Dresba Air Base

Economic and strategic re-evaluation following the end of the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, funding for maintaining vast and remote military installations like Dresba was cut. The perceived threat changed, making forward-staging bases for strategic bombers less critical, and the cost of operating in the harsh Arctic environment became prohibitive.

The site is completely abandoned and in a state of severe decay. Satellite imagery shows a large, unpaved runway (approximately 3500 meters) and taxiways that are heavily eroded and being reclaimed by the Arctic tundra. There are no intact buildings or infrastructure remaining, only faint outlines of where structures once stood. The airfield is unusable for any type of aviation and serves only as a relic of the Cold War.

Dresba Air Base was a key Cold War forward staging base (known as an 'aerodrom podskoka' or 'bounce airfield') for the Soviet Long-Range Aviation (Dalnyaya Aviatsiya). Its strategic location in the high Arctic was critical for missions involving nuclear-capable strategic bombers such as the Tupolev Tu-95 'Bear'. These bases allowed bombers to disperse from their main operating locations, increasing their survivability in a first-strike scenario. They also served as refueling and staging points, significantly extending their operational range and reducing flight time for potential missions over the North Pole to targets in North America. The base was part of a network of similar Arctic airfields designed to project Soviet power into the Western Hemisphere.

There are no known official plans or prospects for reopening Dresba Air Base. While Russia has been actively modernizing and reopening some Soviet-era military bases in the Arctic since the 2010s (e.g., Nagurskoye, Temp Airfield), the focus has been on more strategically viable and better-preserved locations. Dresba is considered too remote, too degraded, and strategically obsolete to warrant the immense investment required for its reconstruction and reactivation.