As soon as referred to as Thule Air Base, now often called Pituffik Area Base, this U.S.-operated set up in northwestern Greenland is among the most strategically essential navy websites on the earth — even when most People have by no means heard of it.
“It’s fairly actually the outermost eye of American protection,” stated Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, a Danish protection analyst. “Pituffik is the place the U.S. can detect a launch, calculate the trajectory and activate its missile protection techniques. It’s irreplaceable.”
The outpost is getting new consideration as President Trump, who has vowed to make Greenland a part of the US, sends a high-level delegation to the island this week. The guests will embrace Vice President JD Vance, who stated on Tuesday that he meant to go to “our guardians” within the Area Power whereas there.
About 150 U.S. Air Power and Area Power personnel are completely stationed at Pituffik (pronounced Bee-doo-FEEK). They deal with missile protection and house surveillance, and the Upgraded Early Warning Radar primarily based right here can detect ballistic missiles of their earliest moments of flight.
There’s additionally a contingent of New York Air Nationwide Guard that assist science missions through the summer time. These personnel primarily use a distinct airport in southern Greenland however often go by means of Pituffik. Flying the U.S. navy’s solely ski-equipped plane, the LC-130, they ship researchers and provides to camps across the island.
Pituffik is the one U.S. navy base on Greenland.
The historical past
The American navy presence in Greenland started throughout World Conflict II, when Greenland was a Danish colony. After Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, Greenland was out of the blue remoted and undefended. The USA struck a quiet take care of Denmark’s ambassador in Washington — bypassing the German-controlled authorities in Copenhagen — for American troops to construct airfields and climate stations on the island.
By 1941, U.S. forces had landed, organising defenses and scanning the North Atlantic for German submarines. A decade later, Denmark and the US formalized the association with a protection treaty granting Washington broad rights to function navy amenities on the island. Greenland is now a semiautonomous a part of Denmark, which, like the US, is a NATO nation.
Through the Chilly Conflict, Thule turned a key Arctic outpost. From right here, long-range American bombers may attain the Soviet Union, and large radar techniques have been constructed to detect missiles crossing the polar route — the shortest path between the 2 superpowers.
One of many period’s strangest experiments was Camp Century, a nuclear-powered base constructed beneath the ice within the late Nineteen Fifties as a part of a secret mission referred to as Iceworm. The plan was to check whether or not nuclear missiles could possibly be hidden and launched from beneath the floor.
“It was Chilly Conflict ambition at its wildest,” Mr. Rasmussen stated. “They constructed a nuclear-powered base in one of the vital hostile environments on Earth simply to see if it could possibly be completed.”
The ice proved too unstable, and the bottom was deserted. However the waste — together with radioactive materials and diesel — remains to be buried and scientists warn that warming temperatures may ultimately expose it.
The bottom additionally left a long-lasting mark on Greenland’s Indigenous inhabitants. In 1953, about 130 Inuit have been forcibly relocated from their properties close to Thule to a harsher settlement farther north, poorly suited to conventional searching. Compensation got here a long time later, however resentment stays.
The bottom’s identify modified two yr in the past from Thule to Pituffik, which suggests in Greenlandic “the place we tie our canine.”
The situation
Pituffik sits above the 76th parallel on Greenland’s northwest coast, about 750 miles from the North Pole. It’s one of the vital distant navy installations on Earth.
The closest settlement, Qaanaaq, is greater than 70 miles away and residential to fewer than 650 individuals. Many hunt seals, walrus and, often, polar bears to outlive.
In winter, the solar disappears for weeks and temperatures drop beneath minus 30 Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius). Regardless of the circumstances, Pituffik’s airfield runs year-round. Ships can attain the bottom solely throughout a slender summer time window when the ocean ice quickly retreats.
The bottom’s know-how
Pituffik is a part of a world net of U.S. protection infrastructure and an important station. Army specialists say that as new threats like hypersonic missiles emerge, the early-warning techniques at Pituffik are indispensable.
Hypersonic cruise missiles don’t go into house, stated Troy J. Bouffard, a retired U.S. Military noncommissioned officer and Arctic protection skilled. “They fly low, they maneuver, and we have now no technique to intercept them as soon as they’re launched,” he stated.
If a missile have been launched from Russia or China towards North America, it will, Mr. Bouffard stated, probably go over the Arctic.
Pituffik’s ground-based sensors are essential in that case, stated Mr. Bouffard, as a result of satellites don’t work effectively in excessive latitudes.
Lasers don’t work within the Arctic, both, he added. “The air columns are filled with ice crystals — principally tiny mirrors — and lasers and mirrors don’t get alongside,” he stated.
Mr. Bouffard sees Pituffik’s position increasing past radar.
“It may additionally function a ahead staging base or a key line of communication,” he stated. “The extra ahead these places are, the extra helpful they’re.”
