After parachuting into the frigid Alaskan countryside, Captain Weston Iannone and his soldiers marched for miles through deep snow, eventually setting up temporary camp on a ridge near a small grove of skeletal spruces that were also struggling to survive.
It was getting dark, the temperature had dropped below freezing, and the 120 men and women assembled as part of a major training exercise in subarctic Alaska had not yet pitched tents. They still hadn’t received fuel, essential to keep warm through the long night ahead.
“Everything is a challenge, from water to fuel, food, moving people, ensuring the comfort of personnel,” said Iannone, 27, the company’s commander, as his soldiers dug deeper into the snow, looking for a firm base on which to build. set up your sleeping tents. “What we’re doing here is inherent training – to figure out how far we can go, physically and mentally.”
This month’s military exercise, the first of its kind, involved 8,000 troops and was conducted near Fairbanks, Alaska. It had been planned long before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it was inspired in part by Russia’s aggressive efforts in recent years to militarize the Arctic, a region of the world where the United States and Russia share an extensive maritime border.
Tensions have been building in the region for years, with different countries claiming control of sea lanes and energy reserves that are becoming accessible as a result of climate change. Now, with the geopolitical order altered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, competition for sovereignty and resources in the Arctic could intensify.
The US federal government is investing hundreds of millions of dollars on Alaska’s west coast to expand the Port of Nome, which could transform the deep-water service hub that supplies and serves US Navy and Coast Guard vessels sailing north of the Arctic Circle. The Coast Guard plans to put three new icebreakers to sea — but Russia already has more than 50 in operation.
As the US denounces Russia’s aggressive military expansion in the Arctic, the Pentagon has its own plans to increase its presence and capabilities in the region, working to rebuild its frigid-weather work skills relegated to the background during two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Air Force has transferred dozens of F-35 fighter jets to Alaska, announcing that the state will be home to “more advanced fighter jets than anywhere else in the world.” Last year the US military released its first strategic plan to “regain hegemony in the Arctic”.
The Navy, which this month conducted exercises above and below the polar ice cap north of the Arctic Circle, also outlined a plan to protect US interests in the region, warning that a weak presence there would mean “peace and prosperity will be increasingly challenged by Russia and China, whose interests and values ​​differ profoundly from ours”.
Preparations are costly, both in terms of funding and personnel. Iannone’s company managed to finish setting up their tents before midnight and survived the night without incident, but other companies did not fare as well: eight soldiers suffered frostbite and four others were taken to hospital after a vehicle fire broke out. troop transport.
Meanwhile, four US Marines died when their aircraft crashed during another recent exercise in very low temperatures, this one in Norway.
Russia, whose eastern coast is just 88 km from the coast of Alaska, separated from it by the Bering Strait, has for years prioritized expanding its presence in the Arctic, renovating and expanding its military airports, building bases, training troops and developing a network of military defense systems on the northern border.
With a warming climate causing the region’s sea ice to shrink, valuable fish populations are shifting north, while rare minerals and substantial Arctic reserves of fossil fuels are becoming a growing target for exploitation. Both commercial and tourist vessel traffic is expected to increase.
Two years ago, Moscow took its own “war games” to the Bering Sea. Russian commanders tested weapons in the region and demanded that US fishing vessels operating in US fishing waters get out of their way – an order the US Coast Guard recommended they obey. On several occasions Russia has sent military planes to the edge of US airspace, prompting US jets to take off in a hurry to intercept them.
This month, in response to escalating international sanctions on Russia, a Russian lawmaker demanded that Alaska, bought by the US from Russia in 1867, be returned to Russian control — a gesture possibly just rhetorical, but one that nonetheless reflected the deterioration of relationship between the two world powers.
The vast waters of the Arctic were for centuries a no-man’s land, whose access was made impossible by the ice cap and whose exact territorial boundaries – claimed by the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – were uncertain.
