Military

Members of the military stationed in Alaska are in line for some extra financial benefits in 2023.

Bills that Congress passed this month include special “Arctic pay” for troops who are based in Alaska and perform critical work in cold weather. The change could add a few hundred dollars a month to a service member’s paycheck.

The special duty pay for service in cold weather is one of several incentives Congress approved to boost morale for Alaska troops. And, with more than 20,000 active duty service members in the state, the economic impact won’t be limited to military installations.

Improving the quality of life in the military is especially important in light of the high incidence of suicide, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said.

“One of the things that we know happens when it comes to mental health is when people are stressed financially, it compounds other problems that are going on,” she said.

In 2021, 17 Alaska-based soldiers died of suicide, from a population of about 11,000. Congress has pressed military leaders to provide more mental health services in Alaska, and Murkowski said that effort continues in the final bills of the year. One component in the annual defense bill gives behavioral health counselors annual bonuses of up to $50,000.

Military families already get higher housing and cost-of-living allowances to live in Alaska, but Murkowski said she learned in meetings with service members that those payments don’t cover all the extra expenses service members incur when they transfer to Alaska — things likes snow tires, warm coats and travel to see relatives out of state. The defense bill, she noted, includes a travel reimbursement for Alaska-based service members to take a personal trip home.

“This is something that I feel pretty proud about, because it really was led by those who we’ve really tried to listen very carefully to,” she said after the bill passed the Senate.

The Alaska basic housing allowance is going up next year, and salaries for all service members will increase 4.6%. The salary increase is the largest in years but still might not be adequate to keep up with inflation.

The U.S. Senate passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill Thursday that had Sen. Lisa Murkowski brimming with happiness. She didn’t know where to start.

“There’s so much in this crazy omnibus,” she said shortly after the vote.

She was already wearing her coat. The spending bill is the last thing Congress passes before she and other lawmakers head for the airports to spend Christmas back home.

Her communications director was toting a thick sheaf of papers. They document Murkowski’s earmarks — or, as they’re known in Congress now, “congressionally directed spending allocations.”

“You’re going to get more text than a radio person really ever asks for,” Murkowski said, grinning broadly.

The legislation has more than 130 of her priorities, totaling nearly $500 million, all over the state. One of the smallest items: $100,000 for medical equipment in Bethel. The largest is $99 million for a fitness and training center at Fort Wainwright. Murkowski said it was the Army’s No. 1 unfunded priority. And Alaska service members are also going to have more spending money.

“The pay increase for our military, that’s going to be very appreciated. I can guarantee that,” she said. “Some of the military construction dollars are going to be significant.”

Murkowski’s earmarks were on a list she submitted months ago to the Appropriations Committee, of which she’s a senior member.

Outside of that list — but something she advocated for that’s in the bill – is $300 million to help people recover from fisheries disasters. Murkowski said it was the talk of every community she visited this year.

“Whether it’s the crash on the Yukon or the Kuskokwim, or what’s happening in the in the crab sector, just a level of desperation” has set in, she said. “And so to know that we’ve made some good headway here when it comes to to the fisheries disasters funding — I think that’s going to be important.”

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan was one of 29 Republican senators who voted no on the spending bill. He chooses not to make earmark requests, and his office did not respond to an interview request. In a statement, Sullivan said he likes much of the omnibus bill, which has several programs he worked on. But he said the process was opaque. The bill was negotiated between House and Senate leadership, and he had only 48 hours to read its 4,000 pages.

Sullivan also objects to the removal of one of his top priorities — the purchase of the Aiviq, a small icebreaker that was to be homeported in Juneau and serve until new Coast Guard icebreakers are built.

Murkowski said she, too, was disappointed that $150 million in icebreaker funding was removed at the last minute, behind closed doors. She said the money appears to have been diverted to fund security measures on the southern border.

“Because as we saw the diminishment of the funding over on the icebreaker side, we saw the plus-up on the border funding,” she said.

