Military

Investigators are working the site where two 11th Airborne Division Apache helicopters collided and crashed in the Interior on April 27, killing three soldiers and injuring a fourth.

Eleventh Airborne Division media relations chief John Pennell says an investigation team from the Army’s Combat Readiness Center out of Ft. Novosel, Alabama began work at the crash site, which is about 50 miles east of Healy, on Monday.

Pennell says onboard flight recorders have been recovered from the wreckage.

“Each helicopter had a black box, that much like with commercial airliners, it records a loop of continuous information during the flight,” he said. “They were able to recover the black boxes from both helicopters and they’ve got those back at Ft. Wainwright now.”

An 11th Airborne Division release says the 30-minute recording loop captures aircraft altitude, attitude, air speed and heading, among other information.

Pennell says additional investigators at the crash site are “taking measurements and looking at the debris from the crashed aircraft and trying to piece together what they think might have happened.”

Pennell says the crash occurred as the two helicopters were returning from training to Fort Wainwright from an aerial gunnery range in the Donnelly Training Area southeast of Fairbanks. There were no known weather or visibility issues.

“I can’t tell you whether it was clear blue skies or cloudy or anything like that, but there were no particular weather warnings for that area at that time,” he said.

Pennell says the wreckage will eventually be transported out of the remote location by helicopter, but he can’t say much more about the investigation.

“The investigation will take as long as the investigation takes, and once its completed then the team from the Army Safety Center will brief the command as to what they found,” he said.

The Army grounded non-critical flying Friday in response to the Alaska helicopter crash and a previous one in Kentucky that killed 9. All active units are required to complete additional training during the pause, which is scheduled to end Friday.

In Alaska, Pennell says the 11th Airborne is only flying as much as it has to for the investigation.

A private memorial service for the 3 soldiers killed in the crash — Christopher Robert Eramo, Stewart Duane Wayment, and Kyle D. McKenna — was held Thursday afternoon at Ft. Wainwright.

Pennell says the division has been shaken by the crash and loss.

“We’re just trying to step forward and do everything we can to support those folks who have been left behind, and figure out why, and then going forward try to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Pennell says the soldier who was injured in the crash is out of the hospital and recovering at home.

Army officials have identified the three soldiers who died Thursday after the two helicopters they were flying collided in mid-air near Healy.

The victims are 39-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 3 Christopher Eramo of Oneonta, New York; 28-year-old Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kyle McKenna of Colorado Springs, Colorado; and 32-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Stewart Wayment of North Logan, Utah.

A fourth soldier who was injured in the crash and transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital is still undergoing treatment there. A news release issued Saturday by the 11th Airborne Division says the servicemember was in stable condition. Army officials haven’t yet released the soldier’s name.

11th Airborne spokesperson John Pennell said the soldiers were flying two AH-64 Apache helicopters with the Fort Wainwright-based 1st Attack Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment. He said the Apaches were returning Thursday afternoon from a training mission in the Donnelly Training Area near Fort Greely when they collided and crashed about 50 miles east of Healy.

“The terrain is extremely rugged, mountainous, deep snow, heavily forested. It required helicopter access with hoists, to get in there,” he said.

Pennell said there wasn’t much information available yet about other factors that may have contributed to the collision. But he said investigators were scheduled to fly in Saturday to the crash site.

“There is a safety investigation that will be ongoing by the Army’s Combat Readiness Center out of Ft. Novosel, Alabama,” he said. “Until they have made their determination, there’s just really no way that I can give you any kind of speculation.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has restricted air traffic within 25 nautical miles of the crash site through May 4, to facilitate the investigation.

Thursday’s crash is the second this year involving 11th Airborne Apache helicopters in Alaska. In February, two soldiers with the 11th Airborne Battalion were injured when the Apache they were in crashed soon after takeoff from the Talkeetna Airport, where they’d stopped to refuel on the way back from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.

In March, nine soldiers were killed in Kentucky when the Blackhawk helicopter they were in crashed during a routine nighttime training exercise.

In response to the crashes, the Army on Friday grounded all its aviation units and ordered them to conduct training this week before they’d be allowed to fly again.

KUAC senior reporter/producer Dan Bross contributed to this story.

Three soldiers died and another was injured in a mid-air crash of two Army helicopters in Interior Alaska yesterday.

According to an 11^th Airborne Division release, the helicopters  — based at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks — were returning from a training mission when they collided near Healy.

