YUKON TRAINING AREA, Alaska – Temperatures are 30 degrees below zero. Punishing spirits. Endless snow. And only a few hours of sunlight.
Those are the conditions facing the US military known as the Arctic Angels, stationed in a region that is turning into a global strategic battleground. President Donald Trump has brought the Arctic into focus as he has threatened to annex Greenland, an independent Danish territory, which he says is necessary for US national security. But since long before that, the US, Russia and China have been fighting for dominance in one of the world’s most underdeveloped sectors.
NBC News joined soldiers with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division as they trained to monitor potential threats and potential battles in remote Alaska, where war is often a strategic one.
“Everything is difficult in the Arctic,” said Maj. Gen. John Cogbill, commanding general of the 11th Airborne Division.
Weapons get cold, batteries die quickly, and moving around takes too long. “Surviving here is a challenge in itself,” Cogbill said.
It is a very different environment than the deserts where many US soldiers have spent decades.
Soldiers with the 11th Airborne undergo cold weather training prior to deployment to ensure they can withstand the weather. They need to eat at least 5,000 calories a day to survive and are motivated by the prospect of their next hot meal or when they can warm up. Doctors often check their fingers and toes for frostbite, which can be quickly set in by holding a cold weapon with the bare hand.
They drive around in a cold-weather vehicle, called a CATV [pronounced cat-v]. Regardless of the weather, the vehicle is able to break through snow and ice, and also through water, to take soldiers to the most distant places.
Military training for such things can include using the environment as a weapon of some kind, said Col. Christopher Brawley, commander of the 11th Airborne’s 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team. “As soon as you reduce their ability to generate themselves or provide themselves with food, water, ammunition, nature just takes over, and you allow nature to kill the enemy,” he said.
Although cold, temperatures in the Arctic are getting warmer, which has allowed potential US adversaries such as Russia and China to send more ships and aircraft to the Arctic and hold joint military exercises, sometimes entering space over waters off Alaska.
“The world has changed. The threat environment has changed, and the environment itself has changed, which has allowed threats to continue,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “We have to raise the level of our game.”
Murkowski and his colleague in the Alaska Senate, Republican Dan Sullivan, have expressed concern about Trump’s approach to Greenland, including threats to take over the area militarily, although those have subsided and the US is in talks with Denmark and Greenland on an agreement to establish more US military bases.
But they also say the US needs to be ready for any development in the Arctic.
“After the Cold War, the Pentagon got amnesia about the importance of Alaska,” Sullivan said. But our enemies have not done that.
