US Army conducts training exercise on Alaskan island less than 300 miles from Russia

U.S. Army soldiers were deployed to the remote Shemya Island in Alaska last week, as part of a training exercise that follows recent flights of Russian and Chinese aircraft near American airspace in the region.

Soldiers of the 11^th Airborne Division, as well as the 1^st and 3^rd Multi Domain Task Forces, deployed to Shemya Island, part of the vast Aleutian Islands archipelago, on September 12.  Shemya Island, located 1,200 miles west of Anchorage and less than 300 miles from the Russian coast, is home the Eareckson Air Station, an early-warning radar installation that can track ballistic missiles and other objects.

“As the number of adversarial exercises increases around Alaska and throughout the region, including June’s joint Russian-Chinese bomber patrol, the operation to Shemya Island demonstrates the division’s ability to respond to events in the Indo-Pacific or across the globe, with a ready, lethal force within hours,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Hilbert, the commanding general of the 11th Airborne Division, said in a statement.

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A summer of close calls with Russian and Chinese aircraft

In July, U.S. and Canadian jets intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bomber aircraft that were flying within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), an area of international airspace where aircraft are required to identify themselves to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

The training exercise also came just a day after NORAD reportedly “detected and tracked two Russian military aircraft” operating in the ADIZ.

As reported by Stars and Stripes, this summer has also seen numerous flights by Russian and Chinese military aircraft around the Pacific, including an incident last week in which a Russian military aircraft circled the island of Okinawa, where the U.S. maintains a large military presence, a flight by Chinese military aircraft into Japanese airspace on August 26, and a July flight by two Russian military bomber aircraft between Japan and South Korea.

The U.S. training exercise, which was expected to last several days, involved paratroopers, artillery, and radars based in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington. An Army press release also described it as an important step in maintaining a U.S. presence in the Arctic, “as it becomes more accessible with the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

Max Hauptman is a Trending Reporter for USA TODAY. He can be reached at MHauptman@gannett.com