Inside underground Bond-like lair at heart of battle for the Arctic | World News

In Norway’s High North, buried deep inside a mountain, sits a Bond-like lair.

It’s a throwback to a time when nuclear war was deemed an imminent threat.

The entrance to the fortress is down a long, narrow tunnel carved out of the rock.

Thick, heavy metal doors can be closed in the event of an attack, shutting those inside out from the world beyond.

But it has an air, water and food supply to keep them alive for months if needed.

The base, a symbol of the Cold War, is Norway’s military headquarters and sits outside the town of Bodo.

For security reasons, our escorts won’t tell me how deep we are, but it feels like a submarine – no windows, a constant background hum of electricity, and a confusing network of corridors and stairways.

In the operations centre, vast screens monitor every ship and aircraft movement around the Arctic.

Bleak and beautiful, the Arctic seems an unlikely region for conflict and a strange place to position an arsenal of weapons that could wipe out humanity.

But the route over the North Pole is the shortest line between Russia and continental America should either side decide to press the red button.

Tensions over the Arctic have been heating up for years but have been inflamed in recent months by Donald Trump’s threats to “own” Greenland, the detection of Russian spy vessels hovering close to key underwater cables, and a series of hybrid incidents mostly blamed on Moscow.

Here at the Norwegian Armed Forces Joint HQ, the base’s chief Vice Admiral Rune Andersen assesses the tensions as “constants” and “developments”.

The “constant” is Russia, a permanent neighbour, enemy, and a longtime nuclear state.

The “developments” have happened elsewhere but have a direct effect on the situation up here: Russia’s failures in Ukraine have raised the stakes again in the High North.

“We’re seeing increased intelligence-gathering efforts in Norway and in other countries,” Vice Admiral Rune Andersen says.

“We also see activity that could potentially be preparation for sabotage actions.”

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen says Norway feels responsibility for being “NATO’s eyes and ears in this region” – and believes the work here is helping protect the US homeland.

“We have had a constant surveillance and watch in this area throughout the decades, and we’ve seen the [Russian] military presence change since 2017-18.

“Russia started to deploy differently with their submarines and we as Western allies responded by increasing our presence in this region.

“We didn’t look away during those [post-Cold War] years and we maintained a continuum of operations in the High North.”

A crowded neighbourhood

Russia is outnumbered in the region – all seven of the other Arctic states are NATO members. Geography doesn’t tell the full story, however.

NATO’s challenge is that half of the Arctic is Russian coastline (around 24,000 km or 14,900 miles) and over the last two decades Moscow has spent billions of roubles building new military bases and refurbishing old ones along its Arctic coast.

Although the number of NATO bases in the Arctic region is roughly the same as Russian bases, any fracture in the alliance could leave NATO vulnerable.

Russia is not the West’s only adversary in the High North.

In 2018, China officially described itself as a “near Arctic” state, despite its most northerly city sitting on the same latitude as Liverpool and Manchester.

Beijing is desperate for legitimate influence in the polar regions and trying to muscle its way into the area.

As climate change warms the Arctic, new passages open up for a few short summer months.

Commercial ships transiting through the northern sea route, which hugs the Russian coastline, can sail from the Far East to Europe and America 40% faster than through the traditional route via the Suez Canal.

This massively cuts costs and opens up commercial opportunities for Russia because it controls the sea along much of the route.

To that end, China is investing masses of money expanding its fleet of icebreakers to take advantage of this ‘Polar Silk Road’.

An investigation by Sky News’ Data and Forensics unit has found that Russia currently operates 48 state-owned icebreakers, of which eight are nuclear powered. It is the only country in the world to have this capability.

This doesn’t just facilitate commercial shipping, it provides access to remote territories, aids military and scientific operations and generally enhances Russia’s territorial claims in the region.

Icebreakers are so important for operating in the High North that they alone could alter the balance of power in the Arctic. Icebreakers are essential to any operations in the Arctic, be they commercial, security or combating hybrid activities.

No wonder then that China now has at least nine state-owned icebreakers and is fast-tracking investment in more.

Within NATO, the United States owns just eight – not including coast guard ships stationed inland in the Great Lakes – and only four of which have been polar tested.

They also have limited ability to build them domestically.

The Arctic is also a massive, untapped reservoir of natural gas, oil and rare earth minerals.

In 2007, Russian submarines planted a titanium flag on the seabed two and a half miles below the North Pole.

It was a symbolic gesture, ridiculed by other Arctic states, but its message, to prove the Arctic is Russian, was unmistakably menacing.

‘Don’t mess with us’

After spending a week in Norway we fly to Iceland, a country unique in NATO because it has no armed forces.

Its importance lies in its location. Like a giant, permanent aircraft carrier, Iceland sits on the edge of the Arctic Ocean in a strategic position called the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap (GIUK).

