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Denmark to ‘close surveillance gap’ with new Faroe Islands radar

Denmark and the Faroe Islands announced on Thursday installation of a new radar which they said would improve surveillance coverage of Faroese airspace.

Published: 9 June 2022 12:43 CEST

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Faroe Islands

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Faroe Islands on June 8th. Photo: Ida Marie Odgaard/Ritzau Scanpix

Danish Minister of Defence Morten Bødskov signed an agreement over the air warning radar with Faroese counterpart Jenis av Rana during a visit to the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of Denmark, on Thursday.

“We are looking at a forthcoming time with increased activity. Much of the Russian military is currently concentrated on Ukraine, but there is no doubt that we will see increased activity in our region,” Bødskov said.

A previous radar installation on the Faroe Islands was removed in 2007, leaving a gap in radar coverage in the territory’s airspace.

The new radar is expected to be located at Sornfelli, a site where a radar has previously stood. It is expected to take five years to install.

Defence alliance Nato currently does not have a full picture of flight traffic from the northern part of Great Britain towards the Faroe Islands, Iceland and southern parts of Greenland.

“There has been a gap, and it must be closed. The new security situation in Europe is also an important reason for it becoming more relevant to close that gap,” Bødskov earlier said in reference to the war in Ukraine.

The radar is part of an Arctic spending plan passed by the Danish parliament in February. That agreement required Faroese permission for the radar to be built.

Several politicians in the Faroe Islands’ Lagtinget parliament have however accused Copenhagen of making the decision without them.

That resulted in extensive Faroese discussion of the matter before Bødskov was eventually given the go-ahead.

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Denmark has space for up to 3.6 million people in underground bunkers

Denmark currently has space for around 3.6 million people or 61 percent of the population in shelters and bunkers.

Authorities have been working on the count for two years. It shows a decline since the previous count in 2002, when 4.7 million places were found, newspaper Jyllands-Posten reports.

The 2002 count was initiated in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, while the 2022 review was in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Bunkers, public shelters and underground annexes like extra rooms under public garages or in basements make up the total number of spaces that can be used.

Of the total 3.6 million spaces, 3.4 million are in bunkers which could be prepared if needed, the Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) states on its website.

The agency distinguishes between a sikringsrum, a specially made bunker, and beskyttelsesrum, ‘safe rooms’ inside normal buildings that can be used for shelter in the event of an air raid or other event that made it unsafe to be in the rest of the building.

Some of the rooms are used for other purposes in peacetime and would have to be prepared for emergency use.

READ ALSO: CHECKLIST: The emergency supplies Denmark advises you to stock up on

Many of the state-owned bunkers are in disrepair and would need some work in order to be usable, meanwhile.

“They need to be inspected for water and mould and that would have large costs,” Lars Robetje, the deputy leader of the national organisation for emergency services, told news wire Ritzau.

Many of the bunkers are Second World War-era constructions that have been sealed, he explained.

“Politically, war was done away with [as a threat to Denmark, ed.] in the 2000s, and just after that all the funding we spent on maintenance and service of concrete bunkers was cancelled,” he said.

READ ALSO: Danish defence analyst: ‘You shouldn’t be worried about war’

State-owned bunkers come under the auspices of municipalities, who are thereby responsible for their upkeep.

Laws dictate that local authorities should be able to ready them in response to an order from the interior ministry.

“I’m not a military analyst but as a professional within the emergency services I would say there’s a lot of other things we should focus on ahead of concrete bunkers,” he said.

“For example, the threat from hybrid war that could affect our power supplies or data traffic,” he said.

READ ALSO: Seven in ten Danes ‘fear attack’ on critical digital infrastructure

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