The release says two soldiers were declared dead at the scene and a third died on the way to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The soldier injured in the crash is being treated at the hospital in Fairbanks.

The accident will be investigated by a team from the Army Combat Readiness Center, in Alabama. The Army says it will withhold the names of the victims until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.

In February, two soldiers were hurt after their For Wainwright-based Apache helicopter crashed in Talkeetna.

The Alaska-based military branches that are patrolling the Arctic, buffering against an increasingly hostile Russia and standing ready to deploy to global trouble spots are coping with another adversary: a housing squeeze.

In testimony at the 2023 legislative session’s first hearing held by the Joint Armed Services Committee, Alaska military leaders on Tuesday described some of those housing challenges.

At Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, expanded operations will mean more strain on housing, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Nahom, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Alaskan NORAD Region.

“We still do worry about this as we bring more assets into the Fairbanks area, mainly our air fuelers that are coming in. One of my biggest concerns is dormitories,” said Nahom, who also leads the Alaskan Command and the Eleventh Air Force.

Some airmen have moved into contingency dormitories, the military term for overflow housing, and billeting rooms, which are rooms rented in non-military locations. But that is a temporary solution, Nahom said. “Those are not good for long-term for airmen to live in,” he said.

It also leaves Eielson without housing for visiting units that come in for exercises like Red Flag Alaska, he said. Visiting units often have to try to find downtown housing, which can be very expensive, even prohibitively so.

“The trend I’m seeing is units canceling Red Flag Alaska participation,” he said. “The key is we’ve got to get the dormitories built so that I have airmen living in proper dormitories and then I free up the contingency housing for the visiting units.”

Nahom said the Air Force want to get some more on-base housing at Eielson for junior enlisted personnel, and hopes to partner with local entities and the state to accomplish that. “It’s very hard for junior enlisted to afford downtown housing and to afford to live, based on their salaries,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, commander of the U.S. Army’s 11th Airborne Division, agreed that housing is tight in the Fairbanks area, home to U.S. Army Garrison Alaska – Fort Wainwright.

Along with securing housing, the Army is trying to make soldiers feel at home in Alaska, a place of growing military importance, Eifler said.

“The Army has volunteers that come to Alaska, right? But not everybody raises their hand to say, ‘Send me to Alaska,’” he said, noting that many people stationed in Alaska come from vastly different parts of the country. “We have to bring our soldiers into this from wherever they’re at and make sure they’re prepared to not just live here and operate with their family but also do their job here, and also be able to do it under fire.” That is one reason why exercises in outdoor Alaska conditions are so important, he said.

For the U.S. Coast Guard, which is expanding its Alaska presence, some housing needs are already being addressed with new construction that is underway or planned, said Rear Adm. Nathan Moore, who leads Alaska operations.

“We’re seeing growth and building to an extent we have never seen in the Coast Guard before, new assets for us. New cutters, new boats, new aircraft means new shore facilities,” Moore, commander of the Coast Guard’s 17th District, told legislators.

In Kodiak, where a cargo pier is being rebuilt in preparation for the arrival of new fast-response cutters and patrol cutters, construction work has already started on housing to support those new ships, he said. In Sitka, where a new fast-response cutter is to arrive, the Coast Guard just finished a land transfer on the waterfront that will support more facilities. In Seward, where another new ship is headed, the Coast Guard is acquiring some housing tracts, he said. “We have money in hand to purchase that property and build housing for the increased size of the crews that this new ship’s going to bring to Seward,” he said.

One tight spot may be Nome, where there are plans to expand the city port into a deepwater, Arctic-service port which Moore called a “fantastic opportunity” for Coast Guard operations.

The state could continue to help the Coast Guard meet its need for more housing there and elsewhere, Moore said. “What we are very interested in, as we build up these new assets and put them places, we will probably continue to need help coordinating for things like development of housing and logistics footprints,” he said.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

The Army has sent 90 Stryker vehicles from Fort Wainwright to Ukraine to help the nation defend itself. The fort still has a few Strykers around to help soldiers train to defend against attack with weapons of mass destruction.

The Army transferred 329 Strykers from Fort Wainwright to the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama last fall, then in January sent 90 of them to Ukraine as part of a military aid package.

“Those are the ones that have been utilized to support the Ukrainian effort,” says Ashley John, a spokesperson for the Army’s Ground Combat Systems Program Executive Office in Michigan. John said in an email Monday that the Strykers sent overseas were “part of the U.S. commitment to provide security assistance to Ukraine.”

