Russia and China probing U.S. defenses in Alaska; Sen. Dan Sullivan sounds an alarm

Russian and Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels are increasing their probes of Alaska and sea defenses. Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan is sounding an alarm, and urging the strengthening of military facilities including the reopening of the closed U.S. Navy base at Adak, in the Aleutians.

Mat-Su residents will be affected by any increased U.S., Russia and China tensions over the Aleutians, Bering Sea and Alaska’s Arctic because military personnel at Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson, or JBER, are among the first called to respond. Many JBER military families live in the Mat-Su and Eagle River.

Chinese research vessels are also active in Arctic seas off the state’s northern sand western coasts, Sullivan said. The research has dual purposes, both scientific and military. This is part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive moves which are becoming a concern for military leaders in Alaska and the Pacific, Sullivan said.

The situation is also being noted in international journals, most recently The Economist, published in the U.K., which devoted a special section on U.S. Arctic vulnerability in its Oct. 18 issue. “The Arctic’s Real Vulnerability: America’s weakest flank is not near Greenland, but around Alaska,” the Economist said in its headline.

U.S. interceptors are quick to respond to the air incursions. While Air Force interceptor pilots have a long way to fly from JBER and Eielson Air Force in Alaska’s Interior, at least the bases are in the state. However, there is little U.S. Navy presence in Alaska waters to counter Russian and Chinese naval patrols, which are increasingly done jointly, the Economist said. There is more submarine activity, too. Russia has deployed seven new submarines in the Pacific in the last three years, more than the U.S. has built in the same period.

Sullivan is working to change that, initially with a plan to reopen the closed naval air station at Adak. Sullivan spoke in an interview after the commissioning of the new USS Storis, a private icebreaker purchased to support the one U.S. icebreaker dedicated to the Arctic.

Adak was active during the Cold War years with several thousand Navy and other service personnel stationed there, but when tensions eased in the post-Soviet period Adak was closed in the mid-1980s. It is now owned by the Aleut Corp., an Alaska Native regional development corporation that operates and owns lands in the Aleutians.

The Aleuts have since tried to find commercial customers of use Adak and its facilities, but with scant luck. A fish processing plant operated for a period but is now closed. The former Navy base provides occasional refueling services for research vessels and plays host to birdwatching groups visiting a nearby wildlife refuge also on the island.

Sullivan has talked up Adak for years as a key unused defense asset in the northern Pacific, and was finally able to get some money to begin reopening Adak in President Donald Trump’s major tax and budget reform bill that passed Congress earlier this year and that was signed by the President July 4. The appropriation was $115 million, just a down payment on the investment needed to reactivate Adak, which has seen its facilities deteriorate in the harsh Aleutian weather.

But it’s a start, Sullivan said. “Adak flanks both China and Russia. It makes sense to reopen that base,” Senator Sullivan said. But the defense establishment often moves slowly. “These things take time.”

The heads of INDOPACCOM (the Pacific and Asia command) and NORTHCOM (in charge of North American defense) want to see Adak reopened, but Navy officials are cautious because of Adak’s remote location and frequent bad weather as well as the cost of a full reopening.

However, the importance of Adak seems obvious to anyone looking at a map, Sullivan said, whether the U.S. focus is on protecting the Arctic or Taiwan, the Economist noted. The island is mid-way along the Aleutians, which stretch for 1,200 miles southwest from the Alaska mainland to Russian territorial waters. Adak itself is 1,200 miles west of Anchorage, the nearest major city and airport. Adak sits astride the “Great Circle” northern shipping route from Alaska’s west coast to Asia, which is used by almost all North America-Asia shipping because its distance is shorter.

Besides the defense considerations, protecting commercial vessels and energy supplies to Asia would be an important mission for Adak. In addition to commercial shipping there is liquefied natural gas, or LNG, that Alaska may someday supply Japan, Korea and Taiwan from Alaska, Sullivan said. More important, Adak is also at the entry point to the Bering Sea, a major commercial fishing region shared by the U.S. and Russia, and which leads to the 50-mile-wide Bering Strait that separates the U.S.-held Alaska and Siberia, which is controlled by Russia.

