Greenland and the new space race: Control Space and You Control the Earth

The Spectator ^ | 01/16/2026 | David Whitehouse

[SeekAndFind]

Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland is not just about access to oil, minerals and control of the new strategic and commercial corridors opening in the region. It’s also about data. Specifically, the most important data in the world.

For decades, Pituffik Space Base – formerly Thule – in Greenland has been central to US space defense and Arctic strategy. It’s the US military’s only base above the Arctic Circle and their most northerly deep-water port and airstrip. It’s home to the 12th Space Warning Squadron. Its massive AN/FPS-132 radar has 240 degrees of coverage surveying the Arctic Ocean and Russia’s northern coast, especially the Kola peninsula where it has concentrated its strategic nuclear weapons.

The high north is on the approach route for Russia’s ballistic missiles as they head for the US mainland. When a Russian rocket blasts off, especially if unannounced, Pituffik reacts to data from the Air Force’s Space Based Infrared System, which detects the rocket’s heat signature from its engines during take-off.

It then reconfigures the radar to track it, sending real-time reports to the US Combined Space Operations Center at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, as well as the Missile Warning Center in Colorado Springs. Every day, Pituffik also tracks hundreds of satellites: Russian, and the increasingly sophisticated orbital manoeuvres of the Chinese.

Donald Trump recently posted on social media that Greenland is “vital for the Golden Dome we are building” – referring to his enormous defense project against space weapons and ballistic weapons. Pituffik will be at the front line of the Dome and duly upgraded in the next few years. It will provide an outer shield and important extra time and data for ground and space-based interceptors.

In March last year, Vice President J.D. Vance, who two months before hosted the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in Washington, visited Pituffik. Soon after his trip, the commander of the station, Colonel Susannah Meyers, was fired, reportedly for distancing herself from Vance’s criticisms of Denmark’s handling of Greenland’s security.

The base is run by the US, but the Danish flag flies over it. Visitors can see it is functional but run down. At the same time, China and Russia are currently refurbishing old oilfields and infrastructure, radars and sensors in the region. Pituffik used to be assigned to US European Command but was last year reassigned to US Northern Command, an indication that the island is seen as a growing part of homeland defense.

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. Svalbard has workarounds for such a situation, but it still resulted in delays of several hours which can affect weather predictions. Just last month, Finnish authorities accused Russian ships of severing a cable in the Baltic Sea.

Norway’s sovereignty over the archipelago allows people from other national signatories to live and work as full residents without visas. There are hundreds of Russian citizens among its population of 3,000.

In 2023, some Russian residents staged a military-style parade in two Svalbard settlements. Men in Army green flew in a Mi-8 helicopter after a “navy parade” in the waters off Svalbard the previous year. In 2023, a group led by a prominent Russian bishop erected a 20ft Orthodox cross, with a ribbon supporting the war in Ukraine. The subtle undermining of the treaty is underway. Russian officials have questioned Norway’s sovereignty over the island prompting the Norwegian government to increase its presence on the archipelago.

As it is in Greenland, so it is in the European Arctic. The US Space Force’s Space Development Agency is constructing a satellite ground station on the island of Andøya, alongside an existing Norwegian military installation, to communicate with and control a constellation of satellites carrying out missile tracking and weapons targeting. The US and Norway recently launched Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission to maintain contact with military facilities in the High North.

The scenario concerning analysts is what would happen if Russia made a move on Svalbard, citing a possible Trump military move on Greenland as justification to protect its own national assets. Moscow can clearly portray America’s activities as looking for provocation, while positioning itself as the defender of the Svalbard Treaty. It’s unlikely that Russia would occupy the main settlement, but it could start expanding its loss-making mining colony at Barentsburg and smuggling in equipment.

Russia would also be able to jam and spoof the satellites Svalbard maintains links with, and in so doing disrupt global communications. Given Russia’s stalemate in Ukraine, a move against Svalbard makes much more sense than moving against the Baltic States.

An invasion is not seen as militarily possible, and even without a NATO response the combined Scandinavian forces are impressive. But in many ways Svalbard is a modern-day Thermopylae – a vulnerable pinch point for information. It’s also been called NATO’s Achilles’ Heel.

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TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: annexation; denmark; greenland; pituffik; space; svalbard; thule

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

Proposal to Denmark:

We will trade you Minnesota for Greenland.

To sweeten the deal, we'll even build at our own expense a 30 ft high border wall around Minnidishu.

