RDAF CL-604 permanently deployed in Greenland
The Flyvevåbnet (RDAF, Royal Danish Air Force) decided to permanently deploy a Bombardier CL-604 Challenger in Grønland (Greenland). The reason for this change is to provide Greenland with better and more surveillance capabilities and better preparedness for rescue operations. Therefor, the detachment will be manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (24/7), all year round.
In Greenland, the distances are enormous. The country is over 1,000 km on one joint and 2,000 km on the other and covers an area of 2,2 million square kilometres - and the airspace is almost twice as large. This requires an aircraft with a large operation radius and high speed that can be airborne at short notice.
The CL-604 is operated by Esk 721 and will be based at Kangerlussûaq on the southwest side of Greenland. For many years, the RDAF stationed a Challenger for approximately 220 days a year for the task.
According to the head of the Arctic Command, Rear Admiral Martin la Cour-Andersen; “The Luftgruppe Vest (Air Group West) and the CL-604 will, together with our other units and capacities, e.g. inspection ships, inspection vessels, helicopters, the Sirius patrol, etc., provide good preparedness in many situations in Greenland. With the new presence of the Challenger around the clock, all year round, we have the opportunity to get both radar images, infrared recordings, regular recordings and eyewitness accounts from the crew home from virtually all parts of Greenland and the Faroe Islands in just a few hours and get an overview of the situation, whether it is rescue operations at sea, searches in the mountains, ships with fire or list, large landslides and so on."
The Challenger's other tasks are asserting sovereignty and patrolling over the vast land and in the even larger airspace. The aircraft also has a major task in fisheries inspection, which contributes to compliance with fisheries agreements and legislation also on those parts of the sea that are otherwise difficult to access. The aircraft also contributes with transport tasks and environmental monitoring (reconnaissance of oil spills) etc.
Greenland is the world's largest island, located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.
Photo by Soren Augustesen (Scramble Archive)