NATO and Washington worry about Russian subs in the High North

http://www.dw.com/en/nato-and-washington-worry-about-russian-subs-in-the-high-north/a-43533440

NATO and Washington worry about Russian subs in the High North

Date 26.04.2018

Captain Jon Gudnason, commander of Iceland's Keflavik Air Base for the last 30 years, chuckled when recalling the brief phone call he got from US officials in May 2014. They informed him they wanted to reinstall some personnel in the base they'd left eight years earlier.

"[They said] 'can we come tomorrow?'" he told DW in his office at the air base. Gudnason said he didn't ask any questions, just started preparing. "We are used to things like this," he shrugged. "This is what we are here for." The Americans would later explain that Washington wanted to restart submarine surveillance due to a surge in Russian deep-sea activities, a plan that would be formalized in a bilateral government agreement in 2016.

Four years after that phone call, Keflavik Air Base is not — and the Icelandic government says it never will be — the massive military outpost it was during the Cold War, when the heavily resourced US naval station there was staffed by some 3,000 American service members, deemed critical for keeping an eye on the Russians. Those forces departed in 2006, more than 50 years after the US first established a presence in Keflavik, as Russian submarine activity was no longer dynamic, and sub-hunting — the major task of the facility — was no longer considered crucial.

But times have changed, and Iceland's strategic significance with them. An allocation by the US Congress last year of $14.4 million (€11.8 million) to upgrade a hangar and other facilities at Keflavik illustrates how worried Washington has become about its lack of surveillance capability in the High North.
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