Bolafjall Radar Station (NATO ID: H-4) is an Icelandic General Surveillance Radar station and part of the

Iceland Air Defence System The Iceland Air Defence System () is a part of the Icelandic Coast Guard. It was founded in 1987 under the Radar Agency of the Icelandic Ministry for Foreign Affairs after an agreement between Iceland and the United States on the takeover by t ...

. It is located atop on Bolafjall near the town of Bolungarvik. It is operated by the

Icelandic Coast Guard The Icelandic Coast Guard (, or simply ) is the Icelandic defence service responsible for search and rescue, maritime safety and security surveillance, national defense, and law enforcement. The Coast Guard maintains the Iceland Air Defence ...

under the joint direction of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

as part of the

Icelandic Air Policing Icelandic Air Policing is a NATO operation conducted to patrol Iceland's airspace. As Iceland does not have an air force, in 2006 it requested that its NATO allies periodically deploy fighter aircraft to Keflavik Air Base to provide protection ...

History

The station was established as a

North Atlantic Treaty Organization The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental transnational military alliance of 32 member states—30 European and 2 North American. Established in the aftermat ...

(NATO) radar station in January 1992, with its construction cost paid by the NATO Infrastructure Fund. While the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

paid for its operational expenses, it was operated by the Radar Agency (Icelandic: ''Ratsjárstofnun'') with civilian staff. The mission of the station was to intercept and shadow all Soviet aircraft in transit in and from the

GIUK gap The GIUK gap (sometimes written G-I-UK) is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean that forms a naval choke point. Its name is an acronym for ''Greenland, Iceland'', and the ''United Kingdom'', the gap being the two stretches of open ocean amo ...

which passed through the detection range of its radars and relay to the

NAS Keflavik Naval Air Station Keflavik (NASKEF) was a United States Navy air station at Keflavík International Airport, Iceland, located on the Reykjanes peninsula on the south-west portion of the island. NASKEF was closed on 8 September 2006 and its faci ...

Radar Operations Control Center (ROCC). In 2006, the United States withdrew its military units from Iceland, leaving the radar station fully in Icelandic hands. In 2008, the Radar Agency was closed and its mission moved to the newly founded Icelandic Defence Agency (Varnarmálastofnun Íslands). Following the closure of the Icelandic Defence Agency, the operations where moved to the

References

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Notes

* Winkler, David F. (1997), Searching the skies: the legacy of the United States Cold War defense radar program. Prepared for United States Air Force Headquarters Air Combat Command. Radar stations of the United States Air Force in Iceland 1992 establishments in Iceland

History

See also

References

Notes