Military

A national expert on Arctic policy told state lawmakers on Thursday that Alaska will be at the front line of global competition over Arctic Ocean resources.

Mike Sfraga, director of the Polar Institute at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Wilson Center, said climate change is making the Arctic Ocean more accessible.

“That’s why I’ve called Alaska the nation’s vanguard, because this is a new ocean,” he said. “This is a new landscape of competition. And that’s why we must be diligent in what we do, I believe, in the state of Alaska.”

Sfraga said Alaska can no longer be seen as isolated. He noted that China has invested in a gas pipeline through Siberia. And Russia has developed both commercial and military sites in the Arctic.

Sfraga said the U.S. should develop a deep-water port in or near the Arctic. He said research suggests it could be at Nome or another site. And he said the country should be prepared to invest heavily in the project.

“This nation needs a deep-water port,” he said. “We just need one. And we have more reports than we can stack on a table — pick one. And then do a Manhattan Project on it. I mean, if it’s Nome, let’s go all in on Nome.”

Sfraga also said the U.S. should establish a greater military presence in the Arctic.

Sfraga’s testimony was part of the annual meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Armed Services Committee.

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Watch the latest legislative coverage from Gavel Alaska.

Juneau police are investigating a burglary at the American Legion post in Auke Bay.

Some of the stolen items may have had low monetary value, but the crime’s victims say they had priceless sentimental value.

American Legion Auke Bay Post 25 Commander John Cooper said burglars broke into the building sometime around Jan. 21 and took two Toyo heaters, a flat-screen TV, and some frozen food from the kitchen.

Cooper said they also took part of a display commemorating those who died during the sinking of the USS Juneau in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

“They’re white beads,” said Cooper. “They’re not pearls. They’re not high-value, except for their symbolic value. Somebody saw them, I think, somebody thought they were probably little pearls and thought they’d get rich.”

The beads were made by local artist Donna Hurley, who wanted to go beyond just the numbers of people who died. So she made the bead strings to tell the story of the USS Juneau’s crew members and how they died.

“A little different when you see like that, isn’t it?” asked Hurley when she showed a new, identical set of beads that she has almost finished.

From the display stolen from the American Legion, there are three strands. The longest has 697 beads — one bead for each crew member before the ship sank in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

The next strand is smaller, and it only has 140 beads. Those represent the sailors who were blown off the ship or managed to escape when it was hit by a torpedo and sank.

The final strand is much, much smaller. It includes just 10 beads. Those are for the only sailors who survived exposure and shark attacks in the South Pacific for eight days before they were finally rescued.

“It’s important we don’t forget,” Hurley said.

“This is one of the largest naval disasters in our history,” she said. “Five (Sullivan) brothers died, an entire crew, and a ship that was nine months old.”

Hurley said she’s made a few versions of the project over the years. The beads taken from the American Legion were made in conjunction with a recent return of the USS Juneau’s silver set to Juneau.

When the ship was being built during World War II, Hurley said Juneau school kids helped raise money for a silver punch bowl, tray, cups and candlesticks. The silver set was presented to the crew when the ship was commissioned in 1942, but it was placed in storage just before it entered combat.

Ina Lucas, wife of Juneau’s mayor at the time, was the ship’s sponsor. Hurley said Lucas christened the USS Juneau and met many of the crew before the ship went into battle.

Hurley said the same silver set was also used aboard two subsequent vessels named Juneau.

There are other memorials to the original USS Juneau. Down on the waterfront where cruise ship passengers disembark every summer, there’s a monument that lists all of the names of the people who died.

Hurley said most of the items stolen from the American Legion can be replaced.

“But, like one of the (Facebook) posts said, it’s like robbing a church,” Hurley said. “These guys are veterans. They fought for us. I mean, we lived the life we live because of them. And those (beads) had no meaning to the people that stole it. They only had meaning to the vets. And that breaks my heart.”

No one has been arrested and none of the stolen items have been recovered. The Juneau Police Department said they have video of the theft, and they’re still investigating the case.

When the theft was originally reported on social media, there was a lot of speculation about who could be responsible.

