(Adnkronos) – Norway’s proximity to the USSR during the Cold War led to the construction of many military bunkers, some of which were vast secret bases for aircraft and ships. Tensions with Russia – writes the BBC – have brought back into the spotlight the bunkers hidden in the caves of the mountains, inside which there are jet fighters and nuclear submarines. At the height of the Cold War, the country had about 3,000 underground structures where its armed forces and allies could hide. Today, due to the war engulfing eastern Ukraine, Oslo is reactivating two of its most iconic underground structures.
Near Norway’s border with Russia north of the Arctic Circle, the hangars at Bardufoss Air Station and the Olavsvern naval base appear to belong in a spy movie, with their rough-hewn rock walls, gleaming concrete and military equipment. Carved into the side of a mountain, protected by about 275 meters of hard rock, the Olasvern base is particularly impressive with its 909-meter-long exit tunnel complete with a huge blast door. Publicity photos for the reactivation of the Bardufoss hangars show the Lockheed Martin fighter jet and the F-35 Lightning II. Inaugurated in 1938, the air station was once used by German fighters to protect the gigantic battleship Tirpitz while it was anchored in a nearby fjord.
After the war, the Royal Norwegian Air Force used the mountain hangars to protect its fighters from a possible Soviet attack. These hangars included everything the aircraft and their pilots needed, such as fuel and weapons storage, space for aircraft systems maintenance, and crew areas. Then about 40 years ago it was closed, but now it seems that Bardufoss may be needed again. The role of the reactivated base, which has received structural and equipment upgrades, is to protect Norwegian F-35s in the face of a Moscow attack. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown the world how vulnerable expensive military aircraft like the $80-110 million F-35s can be when they are on the ground, particularly to attacks by “kamikaze” drones that can cost as little as $300.
The Olavsvern naval base, located near where the Norwegian Sea meets the Barents Sea, was built starting in the 1950s, in response to the increase in the Soviet Northern Fleet. Costing about $450 million, the base, with its underground command center, depot, deep-water dry dock and exit tunnel, was such a massive undertaking for Norway that NATO had to fund much of it. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had crumbled by the time it was completed. In 2009 the Norwegian parliament voted by a narrow majority to close the top-secret Olavsvern base despite the growing threat from Russia and in 2013 it was sold to private investors well below market value. The new ownership allowed two Russian research vessels and Russian fishing vessels to use the facility.
In 2020, WilNor Governmental Services, with close ties to the Norwegian military, acquired a majority stake in the company. Since then it has begun repairing and upgrading the site and there has been an increasing military presence at the base, and even the US Navy is interested in basing its nuclear submarines there. Norway’s security concerns did not begin in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, or in 2014, when it invaded Crimea, but earlier. “Around 2006-2008, there was a confluence of things. There was a lot of investment in Russia’s Northern Fleet,” says Andreas Østhagen, senior researcher at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, a Norwegian foundation, “along with the resumption of Russian military exercises in the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War and Russia’s growing interest in exploiting Arctic resources”.