Since it’s the last train leaving the station, the omnibus spending bill also includes a host of other priorities beyond appropriations. Among them: a rewrite of the Electoral Count Act, to make it clear the vice president’s role in certifying the presidential election is ceremonial; the Pregnant Women’s Fairness Act; and a measure that guarantees workers the time and a clean place to express milk for their newborns.

The House is likely to pass the bill shortly, sending it to the president.

The U.S. Coast Guard is expanding its fleet of icebreakers and could be homeporting one of the vessels in Alaska. Icebreakers are built with thicker hulls to navigate the world’s icy, northernmost waters.

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday evening to authorize the National Defense Authorization Act for the upcoming fiscal year.

On a call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, said the National Defense Authorization Act for the upcoming fiscal year appropriates $150 million towards buying and converting an existing icebreaker. The vessel most likely would be homeported in Juneau, according to Sullivan.

Sullivan said he hopes it’s the first of many to be someday based in Alaska.

“It should be a series of ports in our state that can homeport an icebreaker, but right now I think this is huge news for our state,” said Sullivan.

The U.S. currently has two operational Arctic icebreakers, both based in Seattle. The Department of Defense announced plans late last year to build a new icebreaker at a cost of $552,654,727.

Sullivan said adding an icebreaker to Alaska’s existing Coast Guard fleet would bring 190 service members and hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending to the state.

Language in the legislation would also cut down the timeline for purchasing an existing icebreaker from more than six years down to one, according to Sullivan.

Sullivan said adding to the fleet in Alaska is a top priority. Russia has the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, with dozens more than the U.S.

“Everybody in our state intuitively knows we need more icebreakers to promote our security, economic, environmental interests. And if you have icebreakers in America, they should be homeported in the Arctic,” said Sullivan.

Both Sen. Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted in favor of the bill Thursday evening. The final version outlines $858 billion in defense spending. It now heads to President Biden’s desk.

A former contractor has been sentenced for conspiracy and bribery related to military contracts at Eielson Air Force Base and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

According to the U.S. attorney’s for Alaska’s office, Best Choice Construction LLC owner Ryan Dalbec of Mesa, Ariz., was ordered to serve 42 months in prison, and pay a $172,000 fine and $16,000 in restitution to Eielson.

Court records show Dalbec had agreed to pay over $460,000 in bribes to former U.S. Air Force contracting official Brian Lowell Nash II, in exchange for confidential bidding information that helped him win contracts, including a $6.8 million project related to the buildup of F-35 Lightning II fighter jets at Eielson.

Dalbec and his wife, Raihana Nadem, also helped Nash launder the bribery proceeds. Nash was sentenced last month to serve 30 months in prison and forfeit $47,000 in “unlawful gains” from bribes paid by Best Choice.

Both Dalbec and his wife pleaded guilty in the case, with Nadem scheduled for sentencing on Dec. 16.

The federal government rolled out a new Arctic strategy this month, a move welcomed by the Alaska congressional delegation. But it’s unclear what it means for residents back in Alaska.

“It’s much more a list of goals,” said Amy Lovecraft, the director of the Center for Arctic Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She said that the strategy isn’t necessarily new as much as a revival by the Biden administration of Obama-era policies discarded by the Trump administration.

“So, it’s got a lot of buzzwords: conserve and protect, you know, Arctic ecosystems, Indigenous co-production, co-management. Right. What do all those things mean? And so it seems like it’s pretty specific, and so in that sense there are initiatives mentioned,” Lovecraft said.

Lovecraft said that the document falls short of providing clarity on how the goals outlined might be met.

“So these are strategic objectives,” she said. “What I want next are the action items.”

It’s action items that Sen. Lyman Hoffman also wants to see. He’s been a state legislator representing the Bethel region as a Democrat for more than three decades.

“How do you make people that are living in the Arctic, their lives affordable to live up here?” he wondered. “The food is high. The transportation costs are high. The heating costs are high. Everything is too exorbitant.”

