The United States has shown renewed interest in Greenland this week. A group of U.S. military engineers conducted an inspection of the Narsarsuaq airfield in the south of the Arctic island. According to Danish public television DR on Thursday, four military personnel surveyed the runway with measurement and mapping equipment and also examined other local infrastructures built by Washington during World War II, which the Pentagon now aims to reuse. The visit to the old Narsarsuaq facilities is the second by U.S. military personnel since last May. This Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he has reached a security agreement on Greenland with Denmark, the country that has sovereignty over the island, although details have not yet been disclosed.
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The U.S. Northern Command confirmed to DR that a team of specialists was conducting “technical studies” at the site: a survey of basic data on the runway dimensions, the condition of the infrastructures, and the terrain characteristics to determine its potential for future use.
Narsarsuaq (“the great plain” in Greenlandic) is a remote village in the south of the vast Arctic island with barely 40 inhabitants. The United States built a military base there in the early 1940s during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, where up to 4,000 people lived—more than in any other Greenlandic locality at the time. The world’s leading power had dozens of military installations in Greenland, which it gradually abandoned; today it only retains the Pituffik space base in the northwest.
The U.S. military withdrew from Narsarsuaq in 1958. In the following decades, the population lived almost exclusively from the airfield that Washington handed over to Copenhagen, which became the main entry port to the south of the island. Everything changed last April when the airport closed, downgraded to a heliport after a new one opened in Qaqortoq, the regional capital. Since then, the village has been losing population.
The visit of the military engineers to Narsarsuaq comes as representatives from Denmark, Greenland, and the United States have been negotiating in Washington for months. The talks began shortly after Trump did not rule out the use of military force to occupy the Danish island. The U.S. president, who already showed interest during his first term, has insisted since winning the 2024 elections that the annexation of Greenland is “absolutely necessary for national security reasons.”
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This week’s visit was not the first by U.S. military personnel to Narsarsuaq. Less than a month after the airport closed, members of the Marine Corps, along with representatives from the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen, traveled there. The soldiers deployed on this occasion belong to the Naval Construction Force, a military engineering unit specialized in evaluating and preparing airfields, ports, and other infrastructures for future military operations.
NATO maneuvers
The presence of U.S. engineers coincided with NATO maneuvers in the area. Between September 7 and 18, about 400 allied military personnel conducted exercises around Narsarsuaq in which the United States did not participate. The deployment included forces from Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Canada, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, while Germany, Poland, and Slovenia contributed observers and logistical support. The Northern Command emphasized to Danish television that the mission of the U.S. engineers at the old military base facilities is unrelated to the Alliance’s maneuvers.
After the Arctic European Summit held in the Finnish city of Rovaniemi, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stated that the island has been under “strong pressure” in recent months and thanked her European partners for their support. The Social Democratic leader also advocated closer cooperation with Washington on security and defense and expressed optimism about the outcome of the negotiations started in January in the U.S. capital. The details of the agreement announced this Friday will be revealed during the UN General Assembly meeting next week.
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