Two Royal Danish Air Force F-35A Lightning II fighters landed at Kangerlussuaq Airport in Greenland on September 16, 2026, alongside four U.S. F-16s and two Canadian CF-18s as part of a multinational NATO air operation. The deployment expands Allied access to Greenland for combat aviation and strengthens the ability to project fighter power across the Arctic and the northern approaches to North America.

The operation shows that Danish, U.S., and Canadian fighters can deploy together into a region where long distances, sparse infrastructure, and severe weather complicate air operations. It also reinforces a broader NATO focus on Arctic readiness, rapid reinforcement and the protection of strategically important northern airspace.

Related Topic: U.S. Northern Command Positions F-35As at the Core of an Evolving Arctic Defense Posture

Two Danish F-35A fighter jets land at Arctic Command’s facility in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, marking the aircraft’s first landing on the island. Photo: Rune Dyrholm / Danish Armed Forces.

The mission was part of NATO’s Arctic Sentry activity and linked aircraft operating from widely separated bases, with Danish F-35As flying from Keflavik Air Base in Iceland and U.S. F-16s and Canadian CF-18s operating from Goose Bay in Canada. A French MRTT tanker, a NATO AWACS aircraft and a Danish Challenger surveillance aircraft supported the operation, providing aerial refueling, airborne command and control, surveillance and search-and-rescue coverage across the High North. Bringing four U.S. F-16s into the same mission as Danish F-35As and Canadian CF-18s gives the exercise a wider operational significance than the first landing alone, as the aircraft had to fly hundreds of kilometers from separate bases and synchronize over Greenland, testing NATO’s ability to assemble combat power across the North Atlantic rather than relying on fighters concentrated at a single airfield.

Greenland matters because its geography connects the European Arctic with the northern approaches to Canada and the United States. Its position between North America, Iceland, and the wider North Atlantic gives Allied air forces access to an area central to aerospace warning, reinforcement, and surveillance across the High North. U.S. and Canadian forces have already used Greenland for dispersed Arctic air-defense operations linked to NORAD, while NATO is placing greater emphasis on its northern flank as military activity and strategic competition increase across the Arctic.

The operational challenge is that fighter missions around Greenland are substantially more demanding than comparable sorties over continental Europe. Weather can change rapidly, distances between suitable diversion airfields are large, and emergency options are limited, forcing pilots and planners to carefully account for fuel margins, alternate airfields, and rescue coverage before takeoff. For the F-35A, this means effective Arctic operations depend not only on the fighter’s range and sensors, but on a larger support architecture capable of keeping the aircraft supplied, connected, and recoverable over a vast, sparsely supported operating area.

During the mission, a French MRTT refueled the Danish F-35As flying from Iceland, increasing their effective radius and preserving fuel for the operational phase of the sortie. This is especially important over Greenland because tanker support allows fighters based in Iceland, Canada, or other northern locations to reach remote sectors without requiring permanent combat-air detachments at every operating location. It also gives crews greater flexibility to remain on station, conduct interception or surveillance tasks, and retain sufficient reserves to divert if weather or technical issues prevent recovery at the planned airfield.

The NATO AWACS aircraft added another important layer by providing wide-area airborne surveillance and command and control. Combined with the F-35A’s own integrated sensors and data-sharing systems, this allows Danish fighters to operate as part of a broader Allied air-defense network rather than as isolated interceptors. The F-35A’s AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar, electro-optical and infrared sensors, and electronic-support functions can collect and fuse information from multiple sources, helping pilots detect, classify, and track activity while contributing data to other aircraft and command centers across a region where ground-based surveillance and command infrastructure are geographically dispersed.

The Danish Challenger aircraft assigned to search-and-rescue coverage illustrates another Arctic-specific operational requirement. An emergency over Greenland can leave a fighter crew hundreds of kilometers from major support infrastructure, meaning recovery assets must be integrated into mission planning from the outset rather than treated as a secondary precaution. In this environment, surveillance aircraft, rescue forces and alternative landing locations directly affect how commanders plan routes, fuel reserves and mission duration.

