GLOBUS is a radar system in the town of

Vardø Vardo or Vardø may refer to: Places * Vardø Municipality, a municipality in Finnmark county, Norway *Vardø (town) (Norwegian language, Norwegian; ), , or is a List of towns and cities in Norway, town and the administrative centre of Vard� ...

Vardø Municipality Vardø (; ; ; ) is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Finnmark Counties of Norway, county in the extreme northeastern part of Norway. Vardø is the easternmost town in Norway, more to the east than Saint Petersburg or Istanbul. ...

Finnmark Finnmark (; ; ; ; ) is a counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. By land, it borders Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland (Finland), Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norweg ...

county, Norway. It is operated by the

Norwegian Intelligence Service The Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) or () is a Norway, Norwegian military intelligence agency under the Chief of Defence (Norway), Chief of Defence and the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Defence. History Olav Njølstad says tha ...

(NIS) and its official uses are primarily space observation and Arctic airspace monitoring for Norway's national interest, though the site's close proximity to known Russian naval bases as well as U.S. involvement in construction and funding have fueled suspicions that it also serves as part of an American missile defense system.

History

Cold War and Globus I

Norway and the United States, both founding members of the newly-formed

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 ...

, began cooperation on the GLOBUS project during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

era of the 1950s. By 1988, the Globus I radar array was built and operational in the town of

, just from the border between Norway and the Soviet Union and within visible range of the

Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (; ) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is border ...

, which is known to contain high-security Russian naval bases. This came within the same year that the U.S. condemned the deployment of a large Soviet radar array near

Krasnoyarsk Krasnoyarsk is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is situated along the Yenisey, Yenisey River, and is the second-largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk, with a p ...

, claiming that this violated the 1972

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, also known as the ABM Treaty or ABMT, was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ball ...

Globus II

Originally known as HAVE STARE, the Globus II radar was built by the

Raytheon Company Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major List of United States defense contractors, U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Fou ...

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg S ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

and became operational in 1995. It is designated AN/FPS-129 according to the U.S. military's

Joint Electronics Type Designation System The Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS), which was previously known as the Joint Army-Navy Nomenclature System (AN System. JAN) and the Joint Communications-Electronics Nomenclature System, is a method developed by the U.S. War Depa ...

, as it is the 129th design of an Army-Navy “Fixed, Radar, Search” electronic device. Although the cost of the radar is classified, it is believed to have cost more than US$100 million. In 1999 Raytheon moved the array to Vardø, Norway in fulfillment of a US$23.5 million contract with the

U.S. Defense Department The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, t ...

and operations resumed under Norwegian control in 2001.

Globus III

In 2016 construction began on a new array dubbed the Globus III to replace Globus I and work in concert with Globus II. The new radar was estimated to cost US$121 million. On 13 February 2018 it was reported that the local population felt misled about the size of the radar. The construction work was shrouded in secrecy, and many locals were critical, but they were reluctant to speak out because the project brought sorely needed employment to the community. Testing was set to begin in autumn of 2018 with an expected operational date of 2022.

Purpose and controversy

The site is administrated by NIS and operated by Norwegian personnel only. Their website officially states that the radar is used to: *Monitor, track and categorize objects in space *Monitor our national area of interest in the north *Carry out collection of data for national use in research and development The installation is included as a dedicated sensor in the world-wide

United States Space Surveillance Network The United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN) detects, tracks, catalogs and identifies artificial objects orbiting Earth, e.g. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris. The system is the responsibility of Uni ...

for tracking objects orbiting Earth.

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

, the company that built Globus II, previously described it on their website as a radar "originally designed to collect intelligence data against ballistic missiles". The website has since been removed by request of the

US DoD The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, t ...

. In April 1998, a Norwegian journalist, Inge Sellevåg, from the daily newspaper ''

Bergens Tidende is Norway's fifth-largest newspaper, and the country's largest newspaper outside Oslo. is owned by the public company Schibsted ASA. Norwegian owners held a mere 42% of the shares in Schibsted at the end of 2015. History and profile Founded ...

