Coco Islands BM
Coco Islands BM
At least once a year I tell my student's that before I was a teacher I was a spy. They are skeptical, but my admission is true. During the "Cold War", I used to listen to the bad guys (the same ones that are our friends now). It was an interesting job, not too flashy. But one that, occassionally, got very exciting.
What does this have to do with Coco Islands? It turns out that Myanmar and China struck a deal back in 1992 that would allow the Chinese to build a SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) base on Great Coco Island. As you study the images that I gathered from Google Earth, you will see a hard runway and a number of buildings scattered about. They could be parts of the SIGINT base. South of the runway are small homes that appear to occupied by local villagers. Locals are important to a SIGINT operation as they are the hired help to cook, clean and tend to the spies.
Some of the sources are as follows: 1) Save the Sea Turtles and Coco Islands 2) Asia Times article that discusses Myanmar and China 3) And finally, an article that speculates that China does not have a military base on Great Coco.
Life is interesting. I would like to be able to eventually map the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. To begin that project, I mapped the Coco Island group which is located at the northern extremity of the island group. Now I learn that the Chinese use the islands as a SIGINT gathering station that primarily gathers intelligence on Indian military operations and maritime traffic within this busy area. Very interesting to learn that SIGINT gathering is still in vogue
Enjoy!
Labels: Burma, China, Global Mapper, Google Earth, Indian, Indian Ocean, island, Landsat, map, Myanmar, SIGINT, TerraMetrics
