With no air force of its own, for the next five weeks the only thing guarding Iceland from air invasion will be a sextet of Canadian fighter planes.
In mid-March, six CF-18s and more than 160 Canadian Forces personnel bunked down at a Cold War-era base just outside Reykjavik to kick off Operation Ignition, a periodic mission in which Canada takes its turn defending the island nation, which is the only NATO member without a single soldier or pilot on the payroll.
Canadians will monitor radar, escort “unauthorized” aircraft out of Icelandic airspace and practice scrambling jets to “intercept and identify unknown airborne objects,” according to a statement by the Department of National Defense.
True to the operation’s official name as a “peacetime preparedness mission,” the jets will mostly be unarmed.
“Basically, it’s a presence patrol; they’re providing surveillance and interception capabilities,” said Captain Cynthia Kent, spokeswoman for Canadian Joint Operations Command.
Known as “Task Force Iceland,” the fighters and RCAF staff all come from a Canadian Forces base in Bagotville, Que. – the same base that, in 2011, dispatched six fighters to defend the no-fly-zone over Libya.
Protecting Iceland used to be the United States’ job. Starting in 1951, the U.S. military kept an “Icelandic Defence Force” of as many as 1,000 personnel, all stationed at Naval Air Station Keflavik, a base the U.S. regarded as being on the “front lines” of the Cold War.
The Iceland Defence Force was abolished in 2006. Amid wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon announced they could no longer justify spending $250-million a year on a facility designed to counter air threats from the long-defunct Soviet Union.
Ever since, Iceland has hosted what NATO calls “peacetime preparedness missions” in which, several times a year, a NATO country bunks down at Keflavik and takes charge of air defence. At any point, Iceland’s 300,000 citizens could see their skies patrolled by Germans, Norwegians, Danes, Portuguese, French or Americans.
If Iceland should ever find itself embroiled in “crisis or conflict,” however, the island nation’s game plan is to immediately put the United States in charge of defence.
Indeed, part of the idea with the “peacetime preparedness mission” is to get NATO crews accustomed to flying around Iceland so “if required by real world events” they can get a “policing mission” in the air at “the shortest possible notice,” according to the NATO website.
Although the country was founded by Vikings, of late Iceland has never been much of a military power. The country’s militias were using medieval weapons right up until the 1800s and spent most of the 20th century without any form of standing army. During the Second World War, British forces had few problems invading and occupying the island, which was done over fears that it would fall under German control.
NATO membership has often been a touchy subject among Icelanders.
The website for Iceland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes that NATO conducts occasional “air-surveillance missions” over the country, but makes pains to note NATO’s role in nuclear disarmament and women’s rights.
In recent months, Iceland has moved to shift its air defence needs away from NATO by requesting jets from its non-NATO nordic neighbours, Sweden and Finland.
This is the second time Canada has been handled the defence of Iceland. For 30 days in the spring of 2011, Keflavik was home to a fleet of fighters from Cold Lake, Alta.
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