Mili­ta­ry use of Sval­Sat?

The Spits­ber­gen trea­ty (often cal­led “Sval­bard trea­ty”) does not allow mili­ta­ry faci­li­ties in Sval­bard. It has often been a mat­ter of deba­te what is actual­ly to be con­si­de­red a “mili­ta­ry faci­li­ty”, but per­ma­nent instal­la­ti­ons may clear­ly not ser­ve mili­ta­ry pur­po­ses.

The Nor­we­gi­an aut­hor Bård Worm­dal has now clai­med in a new book that the satel­li­te anten­nas of Sval­Sat on Pla­tå­berg near Lon­gye­ar­by­en are regu­lar­ly used to down­load data from mili­ta­ry satel­li­tes. Worm­dal wro­te this hap­pen­ed, amongst others, during the NATO ope­ra­ti­ons in Libya. This would be a clear vio­la­ti­on of the rules of the Spits­ber­gen trea­ty, which is still in for­ce.

Sval­Sat is a sys­tem of satel­li­te anten­nas to down­load data from satel­li­tes in polar orbits. The 7 anten­nas are owned by Kong­s­berg Satel­li­te Ser­vices who is respon­si­ble for the over­all ope­ra­ti­on, EUMET­SAT, NASA and the Ame­ri­can wea­ther ser­vice. Ser­vices such as GPS and the future Euro­pean equi­va­lent Gali­leo also buy capa­ci­ties.

Source: NRK Nyhe­ter