Military

Fighter jets from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson intercepted Russian reconnaissance planes three times last week in airspace around Alaska. That’s happened often in recent years, but a Fairbanks-based military analyst says it’s noteworthy because this time, it happened while the United States is helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian invaders.

JBER-based F-22 fighters scrambled on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week to intercept a Russian IL-20 that had entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. That’s international airspace, but it’s not unusual for a nation to send fighters out to meet foreign aircraft that enter their ADIZ and often to accompany them until they leave it.

“On average, we conduct about six to seven intercepts a year,” says Capt. Lauren Ott, a spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Alaskan Region based at JBER. Ott says the number of intercepts has varied annually since Russia resumed its so-called out-of-area long-range aviation activity 15 years ago.

“Some years, as high as 14, and some years, as low as zero,” she said in an interview Monday.

This year, however, the usual game of cat-and-mouse is playing out in an entirely different context — one where the United States and Russia aren’t at war but are certainly at odds because of the U.S’s leading role in supporting Ukraine.

But Ott says that didn’t affect last week’s otherwise routine interceptions of the Russian planes near Alaska.

“The recent activity by the Russian aircraft in the Alaskan ADIZ is not perceived as a threat, nor is the activity seen as provocative,” she said.

But a military analyst based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks says the intercepts are notable at the very least.

Troy Bouffard is a 22-year Army veteran who now directs UAF’s Center for Arctic Security and Resilience. He says the timing of the Russian sorties is notable because they likely were intended to send a message to the United States and its allies.

“Russia is trying to demonstrate that it can still project power in different areas, even being decisively engaged in Ukraine,” he said in an interview Monday.

Bouffard says it’s also no coincidence that the Russians decided now is a good time to resume the flights around Alaska because the Il-20 is equipped for intelligence, signals and reconnaissance missions. He suspects they were interested in radio communications between the U.S. and allied forces engaged in the latest round of Red Flag military training exercises that were going on around the state last week.

“It was definitely right in the middle of Red Flag,” he noted.

Bouffard said he thinks the Russians also were sending a message by conducting the sorties with only one Il-20 and not a Tu-95 Bear bomber, which often carries out the missions accompanied by a Russian jet fighter. He says the flights enable the Russians to gain useful intelligence, sometimes just by noting how the Americans respond.

“All the aircraft that they send into an ADIZ is meant to invoke a response and a reaction for the purposes of being able to monitor that and see if they can learn from it,” he said.

Ott said that there haven’t been any Russian aircraft sorties since last week. She declined to say whether there had been any others earlier this year, or to say exactly where the Il-20 entered the Alaska ADIZ.

The state of Alaska has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in an attempt to hold the federal government responsible for the identification of thousands of polluted sites on land given to Alaska Native corporations.

A complete inventory is a first step in the state’s ongoing efforts to hold the federal government responsible for cleaning the sites.

In many cases, the state argues, pollution left by the U.S. military and other federal agencies has prevented the development of land transferred from the federal government under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The state filed its lawsuit July 15 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, with the state represented by a large private firm, Kelley Drye & Warren.

In its complaint, the state argues that three prior acts of Congress — in 1990, 1995 and 2014 — require the Department of the Interior to make a full accounting of contaminated sites in Alaska and to come up with plans for their cleanup.

The suit asks a judge to issue an order compelling the department to conduct surveys and draft plans for cleanup.

Though the suit does not explicitly ask for an order requiring the federal government to clean the sites, the survey process typically includes the identification of a “potentially responsible party” who could be liable for cleanup.

“The federal government has a moral and legal responsibility to address these contaminated sites, which have already languished for far too long,” said Jason Brune, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, in a 2021 letter to the secretaries of Defense, Interior and Agriculture.

In a separate letter, Brune asked Interior Secretary Debra Haaland to direct the cleanup of known contaminated sites.

The Interior Department responded later in 2021 with a letter saying in part that the “DOI has no statutory authority to compel or conduct the cleanup of lands that have been conveyed out of federal ownership, nor is it able to impose liability for contamination that is reported on those lands.”

After that exchange, the state threatened a lawsuit in December 2021 and followed through with its filing this month.

The federal government has yet to formally respond to the lawsuit, which could take years to resolve.

The Alaska National Guard and the Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs plan to award the Alaska Heroism Medal to the families of 16 members of the Alaska National Guard in Gambell. The awards are being presented for the rescue of a downed Navy air crew almost 70 years after the event.

On June 22, 1955, a U.S. Navy patrol plane took off from Kodiak with a crew of 11.

The crew’s mission was to patrol U.S. airspace, check navigational aids and document sea ice, according to Verdie Bowen, director of the Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs.

About 200 miles west of Nome, the crew encountered two Soviet MiG-15 fighter jets, which fired on them. They attempted to hide in the cloud cover, but the MiGs managed to disable one of the patrol plane’s engines, and the crew crash-landed on St. Lawrence Island about 9 miles south of Gambell.

David Assard, the navigator, described the landing in an interview with Alaska Dispatch News in 2015.

“The landing was as beautiful as you could imagine, with the notable exception that, because we had no wheels and there were a lot of boulders and rocks on shore, they ruptured the center tank,” Assad said.

He said the fuel ignited, causing a fire inside the plane.

“As the plane decelerated, the fireball didn’t, and it rolled forward and burned everybody,” Assard said.

 

June Walunga, daughter of one of the National Guard members who responded to the crash, remembers being in Gambell and watching the plane come down.

