Denmark’s top defence official says the country is exploring options for acquiring a fleet of Boeing P-8A maritime patrol aircraft.

Speaking to local Danish broadcaster TV2 on 15 September, defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Copenhagen will invest “billions” of euros to field an unspecified number of the US-made jets to monitor the waters around Greenland.

Denmark may pursue the acquisition alone or in conjunction with other NATO allies.

“I would prefer that we cooperate with other NATO countries to get the most for the money and to have a greater degree of flexibility,” Poulsen says. “But if that is not possible, I am also willing for us to acquire the P-8 aircraft capacity ourselves.”

Exactly how a joint procurement would work is unclear.

Fellow NATO member Canada is in the process of acquiring 14 P-8As from Boeing, along with 11 uncrewed MQ-9Bs from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, to provide maritime reconnaissance and surveillance of Canada’s vast Arctic coastline.

That region borders Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. Copenhagen has responsibility for the defence of Greenlandic territory.

“We need to have a better picture of what is happening around Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” Poulsen notes.

Located between Iceland and Scotland in the North Atlantic, the Faroe Islands are another autonomous territory of Denmark that command the open water approach to the North Sea, the Kattegat strait, and Baltic Sea – all of which would be hotly contested in a conflict between NATO and Russia.

Poulsen specifically notes the anti-submarine warfare capability of the P-8A, saying the jets could be used to monitor the strategic waters between Greenland and Europe for Russian ships and submarines.

Known in national security circles as the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, or GIUK, the waterway is a critical choke point for any vessels transiting between Europe and North America, including supply ships and submarines of the fast attack ballistic missile variety.

A group of Danish lawmakers and government officials will consider the options for P-8A acquisition in the coming weeks.

The conversations come as Copenhagen is seeking to bolster its security posture in Greenland and fend off criticism from the USA that Denmark is not adequately guarding against activity around the strategic island by Russia and China.

At the start of his current term in January, US President Donald Trump and several of his allies repeatedly suggested that Washington would seek to assert a greater degree of control over Greenland, citing vague concerns about national security and mining rights.

This month, Denmark is leading a of military exercises throughout Greenland called Arctic Light 2025, which also includes forces from France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. Poulsen was in Greenland’s capital Nuuk to observe the event.

The US military, which operates a leased space force base in northern Greenland, was notably not invited to participate in the drills.

“We work together with colleagues on the US Pituffik Space Base, but they were not invited with units for this exercise,” Major General Soren Andersen told Reuters on 17 September.

Andersen is Denmark’s senior military commander for the Arctic region.

US-made Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters from the Royal Danish Air Force (RDAF) were among the military contingent deployed to Greenland for the multi-national drills.

Andersen says several of those aircraft are expected to land at US Space Force’s Pituffik base.

“So, we will land up there, and I think the pilots will have a cup of coffee with the base commander there,” Andersen told the Associated Press on 16 September.

The RDAF later confirmed that two of its F-16s had made the trip to Pituffik on 16 September, along with one of the service’s Bombardier Challenger 604 patrol aircraft and an Airbus Defence & Space A330 Phenix multi-role tanker transport from the French air force. 

Washington in 2022 committed some $4 billion to maintaining and improving operations at the Cold War-era base, previously known as Thule air base.

That site, which is the Pentagon’s northernmost outpost, is home to a ballistic missile early warning system, satellite control and tracking facilities and a full air base, capable of supporting modern fighter jets, transport aircraft and aerial refuelling tankers.

The US embassy in Copenhagen says that the airfield boasts a 3,048m (10,000ft) runway and more than 3,000 US and international flights per year.

Earlier this year, Danish officials suggested they might invest in infrastructure improvements at another Greenland airfield that would allow the RDAF to station its Lockheed F-35A stealth fighters there.