Radar Warning System at Edge of World Angers Soviets, Eskimos

Despite Soviet protests and Eskimo grumbling, the Pentagon has switched on a new $100-million radar system at this top-of-the-world outpost, an electronic eye peering farther and faster in the search for incoming missiles.

The Phased Array Warning System towers 10 stories high atop a gale-swept bluff, standing among the antennas of the world’s biggest radar complex, four 400-foot-wide grids in service since 1960 and now being torn down.

“The new radar will perform exactly the same mission as the old radar, only more efficiently,” said the base commander, Col. James W. Knapp of the U.S. Air Force.

But the Soviets complain that the phased array radar, operational since June 24, violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And the local Eskimos are demanding compensation for having been uprooted in the first place to make way for the U.S. base on the frozen northwest coast of this huge Danish island.

265 Military Personnel

In the 1950s, remote, secretive Thule--it’s pronounced “Too’-lee”--supported Strategic Air Command bombers and was manned by up to 10,000 Americans.

With the advent of intercontinental missiles, however, Thule’s mission changed to early-warning radar detection. Today only 265 U.S. military personnel are stationed here, along with about 1,200 Danish and American civilians, who handle everything from radar maintenance to tending bar.

Thule’s setting, in stark white and gray, is spectacular.

The base is wedged between icy Baffin Bay and Greenland’s vast inland ice cap, a brilliant backdrop that looms up just a few miles away.

Severe Weather

The weather, 940 miles from the North Pole, tends toward the extreme: temperatures as low as minus 47 Fahrenheit and winds as high as 207 m.p.h.--second-highest ever recorded anywhere. Furious storms strike in the round-the-clock darkness of the polar winter. One mega blizzard last season trapped radar crews at their posts for 27 hours.

“This place is like being on the back side of the moon,” said Master Sgt. William Cook, 37, of Panama City, Fla., just completing a one-year tour of duty at Thule. “But they’ve spent time and money to try to make it worthwhile for the troops.”

To fight the isolation, the base offers a well-equipped gym and well-stocked shopping exchange, nightly movies and band entertainment, a 10,000-book library, even flowers flown in from Denmark for the club restaurant. Five-channel cable television is being installed.

Some diversions are surprising: Seventy-two golfers climbed 700 feet to the table-top summit of a local landmark July 5 to play in the annual Mount Dundas Open.

‘A Real Challenge’

“Civilization is a little different in Thule,” Lt. Col. Scott Miller, the radar unit commander, observed with a smile. “But from the job perspective, it’s a real challenge.”

Base commander Knapp displayed a polar-projection map to show Greenland’s strategic importance.

“We’re used to looking at the Mercator map of the world, where Greenland is lost off to the right somewhere,” he told a visiting reporter. The polar projection, on the other hand, shows that Thule lies on the path between the Soviet and American heartlands.

Thule’s BMEWS radars--Ballistic Missile Early Warning System--would spot Soviet missiles as they arched into space over the Arctic. These sightings would corroborate those of satellites.

Wider Coverage

The new phased array radar can see 3,200 miles, 200 miles farther than the old system, and has a 240-degree arc of coverage, from the Arctic down to the North Atlantic, 40 degrees more than the old.

Rather than depend on massive grids and mechanical movement of radar dishes, the phased array device transmits radar pulses in many directions instantaneously, via minutely timed signals to 2,650 electronic elements on each of two 84-foot-square flat faces.

The phased array also saves on manpower: A staff of 13 per shift, contrasted with 26 for the old system.

“It’s basically the difference between the technology of 30 years ago and of today,” Miller said.

Tied to Star Wars

The Soviet Union says the difference is so great it should not be allowed.

The Soviet Foreign Ministry protested July 24 that the Thule radar violates the ABM treaty because that 1972 pact, which limits the superpowers’ anti-missile defenses, prohibits installation of such a qualitatively new tracking system outside U.S. territory. Thule could become part of President Reagan’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, the Soviets argue.

The U.S. government counters that the ABM treaty does permit modernization of existing radars. Although phased array installations probably would be part of any U.S. anti-missile defense shield, Knapp said, “we needed this warning radar whether SDI eventually is a ‘go’ or not.”

When asked about the radar, leaders of the Eskimos scattered in hamlets across this forbidding landscape simply shake their heads.

Challenge to Denmark

“We don’t have the information,” said Ussarqak Qujaukitsoq, local representative in Greenland’s home-rule legislature.

The radar question prompted the left-of-center parties that govern Greenland to form a legislative committee on foreign and security policy, a seeming challenge to Denmark, which retained power in those areas when it granted semi-autonomy to the Greenlanders in 1979.

“This is a sort of preliminary step to gain more influence . . . in these matters,” said Jens Lyberth, a leader of Greenland’s dominant Siumut Party.

One matter that needs quick attention, said Qujaukitsoq, is compensation.

Evicted in 1953

The 39-year-old Eskimo hunter remembers the dog sled journey his family undertook in 1953 when they were evicted from Thule and trekked 100 miles north to a new home, leaving behind seal and walrus hunting grounds.

“Just like that, they were told to go,” he said. “Now we want to get something for that time.”

The U.S. position is that compensation is a matter between the Danish government and its Eskimo citizens. Behind the scenes, however, the Americans talk about possible financial aid for Eskimo housing and educational programs.

The Eskimos, whose political savvy is growing fast, point out that the United States pays no rent for Thule, as it does for military facilities in some other nations.

“Think of the damage here if there is ever a war,” the Eskimo leader said. “The Americans say Thule is very important for Americans. But I have to look at what is important for our country.”

A Danish government study commission will report on the compensation question next year. If the Eskimos are dissatisfied, Qujaukitsoq said, they will take their case to the European Court of Justice or other international forums.