GIUK gap
[5] Despite the relatively small-sized population of the Kingdom of Denmark, roughly 6 million, the Danish government's close ties to Greenland and the Faroe Islands legitimises it as an inherently important Arctic actor on matters of geopolitical security and great-power tensions.
Danish assertion of sovereignty in the GIUK gap and the wider Arctic is already a key concern to the Realm[6] and is expected to be an increasingly important component of Denmark's future responsibilities in NATO.
The introduction of long-range precision strike weapons, however, have reduced the significance of the GIUK gap in relation to intercontinental attacks and made it possible for Russia to target North American sites from safer waters, such as the Norwegian Sea.
SLOCs are vulnerable in the North Atlantic both in the gap and beyond, and the US and NATO rely on the Kingdom of Denmark to assist in protecting this critical infrastructure, including the vast number of seabed data cables.
[8] The September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage in the Baltic Sea proves the fragility of seabed infrastructure and underscore the need for the Danish government to maintain a strong Arctic responsibility in the GIUK gap.
The GIUK gap is particularly important to the UK's Royal Navy, as any attempt by northern European forces to break into the open Atlantic would have to be made either through the heavily defended English Channel, one of the world's busiest seaways,[19] or through one of the exits on either side of Iceland.
As the British also control the strategic port of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean, this means Spain, France, and Portugal are the only Continental European countries that possess direct access to the Atlantic Ocean that cannot easily be blocked at a choke point by the Royal Navy.
[citation needed] The GIUK gap again became the focus of naval planning in the 1950s, as it represented the only available outlet into the Atlantic Ocean for Soviet submarines operating from their bases on the Kola Peninsula.
NATO worried that if the Cold War "turned hot", naval convoys reinforcing Europe from the U.S. would suffer unacceptable losses if Soviet submarines could operate in the North Atlantic.
The United States and Britain based much of their post-war naval strategy on blocking the gap, installing a chain of underwater listening posts right across it during the 1950s – an example of a SOSUS "sound surveillance system".
[22][23] In late October 2019, a week before Commander of the Northern Fleet Aleksandr Moiseyev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met their Norwegian counterparts in Kirkenes, Norway, ten submarines of Russia's Northern Fleet, among them two diesel-electric and eight non-strategic nuclear, left their homebases in the Kola Peninsula to participate in submarine drills that were the largest, on the Russian side, since Cold War operations[when?]
