Military

The Army’s command in Alaska has a new name now, to reflect its new focus on fighting in the Arctic and helping develop tactics and equipment for the region. U.S. Army Alaska officially became the 11^th Airborne Division Monday after ceremonies at Fort Wainwright and Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson.

Monday morning’s ceremony at Fort Wainwright began with helicopters, including a half-dozen carrying the Army brass and dignitaries invited to the event.

“You know, I love the sound of helicopters in the morning,” said Gen. James McConville, the Army chief of staff, “because it sounds like victory and that’s what this division is about — it’s about victory!”

McConville flew in for the occasion to officiate in the ceremony. The Army’s top officer observed that the event was being held on the anniversary of D-Day, when U.S. and Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy 78 years ago to liberate the continent from the Nazis.

“And on this June 6^th, we’re also making history,” he said. “We’re passing you the colors and the patch of the storied 11^th Airborne Division.”

McConville noted that the 11^th Airborne wasn’t fighting in Europe at that time. But he says it developed tactics in the Asian theater that made airborne assault a crucial element of the D-Day invasion.

Former U.S. Army Alaska commander Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, who now commands the division, says it will build on that expertise, both in Asia and the Arctic.

“Our mission is to deter the threats and be ready to fight and win both in the Indo-Pacific and the Arctic,” he said. “And yes, that’s a unique and difficult mission.”

The 11^th Airborne will be the Army’s second based in the United States, the first being the 82^nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Eifler says activating the new division will enable the Army to reorganize the 12,000 Alaska-based soldiers who’ve been pulled in many directions over the years to focus their mission on the Arctic and Indo-Pacific.

“We were a brigade and we had an airborne battalion, then it was going away,” he said, recounting U.S. Army Alaska’s frequently shifting missions over the past couple of decades. “Then we had the Strykers. Then were we deploying to Iraq. You know, all over the years, we were all over the place.”

Eifler said in a news conference before Monday’s ceremony that military leaders realized that all those conflicting missions diminished U.S. Army Alaska’s capabilities. He said that and an evolving geopolitical landscape, driven by increased interest in the Arctic, convinced leadership to make some changes.

“We sort of lost the Arctic ethos that we had,” he said, “being an Arctic force and cold-weather capable, because we were all focused on Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Eifler said in a recent interview that the Army will continue reorganizing the 11^th Airborne. He says initially, the public may not notice much more than the new patch on soldiers’ sleeves.

He said many of those changes will be related to a much greater focus on soldier mobility — on foot, on skis, or on new equipment like smaller snow-capable tracked vehicles. And he says the iconic multi-wheeled vehicles the Fort Wainwright-based Stryker brigade uses likely will eventually be phased-out.

“You’ll see a lot less Strykers,” he said. “Maybe a little bit more airborne operations up here because, again, the only Arctic airborne capability is in this unit.”

McConville and Eifler both said the 11^th Airborne will begin hosting big training exercises like those conducted on ranges at Fort Irwin, California, and Fort Rucker, Alabama. And they expect more training with soldiers from allied nations that want their troops to gain experience in operating in cold weather and on mountainous terrain.

For nearly 80 years, a small American flag placed by an old friend was the only thing that stood above the tundra marking Pvt. George Fox’s plot in Unalaska’s cemetery.

That changed last week when the decorated veteran’s resting place was finally recognized.

Fox is the only known Unangax̂ soldier killed fighting in World War II, or in any war since. For decades, he was buried in an unmarked grave. This Memorial Day, he was finally honored with a gravestone in a long-awaited burial ceremony that drew crowds from across the state and Lower 48 to the remote Aleutian community.

Officials unveiled an honorary gravestone during the ceremony, which included an Army color guard, a 21-gun salute and a speech from Fox’s former neighbor following a procession down Unalaska’s Front Beach.

Had it not been for the heavy Aleutian fog, members of Fox’s family and Sens Dan. Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski also would have flown in to speak in his honor. Representatives from the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, the Aleut Corporation and members of the VA Alaska Health Care System were in attendance.

Fox was born in 1920 on Unga Island, the largest of the Shumagin islands, about 250 miles northeast of Unalaska. Census data shows that he and his mother moved to Unalaska by 1929, and he joined the military when he was about 21 years old, according to Michael Livingston, who played an integral role in getting Fox’s gravestone ordered. Livingston works for the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association and spent years uncovering lost details about Fox’s past.

Fox was killed fighting in Ardea, Italy, in 1944. About five years later, his remains were returned to Unalaska. Following a small ceremony, Livingston said he was buried in an unmarked grave next to his mother at the island’s cemetery. It took a lot of work and perseverance to confirm that his body was in Unalaska, he said.

While Sen. Sullivan tried but failed to make it to the special ceremony, Livingston said he played a key role in finally moving the process forward and ordering the grave marker last May.

