As soon as known as Thule Air Base, now referred to as Pituffik Area Base, this U.S.-operated set up in northwestern Greenland is without doubt one of the maximum strategically necessary army websites on the earth — even supposing maximum American citizens have by no means heard of it.
“It’s moderately actually the outermost eye of American protection,” stated Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, a Danish protection analyst. “Pituffik is the place the U.S. can discover a release, calculate the trajectory and turn on its missile protection methods. 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 come with Vice President JD Vance, who stated on Tuesday that he meant to talk over with “our guardians” within the Area Power whilst there.
About 150 U.S. Air Power and Area Power staff are completely stationed at Pituffik (pronounced Bee-doo-FEEK). They maintain missile protection and house surveillance, and the Upgraded Early Warning Radar founded right here can discover ballistic missiles of their earliest moments of flight.
Each and every summer time, about 70 individuals of the New York Air Nationwide Guard fly into Pituffik to fortify science missions. The use of the U.S. army’s best ski-equipped plane, the LC-130, they ship researchers and provides to camps at the ice sheet.
Pituffik is the one U.S. army base on Greenland.
The historical past
The American army presence in Greenland started all over Global Conflict II, when Greenland used to be a Danish colony. After Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, Greenland used to be all at once remoted and undefended. The US struck a quiet care for Denmark’s ambassador in Washington — bypassing the German-controlled executive in Copenhagen — for American troops to construct airfields and climate stations at the island.
By means of 1941, U.S. forces had landed, putting in place 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 extensive rights to perform army amenities at the island. Greenland is now a semiautonomous a part of Denmark, which, like the US, is a NATO nation.
All through the Chilly Conflict, Thule changed into a key Arctic outpost. From right here, long-range American bombers may just achieve the Soviet Union, and large radar methods have been constructed to discover missiles crossing the polar course — the shortest trail between the 2 superpowers.
One of the most generation’s strangest experiments used to be Camp Century, a nuclear-powered base constructed below the ice within the past due Nineteen Fifties as a part of a secret challenge known as Iceworm. The plan used to be to check whether or not nuclear missiles may well be hidden and introduced from underneath the outside.
“It used to be Chilly Conflict ambition at its wildest,” Mr. Rasmussen stated. “They constructed a nuclear-powered base in one of the crucial antagonistic environments on Earth simply to look if it may well be completed.”
The ice proved too volatile, and the bottom used to be deserted. However the waste — together with radioactive subject material and diesel — remains to be buried and scientists warn that warming temperatures may just in the end reveal it.
The bottom additionally left an enduring mark on Greenland’s Indigenous inhabitants. In 1953, about 130 Inuit have been forcibly relocated from their properties close to Thule to a harsher agreement farther north, poorly suited to conventional searching. Reimbursement got here a long time later, however resentment stays.
The bottom’s title modified two 12 months in the past from Thule to Pituffik, which means that in Greenlandic “where we tie our canines.”
The site
Pituffik sits above the 76th parallel on Greenland’s northwest coast, about 750 miles from the North Pole. It’s one of the crucial faraway army installations on Earth.
The closest agreement, Qaanaaq, is greater than 70 miles away and residential to fewer than 650 other people. Many hunt seals, walrus and, every now and then, polar bears to live on.
In iciness, the solar disappears for weeks and temperatures drop under minus 30 Fahrenheit (minus 34 Celsius). Regardless of the stipulations, Pituffik’s airfield runs year-round. Ships can achieve the bottom best all over a slender summer time window when the ocean ice briefly retreats.
The bottom’s generation
Pituffik is a part of a world internet of U.S. protection infrastructure and a an important station. Army mavens say that as new threats like hypersonic missiles emerge, the early-warning methods at Pituffik are indispensable.
“Hypersonic missiles don’t move into house — they fly low, they maneuver, and we don’t have any technique to intercept them after they’re introduced,” defined Troy J. Bouffard, a retired U.S. Military officer and Arctic protection professional. “That makes early caution extra necessary than ever — and that’s the place Pituffik is available in.”
If a missile have been introduced from Russia or China towards North The usa, it will, Mr. Bouffard stated, perhaps cross over the Arctic.
Pituffik’s ground-based sensors are an important if that’s the case, stated Mr. Bouffard, as a result of satellites don’t paintings smartly in prime latitudes.
Lasers don’t paintings within the Arctic, both, he added. “The air columns are stuffed with ice crystals — mainly tiny mirrors — and lasers and mirrors don’t get alongside,” he stated.
Mr. Bouffard sees Pituffik’s position increasing past radar.
“It will additionally function a ahead staging base or a key line of verbal exchange,” he stated. “The extra ahead those places are, the extra helpful they’re.”
