Trump talks of buying Greenland. Nebraska has reason to care [Video]

Invasion? Annexation? Statehood? Even before returning to office, President-elect Donald Trump has the nation’s eyes turned north, with his recent talk of buying Greenland.

But the vast snow-covered island off Canada’s northeast coastline has long held the attention of at least some Americans: the military strategists at the Offutt-based U.S. Strategic Command, whose job is to protect the United States and its allies from nuclear Armageddon.

For nearly 70 years, they’ve relied on electronic sensors spread out across Greenland’s northern reaches (as well as Canada’s and Alaska’s) to detect bombers or, later, nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, headed this way from Russia.

“Greenland is historically important to the United States,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, an arms-control group. “It became very important because of the radars and the long-range bombers.”