[SeekAndFind]

Yu might want to add Illinois while you’re at it... :)

[rktman]

Make it a US terrtitory. Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico.......

[Lysandru]

I am pleased that they mention the AN/FPS-132 radar at Pituffik, but they failed to mention the vital Thule Tracking Station (TTS), part of the Space Force’s Satellite Control Network (SCN)

[Hootowl]

20 years ago, working as a technical writer, I authored the systems manual for the Thule Tracking Station.

[Carry_Okie]

I scanned Svalbard on Google Maps. There is one clearly Russian dominated settlement with what looks like a small phased array. A lot of what is there is for Arctic research. Even the Czechs have a research station there. One airport, one landing strip. Not much in the way of a dock except for cruise ships.

I really don’t get why throwing their weight around is such a Russian thing, but it clearly is some sort of outsized inferiority complex. Don’t know why. We could all be making a lot more money without it.

[Mariner]

“Russia would also be able to jam and spoof the satellites Svalbard maintains links with, and in so doing disrupt global communications. “

The author needs to go back to truth school.

Jamming and spoofing sats that Svalbard comms with will only affect comms in the Arctic Circle.

And nowhere in the article is reasoning or advocacy for taking Greenland.

[Chainmail]

"...but it clearly is some sort of outsized inferiority complex.

That is true: I spent some time in the USSR/Russia as a US military officer inspecting military facilities and verifying weapons destruction for various treaties. I found that the Russians viewed American military forces and equipment as far superior to theirs and were very insecure.

While I was there, I found that their missiles worked well, their equipment functioned well even in their ridiculous weather and in the hands of their poorly-trained conscripts.

But despite their huge mass of weapons and people, they were sure that we would overcome them and win, that we were overwhelmingly powerful.

I did nothing to disabuse them of that belief.

[Secret Agent Man]

Very cool

[Carry_Okie]

Thanks for the report. It’s an immensely destructive paranoia. A lot of people have suffered and died for its ambitions. I’m damned tired of it.

[The Sons of Liberty]

I agree Pituffik currently IS key to our missile warning and Golden Dome, but I question if this is wise. Just how long it would survive if the russkies decided to launch? It is on the coast of Greenland, which means a russian sub could sail up very close and lob a cruise missile that would hit in 3 - 4 minutes or less. Even if it were located further inland, the warning time would be very minimal, especially if they use a low flying hypersonic missile. By the time we figured out what had happened, and reacted, it would be too late.

[9YearLurker]

Lauder is the one who first suggested it to Trump: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-lauder-billionaire-donor-donald-trump-ukraine-greenland

And Trump apparently at one point thought of a Greenland/Puerto Rico trade:

“Mr. Bolton, concerned about expanding Chinese influence in the Arctic, thought that an increased American presence in Greenland made sense but that an outright purchase was not feasible. Mr. Trump kept pushing. He suggested taking federal money from Puerto Rico, which he disparaged, and using it to buy Greenland. On another occasion, he suggested outright trading Puerto Rico for Greenland.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/us/politics/trump-greenland.html

[Robert357]

There are historic alternatives, that should also be discussed. "......Those (DEW Line, Distant Early Warning radar) installations, which were constructed by the U.S. military on remote Arctic tundra beginning in 1954, were manned around the clock by U.S. and Canadian military personnel as an extension of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). .....The DEW Line was coordinated with several similar radar detection networks, such as the Pinetree Early Warning Line (which spanned the width of southern Canada near the 49th parallel), the Mid-Canada Line (which spanned the width of Canada at the 55th parallel), and the U.S. Navy's Atlantic and Pacific Barrier, as well as air and sea patrols and radar stations in Iceland, Great Britain, the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, and Greenland. The first phase of the DEW Line became operational on July 31, 1957, and the line was expanded to encapsulate the Aleutian Islands and Greenland by 1961........" Note that the North Warning System is a joint United States and Canadian early-warning radar system for the atmospheric air defense of North America. It provides surveillance of airspace from potential incursions or attacks from across North America's polar region. It replaced the Distant Early Warning Line system in the late 1980s. So this appears to capable, at least historically, to be done by treaty and joint military accords.

[bitt]

P

[Nuc 1.1]

Well Done!

[gildafarrell]

Uh, control space? That’s a rather large area. Over-reach, much?

[gnarledmaw]

Well,ya yknow. Its like a sandwich, one little bite at a time.