But Lt. Krag Campbell cautions against putting out information on Facebook about potential suspects.

“Social media spreads to a lot of people,” Campbell said. “And typically, once a suspect knows that, ‘Hey, the police are going to be looking for my vehicle with a very specific tire,’ or something like that, (then) they might try to hide or alter that unique identifier.”

And, Campbell said, sometimes information put out on social media may just be wrong.

 

The U.S. Coast Guard has released a list of communications towers in Alaska that may not be receiving VHF radio broadcasts and is warning mariners to bring back up communications systems.

Seven of the problem towers are in Southeast Alaska, including Duke Island, Sukkwan Island, Zarembo Island, Cape Fanshaw, Duffield, Althorp Peak and Deception Hills. The areas near those towers are dead zones where the Coast Guard won’t be able to hear distress calls on emergency channel 16.

Other sites in Alaska are Pigot Point, Bede Mountain, Raspberry Island and Cape Gull.

The Coast Guard has hired a contractor to do repair work.

“Specifically to Southeast, there’s some towers that we’re looking into and making repairs on parts of the towers to get them up and running, back to full running status,” said Matthew Schofield, assistant public affairs officer for the Coast Guard’s District 17 in Alaska.

One of the issues is getting power generators back up and running at the communication towers. Schofield said the fix is happening as soon as possible.

“I don’t necessarily have a timeline. I don’t want to assign something that isn’t 100% here for that, but at this point some of the sites are able to receive. They’re able to receive some of the signals and some of the calls, but they may not be able to transmit, so we’re also working that,” he said.

The Coast Guard this month warned that, even with a fully functioning system, it cannot hear all VHF calls in Alaska’s mountainous terrain. VHF radio is the cheapest means for emergency calls by mariners in distress. But the Coast Guard is recommending other communications systems as a backup, like satellite phones or texting devices, emergency beacons or even cellphones where there’s service.

“Any means that people can take when they’re out on the water to contact the Coast Guard is obviously recommended,” Schofield said. “But we’ll get to the calls the best we can, and we do want to ensure safe passage throughout the water and throughout the fishing season.”

Commercial fisheries are ongoing in Southeast through the winter. This winter has already brought hazardous conditions, with freezing spray warnings, strong winds and a deep freeze.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t sure how she’ll vote on a resolution that would constrain President Donald Trump from military actions against Iran.

“My inclination right now — and I have not made a decision, I think that’s important to state — but my inclination right now is, I’m hesitant to sign on to it for a host of different reasons,” the Alaska Republican said.

Trump’s speech on Wednesday seemed to mark a de-escalation in the hostilities with Iran. But lawmakers are still considering a war powers resolution that would require Trump to get congressional approval for further action, unless the U.S. is under attack.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are likely to pass their version of a war powers resolution on Thursday. Whether the Senate does the same could turn in part on a handful of Republican senators like Murkowski, who do not always fall in line with party leadership.

The idea that the Republican-led Senate might pass a resolution reining Trump in seemed more possible Wednesday afternoon, when Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, emerged from a Senate briefing on Iran.

“I walked into the briefing undecided, I walked out decided (to vote for the resolution),” Lee told reporters, “specifically because of what happened in that briefing.”

Lee said senators were told they should not question the U.S. military response. He didn’t say who, in particular, delivered that message.

“It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government — I don’t care whether they’re with the CIA, with the Department of Defense or otherwise — to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran,” Lee said, voice raised. “It’s un-American. It’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong.”

Lee’s reaction was unusual among Republican senators, and the briefing seemed to have the opposite effect on Murkowski.

She issued a statement Monday commending the president for ordering the drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. The administration’s briefing only reinforced her view.

“The expression that (Soleimani) has the blood of many Americans, hundreds of Americans on his hand, I think is undisputed and is clear,” she said. “The information that we received today allows me to make the statement that I believe that the action that was taken at the direction of the president was appropriate.”

The Senate war powers resolution is sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. It requires 51 votes to pass, so four Republican senators would have to join the Democrats. In addition to Lee, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., supports the resolution.