But with the melting of sea ice opening up new maritime routes and arousing the interest of various countries in the immense reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals located under the Arctic seabed, the complex treaties, claims and boundary zones that govern the region were opened up to new disputes.
Canada and the United States never reached an agreement on the status of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Beaufort Sea. China has also sought to establish a presence in the region, declaring itself a “near-Arctic state” and forming partnerships with Russia to promote the expanded and supposedly sustainable development and use of Arctic trade routes.
“We’re in a pretty tense situation here,” said Troy Bouffard, director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Either we give in to Russia, its extreme control of surface waters, or we elevate or escalate the issue.”
In recent years, greater attention has been focused on expanding diplomatic channels and collaborating on a range of regional challenges through the Arctic Council. But that work was put on hold when Russia invaded Ukraine.
In Nome, which hopes to position itself as a maritime access port to the Far North, it is not new to see evidence of the arrival of a new era for the Arctic. Mayor John Handeland said winter sea ice, which in the past remained present until mid-June, may now disappear in early May and not return until late November.
But there are a number of local interests that need to be taken into account when it comes to pushing development further north in the Arctic. Alaska’s indigenous people fear the effects of development on the region’s fragile environment, which many of them depend on for hunting and fishing, said Julie Kitka, president of the Alaska Federation of Indigenous Peoples.
“I think our people understand that our armed forces need to protect our country and that they do need to invest in a presence in the Arctic,” she said. “But it needs to be done smartly.”
Dan Sullivan, the Republican federal senator representing Alaska, said that while there may be little danger of a Russian invasion of Alaska, there is concern about the buildup of Russian forces and military resources in the region.
Alaska is already one of the most militarized states in the United States, with more than 20,000 active-duty servicemen stationed in places like Eielson Air Force Base and Fort Wainwright in the Fairbanks area, the joint Elmendorf-Richardson base in Anchorage, and the Coast Guard air station at Kodiak. The Army’s largest training exercise — the first Combat Training Center exercise held in Alaska — took place around Fort Greely, 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Alaska is also home to critical parts of the US missile defense system.
Bouffard said the breakdown in relations caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine could open the door to a series of future problems that he can only speculate about at the moment. While there is no looming conflict in the Arctic, it is very possible that friction over how Russia uses coastal waters or disputes over exploration under the seabed could arise. The United States also needs to be prepared to help its allies in northern Europe who share an uncertain future with Russia on the Arctic waterways, according to Bouffard.
This means that the US needs to be prepared for a number of potential problems. In a separate military exercise conducted in Alaska in recent weeks, Navy and Army teams practiced strategies to contain chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear contamination in freezing temperatures.
In the Army’s major “war games” exercise near Fort Greeley, soldiers rehearsed a scenario in which paratroopers take over an airport and launch operations to control new territory. Then, an opposing force was mobilized to try to recover the area.
Portable heaters were used to keep the engines running, as well as lubricants that work in sub-zero temperatures. Some soldiers used skis and snowshoes to get around, as well as snowmobiles and support units light enough to move through thick snow.
For many of the soldiers under Iannone’s command, defending the airfield required them to establish positions in remote areas using more rudimentary means. A group of heavy weapons felled trees by hand and used a sled to pull a large Enhanced Target Acquisition System to a higher point where soldiers could view miles of surrounding landscape.
They pitched a tent with a small stove for heating, protected by a wall of snow on all sides. To keep warm, they took turns in one hour each in front of the tents – half an hour overnight.
Even so, Private Owen Prescott, 21, said he was finding it difficult to weather the cold at night and was experimenting with layers of clothing to keep warm when the temperature approached minus 20 degrees. Eating warm Army rations, he said he and his colleagues are focusing on not falling victim to the cold before they even begin their hypothetical combat mission.
“The hard part is facing the cold, holding on in the cold,” said Prescott, a native of Southern California. “I’ve spent my whole life in shorts and flip-flops.”
