not war and profit

PARC Against DARC’s campaign to stop a military radar in a Welsh National Park

A proposal originating from President Trump’s US Space Force, DARC (Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability) can be said, in a sentence, to be a significant element in plans by Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to cultivate an arguably illegal monopoly over the global commons of space, increasing the capacity of the US for both territorial dominance over the space domain and the military targeting of foreign satellites. It is on both a local and a national basis, though, that PARC (Pembrokeshire Against the Radar Campaign) presents its case to you today.

The Ministry of Defence-proposed array, which would involve 27 large radar dishes of a size perhaps unprecedented for the UK in full view of the UK’s only coastal national park in Pembrokeshire, is roundly and very strongly locally opposed for its many potential impacts on the open rural landscape of the St Davids peninsula. Its extreme and unprecedented visual impact on the landscape, its insufficiently addressed radiation impacts, its heavy and damaging ecological footprint, its poor military-strategic suitability in the context of very poor local road accesses and a significant surrounding residential population, and its far-reaching economic impacts on an area of high tourism and cultural heritage value, in which the cathedral city of Wales’s patron saint finds its home, are just some of the primary reasons why it is believed it to be a deeply inappropriate proposal by so many.

Presenter 

Roy Jones is a former musician who was part of the Post Punk scene in London in the late 70’s and early 80s with his band Red Beat. During this time he was active in the movement to stop Cruise Missiles with nuclear warheads being deployed in Western Europe. He later toured the States in 1987 as a keyboard player with the Howard Jones band. In the early 90s he was a founder member and fund raiser for the peace group PARC – Pembrokeshire Against the Radar Campaign who successfully fought US military plans to build a massive Over the Horizon Radar installation in a similar location to the DARC Radar proposal planned today. A long standing Buddhist and member of the lay Buddhist group SGI, Roy has continued to use his music to fight against nuclear weapons as a supporter of the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).