The first landing at Kangerlussuaq has direct operational significance because it expands the number of locations from which Danish combat aircraft can potentially recover, refuel or reposition. Danish F-16s have previously operated from Greenland, and F-35As had already flown Arctic missions from Iceland, but landing the newer fighter at Kangerlussuaq connects Denmark’s fifth-generation combat aviation directly with Greenlandic infrastructure. Even without a permanent F-35 detachment, access to additional airfields can improve flexibility during a crisis by supporting diversion, temporary staging and reinforcement while reducing dependence on a small number of established bases.

Sustained F-35 operations from Greenland would nevertheless require considerably more than runway access. Fuel, maintenance personnel, spare parts, communications, ground-support equipment and potentially weapons-handling facilities would have to be available or deployable at short notice. Arctic temperatures and weather further complicate this requirement because snow, ice, rapidly changing visibility and cold-weather maintenance conditions can affect ground operations and sortie generation. As a result, maintaining a fifth-generation fighter force in Greenland would depend as much on resilient logistics and support infrastructure as on the aircraft’s performance.

The mission’s multinational composition shows how Allied integration can reduce some of these constraints. Danish F-35As, U.S. F-16s, and Canadian CF-18s operated with French tanker support, NATO airborne surveillance, and Danish search-and-rescue coverage, creating a distributed operational structure spanning Iceland, Greenland, and Canada. This model is particularly relevant in the High North because no single country needs to provide every supporting function independently if NATO and NORAD-related operations can share refueling, surveillance, command and control, and rescue assets.

The participation of four U.S. F-16s also adds importance to the mission for North American air defense. U.S. and Canadian forces have already practiced forward and dispersed Arctic operations from Greenland, and adding Danish F-35As links European and North American combat aviation more closely across the same northern battlespace. For NATO and NORAD, Greenland therefore serves as a geographic bridge between defending the Alliance’s northern flank and surveilling air approaches to Canada and the continental United States.

This becomes more relevant as NATO strengthens its focus on the High North, where Russia maintains major military infrastructure, air bases and long-range aviation forces across its Arctic territories. The operational requirement for Allied forces is not simply to send more fighters northward, but to create a network in which aircraft from different countries can be refueled, controlled, supported and recovered across Iceland, Greenland, Canada and other northern locations. The ability to generate coordinated airpower over such distances is central to improving readiness, surveillance and deterrence in a region where geography imposes significant constraints on every sortie.

For Denmark, the F-35A adds a more advanced surveillance, electronic warfare, and information-sharing capability to the defense of Greenland and the wider Danish Realm than the F-16 it is replacing. The fighter can perform interception and air-defense missions while simultaneously sharing sensor information with other Allied aircraft and command centers, increasing its operational value across large, sparsely monitored areas. Denmark’s decision to expand its F-35 force and strengthen Arctic military capabilities also suggests that operations of this type will likely become more important as Copenhagen builds greater capacity to support NATO missions in Greenland and the North Atlantic.

The first Danish Air Force F-35 fighter jets landing at Kangerlussuaq therefore represents more than an aviation milestone. It shows that Danish fifth-generation fighters can join U.S. F-16s and Canadian CF-18s in a multinational Arctic air operation, fly from bases separated by major distances, receive tanker support, integrate with NATO airborne surveillance and recover in Greenland. For NATO, the broader objective is to turn such deployments into a repeatable Arctic combat-air capability, using Greenland’s strategic position between Europe and North America to support surveillance, reinforcement and air defense across the High North.

Explore More Defense News

• Land Defense News
• Naval Defense News
• Defense Aerospace News

Written by Alain Servaes – Chief Editor, Army Recognition Group
Alain Servaes is a former infantry non-commissioned officer and the founder of Army Recognition. With over 20 years in defense journalism, he provides expert analysis on military equipment, NATO operations, and the global defense industry.