As the threat of nuclear war loomed during the Cold War, the U.S. Army hatched a top secret plan to conceal hundreds of missile launchers on rail lines hidden beneath the thick ice sheets of Greenland.
In case of a Soviet attack, nukes dispersed in thousands of miles of cut-and-cover tunnels could be launched within 20 minutes. The name for the effort was worthy of a Hollywood action movie: Project Iceworm.
“Iceworm formed part of the broader U.S. ‘polar strategy,’ which saw the Arctic as a crucial arena for Cold War nuclear deterrence — a direct route for both Soviet attack and U.S. strategic defense,” said Kristian Nielsen, a historian of science at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of the book “Camp Century: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice.”
American fascination with Greenland as a forward military position is not new. Neither are Danish and Greenlandic doubts about the trustworthiness of the U.S. During the Cold War, a number of military initiatives were kept secret and never disclosed to Greenlanders or the Danes.
“When the Iceworm documents were declassified in 1996, they caused tension and unease because they suggested the U.S. had explored major military plans in Greenland without informing Denmark,” Nielsen said.
The Danish government has repeatedly rejected President Trump’s call to take over, or buy, Greenland, an autonomous territory that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Public opinion polls show that Greenlanders overwhelmingly oppose American control.
Though Project Iceworm never became reality, its history and that of U.S. military activity in Greenland do a lot to explain wariness over Trump’s plans for the island.
Just what those plans might entail is unclear. “Greenland may still play a role in emerging U.S. missile-defense initiatives, such as [the] Golden Dome, early-warning systems, or hosting interceptor capabilities, though nothing resembling Iceworm’s underground missile network,” Nielsen said.
Last month, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Trump ruled out using military force to take the island, but insisted the United States needs Greenland for national security. “All we are asking for is to get Greenland, including right, title and ownership because you need the ownership to defend it,” he said. “You can’t defend it on a lease.”
600 nukes under ice
In the 1960s, as Project Iceworm was being evaluated by the Department of Defense, the U.S. had just started operating Camp Century, a nuclear-powered scientific post in northwestern Greenland almost 130 miles away from the island’s coast, also a site for covert military activity.
By that time, the Army was touting the base as a cutting-edge “city under ice” for Arctic research in PR campaigns on American media, while also secretly using it as a testbed to determine whether missile tunnels under the ice sheet were feasible.
“The concept takes advantage of Northern Greenland’s remoteness from populated areas, its relative closeness to Soviet targets, the unique adaptability of the Icecap to nuclear deployment, and the proximity of the Thule Base,” according to a 1962 declassified Army report titled “The U.S. Army’s Iceworm Concept” and forwarded to The Times by Nielsen.
Thule, now called Pituffik Space Base, was built during World War II, one of several military installations established during the war. It once held as many as 10,000 U.S. military personnel. In 1946, three years before the creation of NATO, the Truman administration proposed buying Greenland for $100 million in gold, but the Danes didn’t accept the bid, according to Department of State documents declassified in the 1970s.
2nd Lt. Peter B. Moulton, standing, uses a surveying instrument during the construction of Camp Century, a U.S. military base in Greenland, in June 1959.
(Pictorial Parade/Getty Images)
Plans for Project Iceworm considered placing around 600 missiles, at least four miles apart, in a deployment area as large as Alabama, according to the report. Mounted on rail lines, the missiles could be moved about to evade detection by the Soviets. This setup, the report said, would allow launching sites to be “relatively invulnerable” to enemy warheads, requiring a “massive blanket Soviet thermonuclear attack” to destroy Iceworm launchers.
The missiles would be be hidden “28 feet beneath the surface of the Icecap,” almost the height of a three-story building.
For that reason, scientists drilled into Greenland’s ice core to study its sub-layers and assess if Iceworm tunnels were viable. The work produced a nonmilitary benefit by gathering data that “helped reveal Earth’s climate history over the past 100,000 years,” says Ronald Doel, a professor of history at Florida State University who co-edited the book “Exploring Greenland: Cold War Science and Technology on Ice.”
“Iceworm’s potential promise certainly helped government officials to endorse and embrace the construction of Camp Century,” he said. “At the same time, research on Greenland’s environment was indeed required to successfully operate there and elsewhere in the Arctic.”
Some of those findings, for instance, were crucial for uncovering the effects of climate change. The frozen soil and ice collected beneath Camp Century provided scientists an early lengthy and detailed record of Earth’s climate from the last 100,000 years, pioneering the kind of paleoclimatologic research that showed how human activities are warming the planet.
A Swiss-made snow removal machine cuts a trench during the construction of Camp Century in Greenland in 1959.
(Pictorial Parade/Getty Images)
Project Iceworm’s legacy
Project Iceworm was shelved in 1962, after it was deemed too technically difficult — the ice sheet shifts — and as the Navy and Air Force pursued less burdensome projects on Greenland. Also, American officials weren’t sure if Danes would back the endeavor.
Also, when Camp Century was decommissioned around five years after Project Iceworm was scrapped, the Army left hazardous waste behind, such as up to 52,000 gallons of diesel and radioactive materials, residues from the small nuclear reactor that had powered the base.
Now, as the island’s ice melts because of climate change, those contaminants might be thrown into the environment. “The remnants of Camp Century are being carried to the west coast of Greenland as ice flows in the ice cap, and at some point will be exposed,” Doel said.
This is, once more, another piece of bad news for Greenlanders. As the Inuit has gained more political independence from Denmark in the last few decades, such as home rule status, it also may foster a far more fierce opposition against American military moves on the island.
“Today, Iceworm serves mainly as a historical reminder that the U.S. has often viewed Greenland primarily through a security lens — with limited consideration for Greenlandic political interests,” Nielsen said.
