From another thread:
“…And Pituffik is not the only high-latitude space base that is vital to the US, and indeed the West. Svalbard is a Norwegian island chain 600 miles north of Norway’s most northernmost city Tromsø. It is the world’s most important space base, providing ground services to more satellites than any other facility on Earth. If you control space, you control the Earth, and this time Russia is already there. The US believes that nobody will fight them if they move on Greenland. Europe has said it will be the end of NATO. This is just what Russia wants, and it’s got its eyes on Svalbard.
Polar ground stations are the only places where satellites in certain vital orbits can downlink their data and receive commands on every lap of the Earth. They are important to gather data for science and weather forecasting, and internet traffic generally relies on the satellite infrastructure in Svalbard.
The Svalbard Treaty of 1920 between Norway and Russia gives sovereignty to Norway, but gives Russia rights to settlements there. The treaty bans military fortifications and activities on Svalbard, but satellite data of almost any kind can have dual use: for example, the weather over Ukraine and its internet traffic have military significance. While Svalbard doesn’t work directly with military satellites, other ground stations in northern Norway do, connecting with satellites that do military communications and missile warning.
In its early years such data had to be shipped out on magnetic tape, but since the early 2000s the island has been linked to mainland Norway with an undersea data cable that, along with a second cable, sends valuable data to the continent and provides the internet to the island.
In January 2022, one of the cables was cut. For 11 days the island ran on just one communications line. Some investigators suggest it was accidental, possibly due to a dragging anchor from a fishing boat, but inevitably suspicion turned on Russia. A Russian trawler passed over the cable’s path more than 20 times in the days before the cut. …”
I went to Google Earth to look around. There’s a statue of Lenin at the end of one “town.” Looks like one would get to know their neighbors pretty well.
Thank you.