The closest point between Russia and the U.S. are in the Bering Strait between two small islands in the strait, Little Diomede (Alaska) and Big Diomede (Russia), where Russia and the U.S. are only three miles apart. The Bering Strait is now becoming a strategic waterway. It is the western entry point to the Arctic Ocean off Russia and North America that is becoming ice-free with climate change.

Submarines have long transited the strait into the Arctic but it is now used increasingly by Russian and Chinese merchant vessels that operate along Russia’s Northern Sea route to Europe off its Arctic coast. Russia operates natural gas fields in its Arctic offshore and liquefied natural gas tankers now routinely carry LNG, as well as refined petroleum products, through the Bering Strait to markets in Asia.

The Economist cited data from the Centre for High North Logistics, which analyses marine shipping, that there were 52 full transits to Asia though Russia’s Northern Sea Route and the Bering Strait from June to August of this year, most of the voyages involving shipments of oil, LNG or other bulk cargo. A general cargo container ship, which was ice-strenghened, set off from a port in China in September and landed in a British port in mid-October, a much faster delivery than would happen if the ship went the normal route through Southeast Asia and the Suez Canal.

Arctic waters off northern Alaska and Canada, in contrast, are little used for commercial traffic except for seasonal barges serving Alaska northern coastal communities and, periodically, oil and gas companies operating on the North Slope. But to support its traffic, and to show the flag, the U.S. Coast Guard now has only one icebreaker, the U.S.S. Healy, which is really a medium-weight icebreaker designed for research rather than the kind of heavy icebreaker that is needed to support Arctic commercial and military purposes. The newly-commissioned USS Storis, a former oil support vessel with ice capabilities, will add to this but U.S. capacity is still far short of the 40-odd icebreakers Russia operates, some of them nuclear-powered, and a number of Chinese icebreakers now operating.

The Russia-U.S. ”icebreaker gap” became an embarrassment in 2012 when an early freeze at Nome, the Alaska community on the Seward Peninsula, brought winter ice in early and blocked important fuel shipments normally scheduled for the fall. Nome was cut off by sea and short of fuel for the winter. A Russian ice-strengthened tanker came to the rescue, cutting an open path for the needed fuel to be delivered. That was before U.S.-Russia relations soured over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, of course.

Aside from the military concerns the increasing shipments of refined oil through the Bering Strait have become a worry for the Coast Guard and western Alaska coastal communities because if an accident were to occur there is little capacity in the region to respond to emergencies or clean up an oil spill.

A U.S.-Russia protocol for emergency response exists on paper but there has been no communication or practice drills since the Ukraine war started. The nearest major U.S. port to the region is at Dutch Harbor, 700 miles south of the Bering Strait. A small port at Nome, near the strait, is being expanded but not to an extent capable of handling deep-draft vessels necessary to support naval ships and heavy icebreakers.

When Chinese and Russian naval ships first showed up in a joint patrol the U.S. was quick to respond with several Arleigh Burke destroyers but since then the U.S. has shadowed these excursions by air, which is why Senator Sullivan wants a permanent base at Adak to project power.

Since 2020 there have been 95 incursions of Russian and recently Chinese military aircraft in the North American air “identification zone,” which is near but not quite in U.S. and Canadian territory. Ninety one of these have been off Alaska. In late September two Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bombers with two fighter escorts were intercepted 30 miles off a U.S.-held island in the Bering Sea. In addition, the Chinese aircraft on the joint patrols took off from Russian air bases, the Economist reported. Last year a joint patrol by Russian and Chinese bombers came within 140 miles of Alaska territory, the closest Chinese military aircraft have come to U.S. shores.

Intercepting the aerial incursions involve long flights from Eielson AFB and Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson with distances as much as 1,500 miles and requiring aerial refueling. There have also been five voyages near Alaska by Chinese dual/purpose (military/scientific) research ships. In contrast, despite Greenland becoming a focus of attention by the U.S. government there have been no Russian air incursions near than Danish-protected territory since 2020.

The point being made by the Economist, with its international perspective, is that U.S. policy is too focused on Greenland and Canada, where these is no discernable threat from Russia and China, and should be shifted to Alaska, where the U.S. is vulnerable despite the buildup at Alaska military installations in recent years.

Tim Bradner is a long-time Alaska state government reporter and is publisher of the Alaska Economic Report.