In February, the U.S. sent about 30 Strykers to Bulgaria, a Balkan nation south of Ukraine.

11th Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler says the Stryker transfer to Ukraine was done after the Army decided last fall that the vehicles wouldn’t fit with the division’s directive to focus on defending the Arctic and training here.

“That was a decision made at the Army level, to divest of the Strykers and work on a force that’s more capable in the region and also training in that environment,” Eifler said in a news conference last month. He said the multi-wheeled, lightly armored vehicles were no longer suited for the division and its two newly reorganized brigades: a mainly infantry unit based at Fort Wainwright and an airborne unit at Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson.

But the Army decided to keep a few specially equipped Strykers in Alaska.

“Back in September, we divested ourselves of probably 99% of the Strykers that we had here at Wainwright. However, one unit did keep a small handful of them,” says Eve Baker, a Fort Wainwright spokesperson. She was referring to the 17th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. The unit specializes in training soldiers on how to respond to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.

“So these Stryker vehicles have radiation-detection equipment and protective abilities, and they’re used Armywide in this type of unit,” she said in an interview last week

Baker says some of those Strykers and their crews took part in last month’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, or JPMRC, training exercise held on training areas around Fort Wainwright.

“So people may see them and be confused,” she said, “but we did divest ourselves of the vast majority of the Stryker vehicles.”

Meanwhile, Army officials are trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the Strykers.

“The Army is still considering several options on what they intend to do with the particular Strykers that came out of Alaska,” says Gen.Charles Flynn, who heads up the Army’s Pacific Command. Both he and Eifler talked about Strykers and the JPMRC exercise during a March 30 news conference at Fort Wainwright.

“Obviously they need to be upgraded,” Flynn said, “but there’s a wide range of options that the Headquarters Department of the Army is working their way through.”

Army officials say the Stryker is a versatile platform that supports 18 variations that include vehicles equipped with armaments like mortars or cannons, and others that transport soldiers and supplies and clear minefields. Flynn said the Army is modernized some Strykers to accommodate short-range air-defense and intelligence-collection systems.

A Gambell man has been recognized by the top military officer in Alaska for his lifesaving effort in 1955.

In June 1955, Soviet fighter planes shot down a U.S. Navy P2V-5 Neptune flying on routine patrols over the Bering Sea. It crashed in flames on St. Lawrence Island, according to the Alaska National Guard.

Corporal Bruce Boolowon was part of a group of 16 Alaska National Guardsmen from the 1st Scout Battalion who mounted a rescue mission to save 11 U.S. Navy airmen who were on board the plane.

Boolowon is believed to be the last surviving member of the St. Lawrence Island rescue team. He attended a ceremony at the John Apangalook Memorial High School in Gambell on March 28. He was awarded the Alaska Heroism Medal from the Alaska National Guard and Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs.

Russians landed often in Gambell during the Cold War, but the visits were not usually nefarious, according to the Associated Press. Since St. Lawrence Island is so close to Russia, people routinely traveled back and forth to visit relatives.

Boolowon recounted when his unit first caught sight of the damaged U.S. Navy airplane.

“They came in and one engine was smoking, and then we knew, with the high-pitched motor, we knew there was something wrong with them,” Boolowon said.

Boolowon was happy to receive the medal for his squad’s action that day in 1955.

“I think it’s a good thing, really, to be awarded several years later,” Boolowon added.

JoAnn Kulukhon is a relative of men in the 1st Scout Battalion. She radiated praise for Boolowon at the ceremony.

“I’m so proud of him and happy,” Kulukhon said.

Alaska Adjutant General and Commissioner of the Department of Military and Veteran’s Affairs Major General Torrence Saxe presented Boolowon with the medal.

The Alaska Heroism Medal is the state’s highest award for valor during peacetime.

The 16 members of the 1st Scout Battalion were:

• Master Sgt. Willis Walunga
• Staff Sgt. Clifford Iknokinok
• Sgt. Herbert Apassingok
• Sgt. Ralph Apatiki Sr.
• Cpl. Bruce Boolowon
• Cpl. Victor Campbell
• Cpl. Ned Koozaata
• Cpl. Joseph Slwooko
• Pfc. Holden Apatiki
• Pfc. Lane Iyakitan
• Pfc. Leroy Kulukhon
• Pfc. Woodrow Malewotkuk
• Pfc. Roger Slwooko
• Pfc. Vernon Slwooko
• Pfc. Donald Ungott
• Pvt. Luke Kulukhon