About 100 nautical miles north of Dutch Harbor, U.S. and Canadian forces spent five days in September practicing how they would track and strike targets at sea, part of a broader military campaign aimed at proving the United States can rapidly mass combat power across Alaska’s vast and harsh terrain.
The exercise, conducted Sept. 18 through 22, combined U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Navy ships and submarines with Canadian maritime patrol aircraft and Alaska-based U.S. Air Force F-35 fighters and E-3 airborne warning and control planes. The goal was to see whether information gathered by different ships and aircraft could be shared quickly enough across the force to find, follow and engage a potential threat.
“The most impressive part to me was seeing the high degree of cooperation and integration amongst units that day in and day out don’t necessarily operate together,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, commander of Alaskan Command, in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“To see the joint nature on the U.S. side integrated together with the inter-agency of the U.S. Coast Guard and with our allies, with Canada as an example, was just an amazing thing to see,” he added.
A campaign called Tundra Merlin
The Dutch Harbor exercise was one piece of Tundra Merlin, an ongoing U.S. military effort to demonstrate that American and allied forces can quickly assemble fighting power across Alaska despite its extreme distances and weather, in order to defend the northern approaches to the United States.
Davis described the operation as a set of military options — “plays in a playbook” — that can be used either to discourage an adversary from acting or to respond if one does.
“Our hope is that we don’t have any adversarial activity because we’ve effectively deterred it,” Davis said. “But if we do see it and we have kind of a play in the playbook ready to go. For a response.”
In a separate demonstration on Alaska’s western edge, U.S. and Canadian forces loaded a U.S. Army HIMARS mobile rocket system and an AN/TPQ-53 radar onto a Royal Canadian Air Force C-17 and flew them into the region, then linked the ground units with American F-35s, F-16s and a KC-135 tanker. F-35s and HIMARS coordinated against a simulated ground target roughly 135 miles away while F-16s intercepted F-35s standing in as incoming aerial threats, according to U.S. Northern Command.
Davis said the exercise was less about proving individual weapons work and more about showing how fast forces can reach a remote part of Alaska and connect with one another, demonstrating the ability “both to defend Alaska, but also, if necessary, to put other adversary targets at risk.”
Why Alaska matters
Alaska sits where the Arctic meets the Pacific, giving the United States a base for defending its own territory and projecting force toward the Indo-Pacific. The Russian and American mainlands are separated by only about 55 miles at the Bering Strait’s narrowest point, and Russia’s Big Diomede Island lies roughly 2.5 miles from Alaska’s Little Diomede Island.
U.S. Northern Command says Alaskan Command includes more than 22,000 active-duty personnel from across the military branches, plus about 4,700 Guard and Reserve members. Davis noted that fighter jets based in Alaska can reach almost anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere in roughly 10 hours of flight time.
“I think what’s changed is primarily two things,” Davis said. “One is that the melting sea ice has made the Arctic more accessible. And we’re seeing increased activity both commercially and militarily in the Arctic, particularly during the summer months.”
“The other factor is that China and Russia and others are continuing to advance their military capabilities and capacity with an interest in showing that they can use them in the Arctic as well,” he said.
The Pentagon’s 2024 Arctic Strategy warned that growing cooperation between Russia and China could “alter the Arctic’s stability and threat picture” and called for a stronger U.S. presence and more exercises in the region.
Fighting the cold itself
Beyond any adversary, Alaska’s own geography and climate pose a challenge. The Pentagon’s strategy points to the region’s vast distances and limited infrastructure as obstacles to military operations, and says maintaining infrastructure there is essential for missile defense, surveillance and rapid deployment of forces.
Davis said equipment brought into Alaska has to be specially prepared. “It needs to be conditioned. It needs to be properly outfitted to operate in sub-zero temperatures for a long period of time,” he said, adding that troops also need specialized clothing, training and procedures to avoid cold-weather injuries while still being able to fight.
In July 2024, the North American Aerospace Defense Command intercepted two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers flying together in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone — the first time NORAD had detected Russian and Chinese military aircraft operating together in that zone. The aircraft stayed in international airspace and did not enter U.S. or Canadian territory, and NORAD did not consider the flight itself a threat, but the episode underscored the kind of cooperation defense officials are watching closely.
Davis said he believes current forces in Alaska are prepared for threats expected in the near term. “We’re postured very well for any of the anticipated threats that we think would come our way in the very near term,” he said, though he noted Alaskan Command would seek additional forces if it saw signs of a major escalation.
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