Murkowski said the measure is vague in places, and she worries it would send a message to the military, and to other countries, that the response is driven by politics rather than policy.

“I want particularly the men and women that are serving us to know that we are behind them 100% in terms of what they do, day in and day out, to protect us as a nation,” she said. “And so making sure that we are clear and cautious at the same time is important and a priority to me.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she’ll sign onto a resolution that commends President Donald Trump and praises the military for the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

Murkowski, in a written statement, called the attack at the Baghdad airport “significant” and “decisive.” The Alaska Republican said it “eliminated one of the greatest threats to peace in the region.” She also said she’ll look for a path toward de-escalation.

Congress has never authorized a war against Iran, and some Democrats are questioning the legality of the attack. But Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said Soleimani was a “vicious” killer of American soldiers, and he said Trump’s order was justified.

“I think it’s a noncontroversial statement that the president’s commander-and-chief constitutional authority is to protect American forces abroad,” Sullivan said.

He contrasted the attack with another potential scenario: a preemptive invasion of North Korea. That would definitely require congressional authorization, Sullivan said, but he believes Trump was within his rights when he ordered the killing in Iraq on his own.

“The big distinction is, are you acting to protect American lives, whether diplomats or soldiers? That’s the most obvious area where (the president) has broad constitutional authority,” Sullivan said.

Trump and members of his cabinet say Soleimani was plotting an “imminent” attack on U.S. interests, a claim many Democrats in Congress are questioning.

Sullivan said he’ll know more after a congressional briefing on Wednesday.

Widespread outages of the Coast Guard’s VHF relay towers persist across Alaska. The federal government has signed a new vendor to begin repairs, but the Coast Guard continues to advise mariners to carry satellite phones and other more sophisticated means of communication as a back up.

For those unfamiliar with marine radios, VHF’s Channel 16 is akin to 911 on the water.

“I don’t know how many people would be that comfortable if suddenly the 911 system went down for months at end, that’s kind of what we have here,” said Ed Page, a retired Coast Guard officer who now runs the Marine Exchange of Alaska.

Marine Exchange offers real-time satellite vessel tracking. But Page says often the simple marine radios are the best things to carry.

“Now the Coast Guard’s suggesting that mariners use their cell phones and these SPOT or satellite transponders,” Page said. “But we shouldn’t have to depend on that. Really, the best technology still should be the VHF call on the radio; it’s been around for years.”

Poor VHF coverage isn’t a new issue. Blame Alaska’s geography and weather for that. But this many outages at once is not normal. The Coast Guard doesn’t service its towers. It relies on private contractors to do this work for it.

“They have to go to Congress and secure funding and then they usually use defense contractors and it takes many years,” Page said.

In Southeast Alaska, there are 34 relay towers that can beam a distress call from the water to a Coast Guard watchstander.  About a third of those are offline, said Coast Guard Lt. Commander Scott McCann.

“So there’s a decent chance that we might not hear any calls for distress on channel 16,” he said.

But he said even if watchstanders don’t hear a call, others nearby might.

“Just because our towers are down, and we might not be able to hear you doesn’t mean that other people’s VHF doesn’t work,” McCann said. “Our towers being down does not affect others. “

Servicing the towers had been the responsibility of Lynxnet, LLC, a Virginia-based subsidiary of NANA Regional Corporation of Kotzebue. But its contract expired last month and it wasn’t renewed.

Silver Mountain Construction, a Palmer-based firm owned by Cook Inlet Region, Inc. also known as CIRI, was recently awarded an $8.5 million contract to take over servicing the sites.

The Coast Guard’s expectation is service will improve over time.

“One of the main things we were looking for when changing over contracts was continuity in support,” McCann said. “We didn’t want to have a gap in support for the radio towers knowing that we have all these issues with them. And that was something that Silver Mountain could provide.”

In recent weeks, much of Prince William Sound has been a dead zone for the Coast Guard’s VHF relay towers. Repair work has been hampered by poor weather. The Coast Guard Cutter Mustang recently stepped up patrols in that region as a precaution.