Hoffman said that he’d like to see a strategy that addresses on-the-ground realities for Alaskans.

“A large portion of it needs to be focused on global warming and the effects that it’s having on places like Newtok, and places that are eroding; the permafrost melting away. What effect does it have on our food supply for salmon?” Hoffman said.

He said that these are some of the realities people in Western Alaska live with every day.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the new strategy for the government’s future Arctic in a video posted to Twitter. In it, Blinken outlined four pillars that will guide White House policy in the Arctic in coming years.

The last time the U.S. government released an Arctic strategy was in 2013. That version was heavy on military presence in the region. The new strategy also calls for improved military capabilities in Alaska, but includes three other objectives that focus on economic development, climate change and international relations and diplomacy.

Lovecraft said that the timing of the new strategy’s release is not coincidental. Federal midterm elections are less than a month away. The announcement also comes as Arctic leaders and policy experts gather for an annual meeting in Iceland to discuss science innovation and international policy in the Arctic.

A new Arctic strategy released on Friday by the White House acknowledges some big changes in the region over the past decade — the rise of military threats posed by Russia, the largest Arctic nation.

A heavier emphasis on national defense is the biggest difference between the new Biden administration strategy and its predecessor, released in 2013 by the Obama administration.

The 15-page document says the strategy “acknowledges increasing strategic competition in the Arctic since 2013, exacerbated by Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, and seeks to position the United States to both effectively compete and manage tensions.”

Security is identified as the first of four strategic pillars guiding White House policies on Arctic affairs. The others are climate change and environmental protection, sustainable economic development and international cooperation and governance.

While the 2013 strategy also identified security as one of the policy pillars, that document did not mention Russia as a security threat. The new strategy, in contrast, makes multiple specific references to Russia.

“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has rendered government-to government cooperation with Russia in the Arctic virtually impossible at present,” the new strategy says in one of those references.

To achieve national strategic goals, the new White House document lists several concrete policies.

To help Alaska Native communities threatened by climate change, for example, the administration plans to make it easier to get access to federal resources to build resilience. That includes more coordination work with tribal governments, Native corporations, the Alaska state government and other entities, the document says.

To promote economic development, the White House “will support development of much-needed infrastructure in Alaska that serves responsible development, food security, stable housing, climate resilience, and national defense needs as driven by requirements,” the document says. It lists telecommunications and the planned deep-draft port in Nome as key infrastructure investments.

To boost security and protect the national interest, “the United States will enhance and exercise both our military and civilian capabilities in the Arctic as required to deter threats and to anticipate, prevent, and respond to both natural and human-made incidents,” the new strategy says.

Alaska’s two U.S. senators gave the new strategy mixed reviews.

In statements, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, said they welcomed the new emphasis on national defense.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the strategy contains many “positive elements.”

“For example, I’m pleased with the administration’s emphasis on security, infrastructure, climate adaptation and resilience, greater consultation with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native Tribes and Corporations, and its elevation of Arctic diplomacy through the creation of the Arctic Ambassador position — all of which I have called for,” she said in a statement. The heavier emphasis on military security is appropriate, as has been demonstrated by the recent incident in which two Russians sailed over the Bering to Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island to request asylum, she said.

However, she criticized it for what she characterized as too little discussion of resource development and an omission of oil and gas development.

Sullivan, in his statement, said he appreciated the “full-throated support for increasing America’s operational capabilities, infrastructure, and Coast Guard and naval vessels in the Arctic, and for elevating the voices and interests of the people who actually live in the Arctic—Alaskans who’ve inhabited these lands for millennia.”

However, he faulted the document for its emphasis on climate change, which he said shows the Biden administration “will continue to focus on shutting down responsible resource development, like oil, natural gas, and critical minerals in Alaska.”

Sullivan, in his statement, dismissed the 2013 strategy as being “filled with mostly pictures,” though that Obama administration document did not include a single image other than the presidential seal. However, a Department of Defense Arctic strategy released in November of 2013 did contain illustrations.

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