PM wants answers from Rakon over military use

Helen Clark

The Government is to ask tech company Rakon whether it specially designs product for military use.

Crystals and oscillators, made by Rakon for global positioning systems (GPS) applications, are not on the list of prohibited exports but Prime Minister Helen Clark and Trade Minister Phil Goff, who is also Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control, said yesterday that a company making items specifically for use in military equipment should seek clearance from the Government.

Components for conventional weapons for use by the United States were unlikely to be an issue, whereas a product would be denied a permit "if it was used for anything to do with delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction".

A spokesman for Mr Goff said Foreign Affairs officials were drafting a letter to Rakon requesting information.

Helen Clark said the end user of the military product was taken into account, noting that the United States was "a very, very, very friendly country".

Asked by the Herald if things would be different if the end user was, say, just a very friendly country such as China, she answered obliquely: "Firstly the oscillators and crystals are not on the list of goods which are prohibited.

"Subsequent to the advice I had yesterday, another piece of advice came forward. Where a product is being designed specifically for use in military equipment, then clearance should be sought," Helen Clark said.

"Then obviously a government would have a decision to make on whether it thought it was appropriate to give that clearance and that would very much depend on whether it was a nuclear weapon or not and it would very much depend on the destination of the export.

"If they are making a product specifically for insertion in a military weapon then they may well need to get clearance for that. But that's what we are trying to establish."

Rakon said in a statement on Saturday that "none of our products are being used or manufactured for use in nuclear weapons", and that it "has not invented technology specifically for US smart bombs".

The company's internal documents indicate it was designing, at the request of American company Rockwell Collins, a crystal oscillator described variously as "radiation-hardened", "nuclear-hardened" or "nuclear-resistant", and a high-G-shock-resistant crystal oscillator to be used to guide artillery shells.

Rakon received funding from Rockwell - a major supplier of communications and navigation systems to the US military - for the high-G-shock project.

Specifications for the nuclear-hardened product required the crystal oscillator to function correctly during exposure to nuclear fallout and at a depth of 135m.

The maximum height specified for the crystal oscillator planned to be adapted to become nuclear-hardened was 24,000m, suggesting an intended use on missiles to be stored in silos enabling guided missiles to be used in response to nuclear attack.

Guidance systems such as JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) - for which Rakon has supplied a key component for the past 10 years - are made as tail kits which are then attached to a bomb.

In a statement released yesterday Rakon said: "We have not developed or supplied any products or technology for nuclear defence programmes. We have developed products for high shock applications. None of our product is specific to the munitions industry. They can be used by a range of industries from mining to aerospace."