If You Think Greenland is Strategic...
look west
Over the weekend, Sal Mercogliano posted a great visual of the great circle route between the USA and East Asia.
You know I love great circle analysis, but for my long-standing Front Porch members, what other favorite topics of mine come to mind, or what popped into your head?
Yep’r … the Arctic and the neglected High North.
We have our bases in Washington State, and we have access to bases in Japan, but what is helping to keep an eye on things, from ships at sea, to aircraft, to … ballistic missiles, taking the shortest route from East Asia to the West Coast of the USA?
Hmmmm…looks like a vulnerability. What can we do to address the problem?
Well, previous generations already solved it. Let’s check in with Patty Nieberg’s article from mid-month in Task & Purpose.
Last week, the top commander in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Paparo, joined other military officials in calling for a revival of a base on Adak Island, a tiny, rocky outpost in Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. The island, which sits halfway between mainland Alaska and Russia, would give the U.S. “an opportunity to gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate,” Paparo said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
…
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has actively pushed the Pentagon to build up Alaska-based forces, called Adak “the gateway to the Arctic,” noting that it sits nearly 1,000 miles west of Hawaii.
“It would enable up to ten times the maritime patrol reconnaissance aircraft coverage of that key and increasingly contested space,” Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, INDOPACOM, said.
The defunct base remains largely intact, with three piers, two 8,000-ft runways — long enough for any plane in the U.S. arsenal, including B-52s — a hangar, and 22 million gallons of fuel storage, according to Sullivan. Videos from more recent visitors highlight entire neighborhoods of decaying but still-standing base housing.
Make Adak Great Again.
Hardship? Meh…not as bad as Thule (I’m sorry, I refuse to call it the politically correct and unpronounceable new name that is only useful because its nickname is so funny, “Pituffik“). There is plenty of fishing and hunting, and more importantly…she is perfectly positioned to cover the gap.
I would be remiss if I did not repeat my call from last fall.
It is time for a serious nation to do serious things. We are blessed with our geography to protect some of the most valuable geography we have. We need to build our base in Nome, AK.
Read the link above about Nome. If the Arctic is as important as everyone says it is, and the future is in the Pacific, then no other nation has the ability to control and secure access to the Arctic like the USA, with Russia a close second.
Adak in the above map is clearly the outer-gate to the Arctic. What is the inner-gate?
Nome.
There is no excuse to ignore our inheritance and show contempt toward our blessings.
Adak and Nome: now more than ever.
Get started now. You can use funding via DOGE to kickstart things this year, then get more funding in the next NDAA.
I spent entirely too much time on Adak, deployed there with VP-50. A fisherman buddy said that when the salmon were running, you could walk across the streams on the backs of the fish, without getting your feet wet. The winter weather was especially miserable; it was just warm enough so that the slush wouldn't freeze.
And if you like Adak for being close to Russia, then you should REALLY like Shemya; "It's not the end of the world, but you can see that from here."
I agree Greenland is strategic. I am still at a loss to understand why America must own it in order to defend it, though. Denmark is a NATO ally, and one of the more trustworthy ones at that. If Greenland is attacked then Denmark can call on us to help, and we will do so. What am I missing here that means we absolutely have to own it for US national security?