“I was seven years old, and I remember the sound and the plane going over Gambell,” she said. “It was thundering to us. You know, we never heard that kind of sound back then. And it’s right there very close to your head. And shortly after that, I saw smoke.”

None of the crew died in the crash, but all of them sustained injuries, including burns, shrapnel and bullet wounds.

Staff Sgt. Clifford Iknokinok and three other members of the Gambell First Scout Battalion were seal hunting nearby and made their way to the crash site despite the Soviet fighters continuing to circle overhead. Upon realizing that they didn’t have the necessary equipment to help the air crew, Iknokinok set off for Gambell to gather additional assistance. Before he made it to Gambell, though, he ran into several of his fellow National Guard members, who were already on their way to help.

The National Guard members used umiaks to transport the injured air crew back to Gambell. June Walunga remembers them arriving in town.

“I remember I was holding my mother’s hand, and we were walking towards the beach where the boats were coming in, and they were carrying these people on stretchers going up the beach. Some had bandages wrapped on them and their arms; some of them were halfway up on their shoulders,” Walunga said.

After arriving in Gambell, the crew’s injuries were treated. A team from Elmendorf Air Force Base retrieved them two days later. Bowen says it was only due to the quick action of the Gambell First Scouts that all 11 members of the air crew survived.

But if this all happened in 1955, why is the National Guard awarding medals in 2022? There’s a simple reason, according to Bowen.

“In 1955, there (were) no peacetime medals in the active military or in the National Guard,” he explained.

Brigadier General John Noyes presented the members of the Gambell First Scout Battalion with letters of commendation for their actions.

“For that time, that was appropriate for 1955 and, in reality, that was the only thing that he really had in his awards branch to provide,” Bowen said.

In November of that year, the U.S. Navy also recognized the Gambell First Scouts by awarding Honorary Naval Aviator Designations to Master Sergeant Willis Walunga and Staff Sergeant Clifford Iknokinok, the senior members of the unit. The other members received letters of appreciation from the Navy.

After a review by Major General Torrence Saxe, the current adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, the awards were upgraded to the Alaska Heroism Medal, currently the highest award for heroism in the Alaska National Guard. The medals will be presented to the families of the members of the Gambell First Scout Battalion and Cpl. Bruce Boolowon, the only surviving member.

The full list of recipients is as follows:

• 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

The award ceremony was originally scheduled for July 9, but due to inclement weather, personnel from the Office of Veterans Affairs and the Alaska National Guard were unable to land in Gambell that day. The National Guard and the Office of Veterans Affairs say they will work with the community and family representatives to reschedule the event.

Click here to watch the full Strait Science presentation focusing on the Gambell National Guardsmen and their heroic rescue mission from 1955.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers visited Unalaska in late June to teach Unalaskans about unexploded munitions.

The U.S. military left lots of unexploded ordnance when they were stationed in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. And grenades, chemical weapons and other munitions have been turning up on the island’s hiking trails and beaches for decades.

Brian McComas put in 20 years as an explosive ordnance master blaster and is now a safety specialist with the corps. He taught the class participants about the 3 R’s of explosives safety: recognize, retreat and report.

“So you want to recognize, ‘Hey this might be an ordnance item, let me get out of the area,’” McComas said.

McComas stressed the importance of leaving the same way you came in because there may be more explosives in the area.

“And then you call the police department, or the local authority that responds to your area,” McComas said.

But recognizing ordnance isn’t always so easy. McComas said things can change appearances after sitting outside for years or decades. Even he’s been fooled.

McComas said he once responded to a call on an Air Force base, where they found a shell.

“I just looked at it, and I said, ‘That’s a VW muffler.’ Because that’s what it looked like. And after contacting my office and doing research, it was a 1900s projectile, or mortar, called a Stokes mortar,” McComas said.

Rylee Lekanoff attended one of the Unalaska trainings. The 11th-grader grew up in Unalaska, and despite such a prevalence of unexploded ordnance in the area, she said she didn’t learn about proper protocol in school. Rather, it was her family who taught her.

“I heard a little bit about it growing up from my family. From my grandparents. One time my dad and a couple of his friends were out hiking, and they found a live grenade,” Lekanoff said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has made several trips to Unalaska lately to clean up old military sites. They plan to clean up petroleum contamination early this fall. But it’s a long and slow process, and Unalaskans will likely be dealing with military debris for many decades to come.

The United States Air Force has agreed to pay more than $200,000 in fines for mismanaging hazardous waste on Shemya Island in the far Western Aleutians. Shemya is about 500 miles from mainland Russia and about 1,500 miles west of Anchorage.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a June 23 statement that the Air Force had stored hazardous waste without a permit at Eareckson Air Station, improperly storing tons of toxic waste fuel and oil, hazardous paints, hydrochloric acid and other chemicals as well as waste items like batteries and aerosol cans.

The Air Force agreed to pay $206,811 in penalties, as well as to properly dispose of around 55,000 pounds of hazardous waste by the end of June 2022.

Ed Kowalski, a spokesperson for the EPA, said he’s “grateful that the Air Force has acknowledged its mistakes and stepped up to its responsibilities to fix the problem.”

The U.S. military presence began on Shemya during World War II. In the 1990s, the Air Force built a more modern station and has maintained a presence there since.

The large Air Force transport plane seen flying over downtown Juneau on Monday was a C-17 doing training exercises at the airport.

According to Patty Wahto, Juneau’s airport manager, the plane was taking advantage of the clear weather to practice visual approaches of the runway, which means landing without using instruments.

The same plane landed and took off several times in the middle of the day.