The US Army has launched a new regional headquarters in Alaska that will oversee the service’s rotary-wing flight operations in the high north.
Arctic Aviation Command was formally launched on 8 August during a ceremony at Fort Wainwright in the city of Fairbanks – situated just 130nm (240km) south of the Arctic Circle in Alaska’s expansive interior region.
The base is home to a brigade of ground combat troops, an attack aviation and reconnaissance battalion operating the Boeing AH-64E Apache and a general aviation battalion that flies the Boeing CH-47F Chinook and Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk.
The two rotary-wing aviation units previously reported to commanders in more southerly locales, such as Hawaii and Washington state.
“Success here in the Arctic depends on knowledge that can only be learned by living and working here,” said Major General Joseph Hilbert at the formal activation of the Arctic Aviation Command.
Hilbert commands the army’s 11th Airborne Division, based at Fort Richardson in Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage. The force represents one of only two US Army combat infantry divisions in the Indo-Pacific theatre and the only paratroopers permanently assigned to the region.
The two-star general notes that aviators working in the Arctic must contend with temperatures as low as -45°C (-50°F), constraints that come with flying at high-altitudes and communication disruptions from operating near the pole.
“We now have a command in place that understands those extremes,” he says.
In remarks on 8 August, the new head of the Arctic Aviation Command, Colonel Russell Vanderlugt, noted mistakes that might be inconsequential in more mild climates “could mean life or death” in the inhospitable environment of the far north.
“There is no other aviation formation anywhere in the world that possess [the] level of skill and innovation required to operate here in the Arctic,” he says.
Vanderlugt’s remarks are not hyperbolic. US Army aviation forces experienced two fatal crashes in Alaska last year, both involving Apache attack helicopters.
Three aviators were killed when two AH-64s collided near the town of Healy in April 2023, while two more soldiers died when another Apache rolled over and crashed after a refuelling stop at the remote Talkeetna airport in February.
While the recent hierarchy change is primarily organisational and does not bring any new aviation assets to the Pentagon’s footprint in Alaska, it is yet another example of the renewed focus on Arctic security by leaders in Washington and Ottawa.
In 2022, the US Air Force announced a nearly $4 billion investment to maintain and expand operations at Greenland’s Thule air base – a Cold War outpost that lies 650nm above the Arctic Circle, making it the Pentagon’s northernmost installation.
The installation of an arresting wire recovery system in 2021 allows carrier-capable Boeing F/A-18 Hornet fighters from the Royal Canadian Air Force to land at Thule throughout the year. Fighter operations were previously limited to non-winter months, due to frequent high winds, limited visibility and ice build-up on the runway.
Canada is in the midst of its own multi-decade expansion of Arctic security infrastructure, under a sprawling 20-year plan valued at nearly $30 billion.
That spending spree will include new quick reaction bases for Ottawa’s planned fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters, a new fleet of Airbus A330 tankers, a modern helicopter acquisition plan and the construction of more over-the-horizon radars to track potential air and space threats coming through the polar region, in particular ultra-fast hypersonic missiles.
The new hardware is meant to increase Canada’s commitments to the North American Aerospace Defense Command operated jointly with the USA.
Those investments come as Russia and China are stepping up joint operations in the Arctic. In July, military aircraft from the two authoritarian countries were observed operating together for the first time, off the coast of Alaska.
In July, two Chinese Xian H-6 jet-powered bombers and two Russian Tupolev Tu-95 turboprops were intercepted by US and Canadian fighters in international airspace near Alaska’s territorial border.
