It is operated by the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) and its official uses are primarily space observation and Arctic airspace monitoring for Norway's national interest, though the site's close proximity to known Russian naval bases as well as U.S. involvement in construction and funding have fueled suspicions that it also serves as part of an American missile defense system.

[1] By 1988, the Globus I radar array was built and operational in the town of Vardø, just 50 km (31 mi) from the border between Norway and the Soviet Union[2] and within visible range of the Kola Peninsula, which is known to contain high-security Russian naval bases.

[3] This came within the same year that the U.S. condemned the deployment of a large Soviet radar array near Krasnoyarsk, claiming that this violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

[4] Originally known as HAVE STARE, the Globus II radar was built by the Raytheon Company at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California and became operational in 1995.

Raytheon, the company that built Globus II, previously described it on their website as a radar "originally designed to collect intelligence data against ballistic missiles".

[12][13] In April 1998, a Norwegian journalist, Inge Sellevåg, from the daily newspaper Bergens Tidende discovered that NASA had no knowledge of a new radar being added to the system, despite the Globus II nearing operational condition.

[2] In March 2017, nine Russian bombers took off from Russia's nearby Kola Peninsula and executed a mock air strike against the radar station, flying in attack formation and turning back just before breaching Norwegian airspace.