Livingston and a few others have been researching and battling for years to get Fox his deserved recognition.

“It really is a decade in the making,” Livingston said. “A lot of people have been working on this to try to find out the information we needed to honor Pvt. George Fox. And a lot of people have been working to get the gravestone ordered. We’re just grateful for all the support.”

He said two locals recently discovered that in 1941, Fox signed a petition to incorporate Unalaska, also making him a founder of the Aleutian town.

Unangax̂ Elder Gertrude Svarny was Fox’s neighbor growing up. She said he was a friend to her older brother.

After Fox died in the war, Svarny would walk to his grave every Memorial Day and place a small American flag on the overgrown plot. This year, thanks to Livingston’s planning and outreach, her small flag was just one of several dozen that were brought by supporters from across the state who made the trek up the hill to his grave.

Following a prayer and hymn from Unalaska’s Father Evon Bereskin, Svarny and Livingston pulled an American flag shroud from the stone, revealing the new marker to the locals and visitors gathered at the base of Mount Newhall.

In a speech following the unveiling, Svarny said that to fully understand what this recognition means, people need to know the region’s history.

“When I was 12 years old, my village survived the bombing of Unalaska Island by the Japanese,” Svarny said. “Shortly thereafter, we were forced to leave home.”

The U.S. government forcibly removed over 800 Unangax̂ people from their homes in the Aleutian and Pribilof region following the WWII bombing.

“We were dropped off in abandoned canneries, gold mines and logging camps in Southeast Alaska, stripped of our civil liberties,” she told the crowd. “And it changed our lives forever. Even as this was happening to us, our sons and daughters, our brothers, sisters were signing up to fight for the United States in the war.”

She said that spirit is in part why she and others survived the camps.

“This ceremony today symbolizes the recognition of the many Unangax̂ people who served in their country,” Svarny said. “If I could wish anything, I would wish that we would all teach our children to care deeply about the welfare of their friends and neighbors. We are nothing without the community around us.”

Fox’s marker is engraved with his own words: “Wish all love.” They come from a letter he wrote to his father just weeks before he died.

Livingston read that letter in Monday’s ceremony.

“‘I would sure like to be fishing,’” Livingston read. “‘This makes three seasons that I have missed fishing. We have transferred into infantry and are seeing some action. I’m getting along fine. Don’t worry about me. Write often, and I wish you all the love. Will write more later. Your son, George.’”

The gravestone also includes Fox’s name, his date of birth, his honors, including a Purple Heart, and his recognition as an “Unangax̂ warrior.”

The soldier who was killed by a bear Tuesday afternoon at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was setting a course through the woods for navigation training at the time of the attack, according to the U.S. Army Alaska.

The soldier was part of a group of three scouting the area west of the Anchorage Regional Landfill. Investigators determined a sow with two cubs attacked the group, said Alaska Wildlife Trooper Capt. Derek DeGraaf. A den was found nearby, he said.

“We don’t know if it was an original den, or the sow had moved and just stashed the bears there — we don’t know, but it was clearly a dugout in the ground,” he said.

The New York Times reported the soldiers’ arrival prompted the sow to crawl out of the den, knock down one soldier and attack a second. The soldier knocked down was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and released, according to the newspaper.

The soldier killed was identified by the U.S. Army Alaska on Thursday as 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Seth Michael Plant, an infantryman from the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Plant, from Florida, joined the active-duty Army in January 2015 and served in Georgia and North Carolina before arriving to JBER in July 2021.

On Tuesday, Plant was medevaced from the scene of the bear attack in a National Guard helicopter to JBER Hospital, where he was declared dead, said John Pennell, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Alaska.

In a statement, Plant’s commander, Lt. Col. David J. Nelson, remembered Plant as “a positive and dedicated leader who brought joy and energy to the paratroopers who served with him.”

“He always had a smile on his face, he always went above and beyond what was asked of him, and he served as an inspiration to all who had the privilege to know him,” Nelson said. “His loss is deeply felt within our organization and we offer our sincere condolences to friends and family.”

The investigation into the bear attack is ongoing. Pennell said he didn’t have information about whether the group was carrying bear spray or a gun.

“That’s part of the ongoing investigation is to find out what happened and if there’s any change that needs to be made to the current way we do business,” he said.

Wildlife troopers helped with the initial on-scene investigation, but have since turned it over to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Pennell said the area where the attack happened was away from roads west of the regional landfill.

“It’s part of the boreal forest,” he said. “It’s woody, with lots of small brush. This time of year it’s not completely overgrown with small brush and leaves, but it’s Alaska terrain.”

Pennell said the team of three soldiers was setting a course for a navigation exercise, which he described as the “military version of orienteering.”

“You start with a map and compass and you have to find your way, from a start point to point A, and then from point A to point B, point B to point C, and so on,” he said.