'' discovered that NASA had no knowledge of a new radar being added to the system, despite the Globus II nearing operational condition. This led her to suspect it had other purposes, and Sellevåg discovered that it was also going to be used for national purposes such as intelligence gathering. In 2000, during a storm, the

radome A radome (a portmanteau of "radar" and "dome") is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna (radio), antenna. The radome is constructed of material transparent to radio waves. Radomes protect the antenna from weathe ...

was torn off and uncovered the Globus II radar dish. At that time it was pointing directly towards

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. A local newspaper editor commented: "I'm not an expert, but I thought space was in the sky." Official comments claimed that the radar was still being tested and that it being pointed towards Russia was a pure coincidence. NIS official

Tom Rykkin Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name. Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Tom'' (1973 film), or ''The Bad Bunch'', a blaxploitation film * ''Tom'' (2002 film) ...

stated "if you use a small part of the brain, you know this also has an intelligence mission. ... In the intelligence business, there are certain things you don't make public. It is the nature of the business." The

Russian Defense Ministry The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (; MOD) is the governing body of the Russian Armed Forces. The President of Russia is the Commander-in-Chief of the forces and directs the activity of the ministry. The Minister of Defence exerci ...

raised complaints that the radar installation violates the

and were supported in this claim by missile defense expert

Theodore Postol Theodore A. Postol (born 1946) is a professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to his work at MIT, he worked at Argonne National Laboratory, the Pentagon, and Stanford ...

of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

. In March 2017, nine Russian bombers took off from Russia's nearby

and executed a mock air strike against the radar station, flying in attack formation and turning back just before breaching Norwegian airspace. Then in February of the following year, a very similar mock strike was carried out by eleven Russian fighter jets. Regarding the GLOBUS system, Russian spokesperson

Maria Zakharova Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova (, ; born 24 December 1975) is a Russian politician who serves as the director of the information and press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federa ...

stated in 2019 "There is every reason to believe that the radar will monitor precisely the territory of the Russian Federation and will become part of the US missile defense system" and added "It seems obvious to me that military preparations near Russian or any other borders cannot be ignored by our or other countries. We presume that we will take response measures to ensure our own security." Shortly after these statements Russia deployed a Bal missile system to the

Sredny Peninsula Sredny Peninsula (, lit. ''middle peninsula'') is a peninsula at north part of continental European Russia. The peninsula is connected with the continent by a thin isthmus and with Rybachy Peninsula by a similar thin isthmus, making it nearly comp ...

, just from Vardø.

Technical description

According to the U.S. Department of Defense in 2022, "The GLOBUS program is a dual band ground-based radar system consisting of an S-band solid state phased array, an X-band dish antenna, an Integrated System Controller (ISC), and a Mission Communications Suite (MCS) hosted at an Outside Continental United States (

OCONUS The contiguous United States, also known as the U.S. mainland, officially referred to as the conterminous United States, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America. The ter ...

) location. The

S-band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the convention ...

sensor is mounted on an

azimuth An azimuth (; from ) is the horizontal angle from a cardinal direction, most commonly north, in a local or observer-centric spherical coordinate system. Mathematically, the relative position vector from an observer ( origin) to a point ...

-only pedestal, housed in a new facility. The

X-band The X band is the designation for a band of frequency, frequencies in the microwave radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In some cases, such as in communication engineering, the frequency range of the X band is set at approximately 7.0� ...

sensor is a large aperture dish mounted on an elevation/azimuth pedestal. Each sensor may operate independently or cooperatively under the control of the ISC."

References

External links

A GLOBUS II / HAVE STARE SOURCEBOOK
Federation of American Scientists

GlobalSecurity.org * {{AN/FPS Military equipment introduced in the 1980s Military installations in Finnmark Missile defense United States Space Surveillance Network Vardø Military electronics of the United States