Pituffik Space Base

But before an attack could be retaliated against, it first had to be detected, and before the now obsolete DEW line was even complete, the United States Air Force began construction of a new ballistic missile early warning system.

Three of these early warning systems were built at Clear Air Force Base in Alaska, RAF Flyingdales in the UK, and Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, as far north as possible to give maximum warning of an attack.

Each site was equipped with three large fixed General Electric AN/FPS-50 radars for initial missile detection, and a number of smaller RCA AN/FPS-49 and 92 sets for finer tracking.

The system also included a number of computer facilities, both on and off-site, to process incoming data, which was routed to command and control displays at the Pentagon and NORAD's underground headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

Second.

Patufik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base.

It's one of only two Arctic facilities the U.S. has for polar orbiting satellite ground stations.

That matters for communications, imagery, and missile warning.

[laughs] You know there's an existing 1951 agreement with Denmark in under which the US can send as many trip- troops as it wants to Greenland.

Like, they already have 100 military personnel permanently stationed in Greenland at that, uh, what's it called? The, the, the Pituffik Base in the northwestern tip of the territory.

So I guess my, my point here is that we trust that's a good deal, even though it's probably a deal that's existed since 1951.

But what it does is it gets rid of this-

Um, he wound up going to, uh, uh, uh- The NASA Ames Research Center in, in, uh, Mountain View, California, where he got some training and he focused on how we could get people back out of orbit to Earth, um, safely, not burn up in the atmosphere.

And that research ultimately led him, um, to Greenland actually, and Thule Air Force Base, which is now our space base, as you know, in Greenland.

And there he studied, um, the, you know, what, what occurred, uh, as objects reentered the earth at that time.

They were, of course it was the Cold War, and they were studying how, what it might look like to detect a, a missile, an ICBM, intercontinental bal- ballistic missile coming in through the atmosphere.

So there's Russian, there's Russian research and scientific interests on Svalbard, but the Russians are more concerned about Svalbard's role in, as a listening post to guard the as well as be this connection to the polar satellite architecture that the U.S. and the NATO allies use to communicate with forces that are in the Arctic.

But yeah, so looking kind of over towards our end of the Arctic, the U.S. depends on radar stations that are in Greenland, in Thule, or I guess Navajo, Patufik, and then also in Alaska to be able to monitor the Arctic region for air and missile threats.

So if you are Russia, you're going to try to somehow degrade those capabilities, ability to detect those threats coming over.

And it used to be that you're mostly looking for bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles, right? So it's still a relatively small number of targets that you're trying to track.

For now, though, just know that Greenland and the wider Arctic is rising in importance once again.

The base that the US had on the island, Pituffik Space Base, is slated for expansion under the terms of this deal, and two additional bases have been approved.

Mestvig, a gravel airstrip on the east coast that's currently used by the Danish Special Forces Dog Sled Patrol, and Nasasuake, World War II era US base that was later abandoned.

This expanded access also comes with new caveats about who can, and more specifically, who cannot, set up shop on the island.

Yes, uh, thank you for what you do, and thank you for taking my call.

I wanted to mention Greenland, uh, because my father worked on the Thule Air Force Base up in Greenland, a very bitter cold space, and he was there for two to three years away from his eight children.

Wow.

And I heard someone this morning say that it was, Greenland was letting us in there for free.