Operating under NATO’s Mediterranean Joint Force Command, Stratis is now home to Task Force Aegis, a predominantly US Army deployment tasked with maintaining the security of Air Station Mike-26. Originally Greece’s ‘first green island’, the island was repurposed into a military installation in the early 2020s. Now the front-line watch over an expanding Iranian empire, the island holds several strategic locations, including a large airfield built on reclaimed land and an advanced radar facility, which forms a key part of the radar belt monitoring NATO’s eastern front.
There are two main settlements on the island: Agios Efstratios and Agios Nikolaos, sparsely inhabited by a small civilian population, who provide fishing and general maintenance services to the military personnel.
Stratis has been literally turned into a military base, currently housing the US Army task force, an airfield and a radar station personnel and security troops. The recent build-up of Iranian battlegroups on the western coast of Turkey and various Aegean islands has put this installation on high alert. A NATO commanded CTRG group has recently moved to the Stratis in preparation of an undisclosed mission.
