Photo Gallery Summer 2001.html

Land Component. U.S. Army Alaska (USARAK) plans and executes ground operations within the theater. From its headquarters at Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, USARAK commands a unique separate infantry brigade and a variety of combat support and support units. The 172nd Infantry Brigade (Separate) is headquartered at Fort Wainwright and consists of three infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, a support battalion, and four separate supporting companies. One of the infantry battalions and its supporting elements are airborne qualified – a critical element of USPACOM’s force projection capabilities. USARAK also manages the Northern Warfare Training Center, the Army’s military mountaineering, high altitude rescue and arctic survival experts. USARAK’s light and lean forces are trained and ready to support initial entry force operations throughout the Pacific and operate anywhere in the world.

U.S. Air Force F-16s from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, fly over Alaska’s rugged terrain.

Official U.S. Air Force Photo

Naval Component. U.S. Coast Guard District 17, augmented with a small U.S. Navy contingent, comprises the naval component of ALCOM. The U.S. Coast Guard is under the peacetime control of the Department of Transportation. Headquartered in Juneau, the state capital. Operating from main bases at Kodiak, Sitka, and Ketchikan, the Coast Guard provides maritime law enforcement, fisheries oversight, lifesaving and maintenance of aids to navigation throughout the vast waters of Alaska. However, during time of war, they are tasked to support the U.S. Navy, and Coast Guard District 17 is an active participant in joint training exercises. ALCOM has also forged a partnership with Third Fleet, USPACOM’s experimentation lead agency, and is working to restructure the joint exercise program to support greater participation by main fleet forces in Alaskan waters.

Reserve Forces. The military capabilities in Alaska are not complete without the addition of citizen soldiers. More than 4,000 Alaska residents serve in the National Guard or Reserve, which routinely support and, in some cases, perform full-time active-duty missions. The Alaska National Guard manages search and rescue operations throughout the state and the Air Guard provides critical aerial tanker support for deployments.

Joint Training

The integration of diverse force assets, maximizing their strengths and minimizing vulnerabilities, is the essence of the operational art and the key objective of ALCOM’s training program. Alaskan Command promotes this synergy by providing a vision for joint, combined and coalition training, leveraging experimentation and developing improved concepts of operations. ALCOM strives to set the conditions for transformation by providing world-class training facilities and commonality of purpose in joint operations. Technology is changing the nature of the military art, and ALCOM ensures that these trends, from precision strike to information and space operations, are fully integrated into the joint and combined training programs within Alaska.

Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, parachute from a C-130 over training ranges in interior Alaska.

Photo by Sr. Amn. Adam R. Wooten, USAF

The largest of these training efforts is Exercise NORTHERN EDGE. Since 1951, thousands of men and women from all U.S. military branches have been coming to the “Last Frontier” to be part of this joint training exercise. During NORTHERN EDGE 2001, almost 10,000 military troops took part in the peace enforcement scenario. Alaska’s diverse terrain not only offers excellent training opportunities for a distributed event like this, but also significant “real-world” challenges. With geography and climates ranging from a windswept island chain to a desolate Arctic desert, a major catastrophe in this region warrants unique training for rescue experts across the polar region.

ARCTIC SAREX, a combined search and rescue exercise, brings together U.S., Canadian and Russian military troops to train for just this type of rescue mission. These three countries share the Northern Polar region and are developing a cooperative agreement to assist each other during emergencies, such as an airliner crash in the Arctic. The exercise location rotates each year between the countries to help ensure these professionals can perform their mission in any environment.

Preserving the lives and well being of men and women in uniform is one of the highest priorities of all commanders. Isolated, lost, captured, or unaccounted for personnel can change the perception of otherwise successful operations, and provide an enemy a powerful bargaining tool. To paraphrase Ernest Blazar, “There exists a moral contract between a democratic society and those that risk their lives in the military. . . that every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, [placed] in harm’s way, can go there confident in the knowledge that we have properly resourced and trained our [personnel] recovery forces, and that they will do their utmost to bring each and every one of them home safely.”

ALCOM is at the forefront of USPACOM initiatives to reinvigorate Personnel Recovery. Every major exercise in Alaska includes recovery planning with emphasis on combat search and rescue. We have a unique force mix within Alaskan Command, primarily composed of Alaska Air National Guard resources that is ideally suited to this task. This team of highly skilled professionals executes a vast spectrum of search and rescue operations daily in their partnered role with the state of Alaska. Our goal is to provide a viable recovery capability to the Joint Mission Force that can deploy anywhere in the Pacific and concurrently advance the art of personnel recovery within both American and allied forces.