The last fatal bear attack in Alaska happened in September 2020, when a man was killed in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve during a moose hunt.

Capt. Pal Bratbak has patrolled the Barents Sea for decades. His Norwegian coast guard search-and-rescue cutter mostly chases after distress calls from fishermen. The fishermen are chasing the cod — and the cod sometimes lead them astray.

“The codfish, they don’t see the border, so we help every boat in our area,” he says, and that means as many Russian boats as Norwegian. A treaty allows both nations to catch a quota, and that management of the Barents Sea Arctic cod fleet is considered a success worldwide, both economically and environmentally.

“That’s important for Norway and the European Union and NATO and the whole world. And it’s important for the Russians,” he says.

Cooperation like that has been a given on the Russian-Norwegian frontier for decades, if not centuries. The Norwegians call it “high north, low tension.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though, that tension isn’t so low, and Bratbak is worried. The coast guard also enforces the fishing laws in the Barents Sea.

Years ago, in a rare case, a Russian trawler fled from a coast guard ship, into Russian waters — with Norwegian inspectors on board. Back then, Russian authorities promptly arrested the captain and returned the inspectors. Bratbak hopes the same cooperation would happen today, but his confidence is a bit shaken by recent events.

“In these days, Russia can use other methods to negotiate. Like in the Ukraine conflict, they are willing to use power (more) than talking,” he says.

Critical climate work is on hold

As a founding member of NATO, Norway’s government has joined the rest of Europe in isolating Russia. But as a country bordering Russia, it’s feeling the effects more immediately than some others — in everything from Arctic climate action and nuclear waste control to cross-border trade and regional sports leagues.

The protection of the pristine waters of the Arctic, as well as that cod fleet Capt. Bratbak mentioned, falls under an international group called the Arctic Council. The rotating chair of that group is currently Russia, and as such the council has suspended all activities, including crucial research on climate change.

“It’s not something you can point out that failed today, but it’s ongoing,” says Kim Holmen with the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso, where the Arctic Council would normally be coordinating research.

Russia has about half of the world’s Arctic landmass, including permafrost that, if it melts, could release megatons of trapped carbon and greenhouse gases.

Scientists like Holmen count on collaboration with their Russian colleagues.

“We have common publications. We have collected data together. We’ve been on each other’s cruises. I’ve been to people’s homes in Saint Petersburg, good friends,” he says.

Holmen isn’t in contact with those friends right now. He’s been working on the Arctic for more than 30 years, and he says the lesson from back in the Soviet days is that communication will only get them into trouble, which would delay getting back to work.

“Polar scientists are used to the cold,” says Holmen. “We hope and wish to pick up when it thaws.”

‘We are seeing the Iron Curtain come back’

For residents of the border city of Kirkenes, their world changed overnight.

Guro Brandshaug is CEO of the Kirkenes Conference, an annual businesses summit between Russia and Norway. This was the 14th year the event was held, and, on a weeknight in February, it all started out relatively normally.

“On Wednesday the 23rd I welcomed our foreign minister and the Russian ambassador,” says Brandshaug.

With Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border, she says, it was tense. But Kirkenes is a city built on friendly relations with Russia, and Brandshaug says no one she knew thought Russian President Vladimir Putin would really invade.

“And then we woke up on the morning on the 24th,” she says. “The Russians had started bombing Ukraine. It was a huge shock. People were actually crying.”

A nuclear waste dump poses a constant threat

“Everything that has been built up over the last 30 years, was just washed out in a few days. We are seeing the Iron Curtain coming back,” says Thomas Nilsen with the Barents Observer newspaper in Kirkenes.

The new Iron Curtain severed personal ties, economic links and even scuttled issues of mutual survival, Nilsen says. For years, Norway had been helping Russia safely dispose of spent fuel rods from its aging nuclear submarines, which were stationed in the Arctic.

At a park station in Svanvik, scientist Bredo Moller collects air samples for the Norwegian radiation safety authority.

“We are some, some kind of a nuclear watchdog on the border to Russia,” he says. “That’s more or less why we’re here — to monitor what’s on the other side of the border, just a few kilometers from here.”

He’s referring to one of the world’s biggest nuclear waste dumps, across the border, where tons of waste from Russian power plants and aging submarines pose a constant threat, either as a contaminant to the Arctic sea life or as material in a terrorist dirty bomb.

Moller says that just last November, Norway marked 25 years of cooperation on nuclear cleanup, and he went to Murmansk in Russia for a celebration with his colleagues.

“I have many friends in Murmansk, shaking their heads like me, waiting for this to end,” he says.

Moller is counting on those colleagues to keep up the work of saving the Arctic from nuclear contamination. And he’s certain his friends oppose the war in Ukraine just as he does — they just can’t speak right now. But it’s chilling that many local officials across the border, as well as 700 rectors and university presidents in Russia, have issued strong statements supporting Putin. And that makes Moller worry that even this vital work might not resume soon.