Russian submarines and ships transit through the waters either side of Iceland and so the chokepoint is an opportunity for NATO to detect and track their progress before they disappear into the North Atlantic.

In January, the US coastguard intercepted and boarded a tanker south of Iceland. The legality of the operation, in international waters, was dubious, but the ability for the US to carry it out was a direct benefit of its membership of NATO.

Its forces and aircraft were pre-positioned at bases in Britain, the RAF helped with surveillance and the ship’s track was monitored by satellites downlinked to receivers in Europe.

In 2006, when the West was pre-occupied with counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US closed its permanent airbase in Iceland and withdrew around 15,000 American personnel and their families.

Today US forces are back, numbering a few hundred, to keep a constant watch on Russian submarine movements using maritime patrol aircraft.

They’ve been joined on Keflavik Airbase by six fighter jets and 110 personnel from the Swedish Air Force, on their first solo NATO mission since the Scandinavian country joined the alliance less than two years ago.

It was a previously unthinkable move that came about as a result of Russian aggression.

With the grumble of fighter jets above us, Lieutenant Colonel Johan Legardt explains his job of tracking Russian long-range bombers.

“It’s important for me that we stay stable, status quo, show the Russians that we are strong together in NATO and don’t mess with us,” he says.

Iceland’s position means it is undeniably important to the homeland security of the US.

Asked if she worries Trump’s territorial ambitions may extend to Iceland, the country’s foreign affairs minister replies diplomatically.

“He can be a reasonable man when he listens both to the history (Iceland was a founding member of NATO) and why Iceland is so important,” says Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir.

“I would be lying if I did not admit that all kinds of statements coming from one of our best friends through the years and decades would not be concerning.”

“We are not immune when it comes to developments. Of course it’s concerning that it’s fragmented now that’s why it’s more important now that small and middle-sized nations stick together.

“It’s vital for countries like Iceland that we still want desperately to hold to our values; democracy, freedom, human rights etc.”

How the US relies on NATO

If Donald Trump’s methods are unnervingly aggressive towards historical allies, his motives have some merit.

Privately, some senior European military commanders told us they believe Denmark hasn’t done enough on Greenland.

But NATO is starting to make up for lost time.

The Royal Marines recently announced a permanent presence in Norway at Camp Viking south of Tromso, while Norway itself has created the Finnmark Brigade, who we spent time with in the High North.

The Arctic saw double the number of military exercises in 2025 compared to the average over 2020 to 2024, according to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And the day after we arrived, the Icelandic parliament agreed the first defence and security strategy in the country’s history.

Last year in The Hague, NATO members agreed to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 (from a current minimum threshold of 2%) but most currently fall woefully short of that target and will have to accelerate spending far beyond what might be possible if they are to achieve their pledges.

Although US security is undeniably linked to security in the Arctic, the direct exposure of US territory is relatively small.

Our research underlines how much the US relies on allies in the region, for protection and to accommodate its own military.

Take as an example the North American Aerospace Defence Command, better known as NORAD.

Its North Warning System, nicknamed Tripwire, is a network of dozens of radars stretching across the most northerly edge of the continent, monitoring enemy fighter jets and low altitude attacks from cruise missiles.

This belt of largely unmanned stations is supplemented by a network of forward operating locations where fighter jets can be hosted for rapid response missions.

Without this joint partnership with Canada, the US could lose access to more than 80% of the continent’s most northerly radars.

Where interests collide

It has been said many times before, and with increasing desperation in recent months, that NATO collectively outspends and outmuscles Russia, and US membership of NATO is a force multiplier to Washington’s benefit.

Like a private members club, with international affiliates, American forces can be stationed in key locations to project power across Europe and into the Middle East and Africa.

Being a member of this club means US ships and aircraft can use European airspace, ports and bases at short notice and tap into allied logistical resources with ease.

The US might have the biggest military in NATO but it becomes incalculably stronger when surrounded by NATO allies.

From the weeks we spent travelling around the Arctic, it was clear that no one here is in denial.

That NATO has become the world’s most successful military alliance over the past 77 years means zip to a current US president who cares little for history.

The ignorance is dangerous, because less than three miles from the United States, on the other side of the Bering Strait, is another president, this one a voracious student of history with a life ambition to recreate the glory days of the USSR.

The Arctic is the only region in the world where American, Russian and Chinese interests collide.

Up here Trump’s enemies are close, so he would be wiser to keep his friends closer.

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CREDITS

Reporting: Alistair Bunkall, Europe correspondent

Data and Forensics analysis: Kate Schneider and Sophia Massam

Production: Michael Greenfield, Megan Matthews, Michelle Inez Simon

Editing: Adam Parris-Long, Natasha Muktarsingh, Chris Howard

Camera operator: Sam Williams

Graphics and Design: Dan Roulstone, Taylor Stuart, Eloise Atter, Amelia Fulton-Urry, and Angela Martin