Ukraine’s air force has completed a month-long operation to resupply a Danish military and scientific station on the northern tip of Greenland in the Arctic.
Ukraine’s 25th Transport Air Brigade carried out the joint Ukrainian-Danish Northern Falcon 2017 operation, which resupplied Denmark’s permanently inhabited Station Nord, some 924 kilometers from the North Pole.
The Ukrainian Il-76MD heavy airlifter used in the operation, with 22 Ukrainian military aviators on board, has now returned to Ukraine, landing at Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport on the morning of April 12.
During a month of flying in extreme conditions in the Arctic, the Il-76 transported 700,000 liters of fuel and 43 tons of supplies to the crew operating the station, which is situated on the shores of the Greenland Sea. Danish air and naval forces usually maintain a crew of just five servicemen in Station Nord, the northernmost constantly habited base in Greenland, while some 20 scientists and personnel join the military servicemen in summer.
Sea ice blocks entry to the base to ships most years, so Station Nord is usually supplied via an air bridge from the U.S. Thule Air Base some 1,200 kilometers away on the western coast of Greenland. To maintain airborne supplies, the Station Nord crew keeps the base’s airstrip open for 300 days a year.
According to the commander of the Ukrainian team, Colonel Oleksandr Kulibaba, the flights were made in temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius, with freezing winds of up to 20 meters per second.
The Ukrainian Il-76MD plane was chosen to lead the operation due to its unique technical capabilities: the airlifter’s onboard crane equipment allows loading and unloading without any additional airfield equipment, which gives the aircraft an advantage over NATO-operated airlifters such as the C-130 Hercules or C-17 Globemaster.
The Il-76MD is also suited to short airstrips such as the one at Station Nord, which is only 1,700 meters long.
Before leaving for the mission, the Ukrainian pilots underwent a month of training in late January. Some $150,000 in expenses for the training program were covered by the Danish military.
The Northern Falcon operation has been conducted annually by the Ukrainian and Danish air forces since 2009. In the seven previous operations, Ukrainian pilots delivered a total of 4 million liters of fuel to Station Nord, logging over 800 hours of Arctic flying experience.
