Greenland and the High Ground of the Kill Web: Why the Arctic Matters for Fighting at the Speed of Light

By twentieth-century standards, Greenland appears strategically marginal, a remote landmass with minimal population, sparse infrastructure, and no indigenous military capability. Yet Greenland has emerged as a critical node in twenty-first-century strategic competition, not because of conventional territorial or resource value, but because modern warfare increasingly turns on information velocity, network resilience, and multi-domain integration.

In A Maritime Kill Web Force in the Making (2022), Robbin Laird and I articulated a framework for understanding this transformation through the concept of kill webs. Unlike traditional linear kill chains, kill webs emphasize distributed sensing, shared situational awareness, and accelerated decision cycles across operational domains. Through this lens, Greenland represents far more than a peripheral Arctic outpost. It constitutes critical high ground in the emerging information-centric battlespace.

From Platforms to Networks

Military power was traditionally measured by platforms, ships, aircraft, armored formations, and forward-deployed force structure. This model falters against hypersonic weapons, space-enabled targeting, cyber operations, and precision strike capabilities that collapse response timelines.

The decisive factor now is not the individual platform but the network connecting platforms, sensors, and decision-makers. Traditional kill chains, detect, decide, engage, prove too slow and too vulnerable. They depend on centralized command architectures and sequential decision processes that adversaries can exploit or disrupt.

Kill webs operate differently. They are distributed and adaptive. Any sensor can cue any shooter. Information flows laterally and vertically. Decision authority derives from shared awareness rather than rigid hierarchy. The side that processes and acts on information faster achieves decisive advantage, often before kinetic engagement.

This is what I mean by “fighting at the speed of light”, not exotic weaponry, but information and decision velocity in contested environments.

Arctic Geometry and Strategic Reality

Greenland’s renewed relevance begins with geography but extends far beyond it. The Arctic no longer functions as strategic periphery. It represents the shortest route between major powers, particularly for intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles, and long-range strike platforms. As great-power competition intensifies, the Arctic has transformed from marginal theater to primary avenue of approach.

Greenland anchors the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap, a critical corridor for monitoring maritime and aerial movement between Eurasia and North America. During the Cold War, this gap centered on anti-submarine warfare. In the twenty-first century, its importance extends across air, space, cyber, and missile-defense domains.

From a kill-web perspective, Greenland’s value lies in enabling early detection and sensor fusion. High-latitude sensors provide earlier warning of missile launches and enhanced tracking of airborne and space-based threats. Integrated into distributed networks, these sensors compress decision timelines for commanders across NATO and U.S. commands.

Missile Warning, Space, and Decision Speed

Greenland already contributes to missile warning and space surveillance missions. In kill-web architecture, these capabilities are not isolated systems but foundational nodes in broader multi-domain networks.

Arctic-collected data can cue interceptors thousands of miles distant. Space-domain awareness informs air and missile defense decisions in real time. Naval and air forces position based on shared situational awareness rather than delayed reporting.

This integration compresses the observe-orient-decide-act loop. In high-end conflict against peer competitors, minutes or seconds determine outcomes. Greenland’s location ensures allied forces avoid reactive delay against threats emerging over the pole.

Distributed Nodes, Not Centralized Targets

A central theme in our work addresses the vulnerability of centralization. Large singular hubs may prove efficient in peacetime but become liabilities in combat. Kill webs pursue resilience through distribution and redundancy.

Greenland exemplifies this logic. Sparse infrastructure encourages hardened, mission-focused systems over sprawling installations. It functions optimally not as command center but as resilient network node, contributing to operations without creating single points of failure.

This approach aligns with modern conflict realities where adversaries contest communications, attempt cyber disruption, and target infrastructure. Distributed architecture enables networks to reroute data, reassign functions, and maintain operations under attack.

Strategic Competition in the Arctic

Renewed attention to Greenland reflects broader strategic competition. Russia has expanded Arctic military presence, reopening Soviet-era installations, increasing submarine operations, and deploying advanced missile systems exploiting northern approaches. China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state,” invested in polar research and satellite systems, and emphasized information warfare and network disruption in military doctrine.

In this environment, Arctic control centers less on territorial occupation than information dominance. Who observes first? Who comprehends first? Who decides first? Kill webs are designed to answer these questions in favor of allied forces.

Infrastructure, Cyber, and Resilience

Kill-web thinking frames infrastructure not as offensive exploitation target but as capability requiring defense, hardening, and rapid reconstitution. We consistently emphasize resilience over fragility.

Greenland’s role is not enabling offensive network disruption but ensuring allied systems function under stress. This demands communications redundancy, cyber-secure architectures, and integrated military-commercial capabilities where appropriate.

The objective is sustained awareness and decision capability in contested environments.

Conclusion: Information-Age High Ground

In earlier eras, Greenland’s value derived from runways and radar stations. Today its value manifests in latency, connectivity, and decision speed. Through kill-web framework, Greenland emerges as critical high ground, not by hosting large forces but by enabling forces elsewhere to act faster with greater confidence.

As warfare evolves toward multi-domain, information-centric competition, locations enabling combat at light-speed tempo matter most. Greenland is among them.

In the twenty-first century, the Arctic is no longer map’s edge. It constitutes central arena in the struggle for decision dominance and Greenland occupies its strategic heart.