Bad Aibling replacement in Darmstadt-Griesheim?

Dear friends (and a few BCC recipients),

in local media, there was a few reports some days ago that in Griesheim - a little town some 5 km west of Darmstadt -, 4 satellite senders and 1 satellite receiver are going to be set up by the US Army. The permit they requested from the local authorities runs until 2012. The media calls it "radar" and "radomes". There is now some speculation as to whether part of the Bad Aibling capability is going to be moved to Darmstadt (with the rest going to Menwith Hill.) Another vague idea I have is that it could be an early preparation for a US missile defense system in Europe. But it seems there is also an intelligence unit located in Griesheim, so it could also be that the senders are used to send processed information to the NSA.

There is a German webpage with a few pictures, scans of newspaper articles, and a lot of links to English webpages on this issue. The URL is http://kai.iks-jena.de/miniwahr/badaibling.html

I will try to find someone locally who is technically knowledgable enough to look into this and hopefully work with people in the town parliament to try to gain access to further information. As the US Army does this under NATO Statute, there is no information available publicly, and they need not undergo normal planning and environmental protection procedures (hi, CAAB, does this sound familiar?) But I thought I should make the community aware of this development. And maybe someone can add information.

In peace

Regina

See also:
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=17316&archive=true