Implications for NZ from Rocket Lab’s military work go
undebated
Warren Thomson
Warren Thomson is an anti-nuclear activist who has been
writing and speaking on peace issues for fifty years, and
is involved with the Anti-Bases Campaign.
OPINION: As this article is being written,
Rocket Lab is about to launch another key warfighting
satellite from its site at Mahia Peninsula, south of
Gisborne. The
BlackSky Gen 3 satellite was to go into orbit about
470 kilometres above the earth, “delivering very
high-resolution imagery and AI enabled analytics for daily
intelligence operations”. This is the second launch in a
series for BlackSky this year and the 10th overall for the
military intelligence client corporation.
Upcoming also are more missions for
HawkEye 360, part of a number of launches which
started in January 2023, and involve putting 15 satellites
into orbit to support international spying and war
fighting operations.
Rocket Lab began as a small
Aotearoa/NZ company, but is now an American corporation.
At a recent ceremony attended by Nicola Willis, Judith
Collins, Chris Hipkins and a number of other establishment
figures, Rocket Lab CEO Sir Peter Beck was inducted into
the NZ Hi-Tech hall of fame. It should be renamed the hall
of shame.
When Beck co-founded the company 20
years ago, he
publicly stated that he would not take military money
to fund the organisation. In April last year Beck
announced: “It’s an honour to be selected by the
[American] Space Systems Command to partner in delivering
the Victus Haze mission and demonstrate the kind of
advanced tactically responsive capabilities critical to
evolving national security needs” (Victus Haze is an
American military research programme experimenting with
hypersonic space vehicles.)
In recent years, attempts by Rocket
Lab and New Zealand Government officials to conceal the
company’s frontline military intelligence role have given
way to public pronouncements glorifying its scope and
“success” in becoming the world’s second biggest
corporation in terms of satellite launches (after Musk’s
SpaceX). In Aotearoa New Zealand both the major political
parties have blatantly ignored the fact that Rocket Lab’s
ability to quickly replace satellites (an absolute
requirement of modern warfare) makes this country a prime
military target.
Rocket Lab’s own website
emphatically reinforces the way it contributes to Five
Eyes’ warfighting strategies. As well as extolling the
capability for “rapid call-up launch on demand” it lists
upcoming missions in its Haste (Hypersonic Accelerator
Suborbital Test Electron) series: “Haste is operated under
Rocket Lab National Security (RLNS), the company’s
wholly-owned subsidiary created to serve the unique needs
of the US defence and intelligence community and its
allies”. Also, “Rocket Lab will launch a Haste hypersonic
test mission for the US Department of Defence Innovation
Unit (DIU) in 2025”.
In 2025 Rocket Lab is scheduled to
launch rockets from its Virginia, USA site for the “US
Space force’s Space Systems Command”. These involve very
low-earth orbit satellites which experiment with systems
“designed to increase on-orbit persistence”. In other
words, ways to prevent destruction in a war-fighting
situation.
The company is not always so public
in its disclosure of its activities. At the end of last
year its website mentioned a mission with an “undisclosed”
client; from mid 2026 there will be “...two dedicated
missions for a confidential customer” on a vehicle “being
rapidly developed to meet the demand for high assurance
national security missions...” .
Rocket Lab is also working with the
United States Air Force on missions for cargo
transportation “to advance global defence logistics for
the (United States)”.
Officials and senior politicians in
this country have avidly supported Rocket Lab and there
has been a complete absence of debate over the company’s
Pentagon war fighting activities and the implications for
the real security of Kiwis.
Our intelligence agencies rubber-stamp launches from Mahia in an opaque process that allows no proper discussion of the military implications, and the ethics, of hosting a major war fighting operation in this country.
Murray Horton
Secretary/Organiser Anti-Bases Campaign.