“It will take many, many years I’m afraid, to get back to that trust that we have gained through these 25 years of cooperation. So, yeah, it is frightening times,” he says.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Public comment ends Monday for a U.S. Navy proposal to greatly expand the area its ships are allowed to use for a war games exercise next summer in the Gulf of Alaska.

Northern Edge is a biennial, large-scale training exercise that involves the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps, as well as the Navy, which says it needs more room.

In the past, the Navy has worked within a 55,000 square mile zone east of Kodiak and south of Prince William Sound. But for 2023, it wants to add 246,000 square miles, stretching west to a point south of Dutch Harbor.

Critics of Northern Edge include coastal Alaska city councils, commercial fishers and environmental and Alaska Native groups. They say such a massive exercise — often conducted in May, with live munitions and active sonar — disrupts fish and marine mammals during a critical time, as they’re migrating and breeding in the Gulf of Alaska.

The Navy disputes that its activities harm fish and marine mammals, saying it takes steps to mitigate negative impacts. Unlike its existing zone, the Navy would not conduct live-fire training or use active sonar in the new area.

A supplemental environmental impact statement is available for review and public comment. The comment period is open until 11:59 p.m. Monday, May 2.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Anacapa is leaving Petersburg this year after more than three decades of fisheries law enforcement, rescues and patrols in Southeast Alaska. The Coast Guard plans to reassign the vessel after an overhaul.

The captain and crew of ship welcomed the community for tours this week as they get set to depart Alaska.

“There’s not a lot of creature comforts on this boat. This boat is to do a mission,” said Petty Officer Second Class Caleb Tower as he lead one of the tours. “The 154s down in Ketchikan, they’re built to a commercial standard. So it’s much more luxurious — essentially take a yacht and put guns on it and say it’s for the Coast Guard.”

The fast response cutters are 154-foot replacements that are being deployed to other Alaskan ports. Local officials fought to keep a cutter stationed in Petersburg after the military branch announced plans to replace the 110-foot Island class ships like the Anacapa. Named after an island in California, the Anacapa arrived in Petersburg and was commissioned in 1990.

Tower said the constant use in Alaska is hard on a 30-year-old ship.

“The only other boat I’ve been on that is equivalent to what we do here in Alaska is over in the Middle East,” he said. “And it’s high op tempo, constantly just go, go, go, go. So the boat gets tired — it’s a 30-year-old boat. She’s tired. But she’s in very good condition for her age.”

Deep in the stern, senior chief petty officer Jeffrey Wilkes showed off the two large engines for propulsion and two for electrical power. At top speed, the ship can burn around 300 gallons an hour. At lower speeds it can go almost 5,000 nautical miles on a tank of gas. Wilkes said it’s been challenging to be on an older ship.

“It’s getting harder and harder to maintain the asset with the limited resources,” he said. “Parts are hard to find.”

The Anacapa will head to Ketchikan and will spend about a month there, swapping out engines and generators before heading to its new homeport of Port Angeles, Washington. A new crew will take over there as the Petersburg crew heads to new postings.

It’s bittersweet for some on board, including Wilkes.

“The town has been real welcoming to me and my family, my kids, my wife works at the school. We just love it here, but work-wise it’s been a difficult tour,” Wilkes said.

The Anacapa was to be decommissioned, but that’s no longer the plan. It will be replacing a ship that’s in worse shape. The crew says there are maybe a dozen of the 110s left in the Coast Guard, and this one may have another two to five years left in it.

Out on the front deck, Tower shows off the 25 millimeter cannon, which is usually kept under cover.

“It’s a fun gun to shoot,” he said. “It shoots about 175 rounds per minute.”

The Anacapa also has two .50 caliber machine guns and some smaller arms onboard.

In 2012, the crew used the cannon to scuttle a derelict Japanese fishing boat that wound up off the coast of Alaska after the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami.

Over the years the Anacapa has responded to natural disasters, freed entangled whales, and searched for missing aircraft and hunters.

Michaela McKeown has been commanding officer on the Anacapa for about a year. It’s her first command. She says the ship has character, and it’s been a privilege to work with her crew.

McKeown said one of the tougher missions during her time was a search and rescue for a sailboat in distress north of Sitka

“The weather was rough, of course, as it is with SAR cases,” she said. “We steamed through the night, got there first light in the morning and went into this remote bay and had to come up with a pretty creative plan. We used our small boat to get the sailboat under tow and then transfer the tow over to the cutter and were able to rescue the sailboat and the couple individuals onboard and bring them back to Sitka.”

The Anacapa’s replacement in Petersburg is an 87-foot San Francisco-based Marine Protector-class cutter called the Pike, built in 2005. The smaller ship means around 7 fewer crew.

The Pike is expected to arrive in Petersburg in June.