Render of a small launch vehicle launching from SaxaVord Spaceport – via Shetland Flyer Aerial Media
By Susan Walton,
Published by Geopolitical Monitor, 4 May 2025
President Trump wants to buy Greenland, “an absolute necessity” for US national and economic security. Yes, partly due to its abundance of rare earths – particularly yttrium, scandium, neodymium and dysprosium which have military applications, but also because of the island’s geography, with it sitting at the top of what is termed the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom – the GIUK gap – two strategically vital stretches of sea that separate these three islands. The gap historically has been a potential strategic military choke point: in World War II the U.S. occupied Greenland and the Brits took Iceland to secure the gap and prevent the German navy entering the North Atlantic, whilst during the Cold War Soviet naval doctrine dictated that during a “Hot War” their forces would push through the gap to reach the North Atlantic to as to prevent US forces from reinforcing Europe, with a Soviet-occupied Greenland serving as a landing station for an invasion of the US homeland.
With recent geopolitical shifts due to an aggressive Russia and rising China, the gap’s military significance has resurfaced in military strategic thinking. Central to this is Iceland and Greenland’s membership of NATO, with the U.S. maintaining an air force and space force presence at Pituffik in Greenland (including missile warning, missile defence and space surveillance capacities). In Iceland in 2016, the US reopened Keflavik Naval Air Station, then re-established its 2nd Fleet in 2018 to protect the gap, and as recently as March 2025, the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 has increased patrols in the region.
A collision of future strategic ambitions is imminent – one that threatens to compromise Arctic, NATO, and global military security for the advancement of the UK’s national space sovereign launch capability. The integrity and security of the GIUK gap and the freedom of NATO forces to operate within it, is now being imperilled by the developing space strategy – specifically nascent launch capability from the UK and Europe’s leading vertical space port on Shetland, SaxaVord. Launches from this site have the potential to threaten shipping, air travel, environmental, and safety considerations of Iceland, with negative implications for the military security of the gap and NATO as well.
From July onward, SaxaVord intends to launch four rockets a month at peak launch periods, from a site which has yet to have a successful launch (last year an engine exploded on the launchpad during a test), with 30 launches a year planned to then rise to 40-50 under agreements recently signed with the German government to launch military intelligence-gathering satellites via commercial space companies lined up to utilize the port.
However, despite Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) approval following a routine public consultation, substantial risks from SaxaVord to the UK-Iceland section of the gap remain. Just 12 nautical miles out of SaxaVord rockets enter Icelandic air traffic control areas. During launches, and as stipulated in a MoU on space signed between the UK and Iceland in 2021, pre-designated areas of Icelandic sea and airspace will be temporarily closed to accommodate the impact from these launches. These zones include wide areas of Icelandic fishing and civil and military seaspace as well as commercial and military airspace where a rocket could potentially crash or more probably where debris from the rocket’s first stages could fall – or where hazardous, polluting or toxic substances could land.
Some in Iceland are aware of these risks, but they are not widely understood or scrutinized beyond a few civil servants, in a country with no cohesive space strategy and limited space expertise. In an anonymous submission to the CAA SaxaVord space port licence consultation in 2023, widely attributed to Isavia, Iceland’s air traffic control agency, it was estimated that a huge number – 76 flights a day – would need to be rerouted over Iceland airspace during launches, in air space crossed by 25% of all transatlantic flights. Minutes of a meeting between the UK Ministry of Transport and the Icelandic Transport Authority from April 2024, released under a FOI request, reflect ITA concern that closures of air traffic corridors would be ‘huge.’ In terms of civilian impact this could severely constrain Iceland Air, leading to travel and economic chaos in a country dependent upon both travel and tourism. Yet the risks to military aircraft – and military shipping – protecting the Icelandic-UK gap have not been examined or evaluated, and when this does become widespread knowledge it cannot be possible that SaxaVord will be allowed to launch its rockets as planned.
On March 24th, a witness to the House of Lords UK Engagement with Space inquiry, Adam Baker of UK Launch Services Ltd commented: “We are a very busy country. We fly a lot of aircraft around our shores and there is a lot of sea traffic. While I am sure Scott (Scott Hammond, Deputy CEO of SaxaVord) thinks he has a handle on all that, to thread a launch vehicle flight through that very small needle and not disrupt hundreds of transatlantic flights is harder than anyone cares to admit.”
Curiously no one is asking questions about the impact of the launches – not the UK parliament, or the Althing (the Icelandic parliament), or the media – possibly due to the innate international (and innately interplanetary) nature of space, namely that the actual impact of launches will fall far beyond UK shores and this is why it seems to have escaped being reviewed in risk assessments, resulting in SaxaVord gaining its launch licences. Much of the risks are simply externalised to Iceland via the MoU (currently having its annual review), and in fact it is hard to locate the detail as the MoU’s full title is the innocuous Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Iceland and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on Cooperation on Education, Research and Innovation, and Space. It is not till pages 5 and 6 of the MoU – the annex – where stipulations for launches are laid out and what requests will be made of the Icelandic government regarding the closing of airspace and seaspace and what debris and toxic pollutants might impact.
On April 23, the Corporation of London organized another of its leading London Space Finance conferences – looking at ways to make London the center for space finance – which for the UK plays well to its strengths, whilst leadership in satellites, advanced manufacturing and ISRU are other areas the UK leads in. The UK space launch program has to be a success – it is the pinnacle of space ambitions – but SaxaVord, the CAA, and the government of Iceland – in all their consultations and risk assessments, have simply failed to fully understand the implications and strategic risks of launches from SaxaVord’s current trajectory, which will inadvertently undermine the very security architecture that underpins Western interests in the North Atlantic and Arctic. A recalibration of risk management and multilateral consultation is urgently needed to align space ambitions with enduring geopolitical realities.
The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.
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