The Greenland defense deal cites Golden Dome, the missile shield already anchored in Alaska

A defense agreement signed by the United States, Denmark and Greenland in New York on Tuesday expands American military access across Greenland and names Golden Dome as its rationale. The pact amends the 1951 Defense Agreement, carries no end date, and awaits approval from the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments.

Golden Dome appears once in the text, in a preamble recognizing a shared interest in American military access to Greenland "including through establishment of a Golden Dome defense system." The agreement lets the United States modernize Pituffik Space Base and add new Defense Areas at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, with contracts going to Greenlandic sources where possible. It grants movement between sites and overflight rights, to be exercised with respect for Greenlandic hunting and fishing. It bars installations by non-NATO states or a persistent foreign military presence unless the parties agree otherwise, and reaffirms Danish sovereignty and Greenlandic self-determination. It does not name an interceptor site or radar location.

Golden Dome is the layered missile defense system President Donald Trump ordered in January 2025. Congress provided $24.4 billion toward it through the reconciliation bill signed last July. Trump has put the full cost at $175 billion; the Congressional Budget Office has estimated a limited space-based interceptor layer alone at more than $500 billion. In the fiscal 2026 defense spending bill passed in January, appropriators wrote that they support the program but criticized the Pentagon's "decision to date not to provide complete budgetary details and justification" for the money.

The system already runs through Alaska. Fort Greely holds the nation's ground-based interceptors, and Clear Space Force Station its northern early-warning radar. The GOLDEN DOME Act, introduced in the Senate in June 2025 by Sen. Dan Sullivan, calls for expanding Fort Greely to 80 next-generation interceptors by January 2028 and authorizes $460 million for it, plus $500 million for an Aegis Ashore station in Alaska.

Sullivan said the Greenland agreement "expands our security cooperation, strengthens America's military access to Greenland." Sen. Lisa Murkowski called it a breakthrough that respects Greenlandic self-determination and Danish sovereignty.

Greenland and Alaska have been paired in American missile warning for 65 years. When the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System went operational in 1960, its first site was Thule, Greenland, and its second, a year later, was Clear, Alaska; a third followed at Fylingdales in England. The three radars gave North America about 15 minutes' notice of a Soviet launch over the pole. Thule was renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023. Before BMEWS, the Distant Early Warning Line across Alaska and Canada and the White Alice communications network watched for bombers on the same approach. Golden Dome would be the next system on the same geography.

The agreement leaves what a Golden Dome component in Greenland would be to the modernization and Defense Area processes it establishes.