An RAF base in Yorkshire is being used secretly by America’s National Security Agency for the installation of a space-based anti-missile system.

Although on British soil, RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, is totally under American control. No British minister has ever visited it. It is being developed as the ground station for the most advanced defence system in the world.

SBIRS (space-based infra-red system) is the successor to a proposed American ground-based shield that has already been opposed by all of Washington’s European allies – including Britain – because of fears it could erode Europe’s security and unleash a new arms race.

The scheme has been dubbed “son of star wars” after the defence project first proposed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Under the plan the US would set up a series of “brilliant eyes”, low earth orbit satellites already being developed by American defence company Rockwell, armed with tactical high-energy lasers to destroy “rogue” ballistic missiles.

They would be warned within seconds of the launch of a missile anywhere in the world by tracking stations such as Menwith Hill, but the system, according to the American government, would be used only to protect the US from “rogue states”. Critics claim both SBIRS and its gound-based forerunner are in breach of the US-Russian anti-ballistic missile treaty signed in 1972.

It was thought that the British government had opted for discreet diplomatic lobbying to dissuade President Bill Clinton from ratifying the $100bn (£63m) project, but a series of Commons written answers has revealed that Britain has already given the US permission to install the ground based systems for SBIRS at RAF Menwith Hill. The news will shock Britain's French and German allies who are trying to stop the US setting up another ABM site in Alaska which would also receive early warnings of launches from Menwith Hill.

TheABM treaty restricts Russia and the US to one ABM site apiece. Russia has 100 anti-ballistic missiles deployed around Moscow; US missiles are concentrated at a large silo in North Dakota.

America's European allies believe the project, which is due to be agreed by President Clinton next summer, will “lead to a split in security standards”, according to Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, Foreign Office minister, said the Government had granted the US permission to develop SBIRS at Menwith Hill in March 1997 after a series of consultations.

Since then the Ministry of Defence has used its government immunity to grant planning permission for up to four new radomes (golf-ball-shaped satellite ground stations).

Baroness Dean maintained that the British government retained legal possession and control over Menwith Hill, but analysts such as Simon Davies of Privacy International believe that control is nominal.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, recently proved that the Americans were effectively "squatting" at the base. The US government's lease on Menwith Hill expired in May 1997 and has not been renewed.

Mr Baker, who has doggedly tried to unlock the secrets of Menwith Hill, said: “I believe what is happening is contrary to international agreements and against the national interest of this country. The Government should come clean about Menwith Hill and should be putting British interests first. Every time you lift a Menwith Hill stone something nasty crawls out.”

Menwith Hill is better known for housing the Echelon eaves-dropping system which enables the National Security Agency to listen in on two million telephone, e-mail and fax operation conversations an hour. Many European countries suspect that the base is used for industrial espionage, an allegation denied by NSA.

Opened in the late 1950s on land purchased by the Crown, it was taken over directly by the NSA in 1966 and became its Field Station F83. It is now the NSA’s largest listening post in the world. Sprawling across 560 acres, it has a 24-hour operation centre and on-site town.

There are now 25 radomes, not including the three under construction, and the size of the staff has grown from 400 in 1980 to 1,770, of which 1,400 are American – a staff as large as MI5.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “The Government is fully aware of what is going on at Menwith Hill and is an equal partner in the development of the equipment,”

See also Comment from the Independent on Sunday.

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