Girl Scouts of Alaska Camp Singing Hills, photographed on Thursday, May 1, 2025 in Chugiak. (Loren Holmes / ADN)
At least 87 federally funded AmeriCorps volunteers were notified this week that their current or upcoming service work in Alaska was abruptly canceled.
They include out-of-state volunteers set to work at Girl Scout Camps in Chugiak this summer, and local aspiring teachers planning to tutor young Alaskans.
AmeriCorps is a federal agency aimed at volunteerism that operates a network of local, state and national service programs. But last month, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began dismantling the program, placing the majority of the agency’s employees on administrative leave, and demobilizing a branch of close to 2,000 young volunteers three months before their service projects ended, according to the nonprofit that represents commissions in every state and territory.
Then, late last week, DOGE directed the termination of $400 million in AmeriCorps grants, the nonprofit reported, the vast majority of which were allocated to state and national programs through state commissions.
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In Alaska, the funding loss amounts to $1.8 million, according to Katie Abbott, who leads the state commission that funds and supports local AmeriCorps programs, Serve Alaska. Serve Alaska funded five AmeriCorps programs that operated in 18 urban and rural communities across the state, Abbott said. On April 25, AmeriCorps’ interim director said in a message that federal funding had been cut for four of those programs — comprising 43 active volunteers and another 44 in the summer pipeline.
They were told “the grants no longer effectuate agency priorities,” Abbott said. One state grantee remains: The Student Conservation Association, an organization that hosts about 40 AmeriCorps volunteers annually to work projects on public lands in Alaska, was spared from cuts, though it’s unclear why. Additionally, an AmeriCorps Senior program, open to people 55 and older, remains intact with about 80 Alaska corps members.
The loss for residents — recipients of service work — is harder to quantify, volunteers and their host organizations said this week.
But it is being felt across the state, according to Abbott: Youths in Nenana will lose their science, technology, engineering and math coach. A number of low-income Alaskans dealing with the criminal justice system — about 35 per volunteer — will no longer have an advocate to connect them with recovery resources and housing aid. In Sitka, students will lose their tutors and classroom support, and mental health organizations in the communitywill be left without a workforce for youth community outreach. Kids in Ouzinkie will lose their dance coach. Koyukuk youths enrolled in an after-school program designed by the AmeriCorps members will miss out. Prince William Sound Science Center attendees will lose summer programming.
Also, 19 Alaska high school and college students — each interested in a teaching career and in the process of securing summer positions tutoring elementary schoolers in STEM — will no longer have an “on-ramp” into the education field, said Alaska Afterschool Network’s AmeriCorps program director, Lily Tegner.
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AmeriCorps project director Lily Tegner in her office at the Alaska Children’s Trust. (Loren Holmes / ADN)
Tegner was in the midst of onboarding the interns for their summer camp tutoring positions in the Anchorage and Mat-Su areas when the cuts came through, she said. Now, four weeks out from the beginning of summer, camps have to pivot their programming to account for a diminished workforce, and locals counting on a summer intern experience will have to find alternate plans, said Alaska Afterschool Network Executive Director Thomas Azzarella. He called the cuts a “major disruption,” and said the loss of AmeriCorps funding could mean both failing to keep talented Alaskans in Alaska, and missing an opportunity to attract new workers to the state.
Tegner herself is a former AmeriCorps volunteer who came to Alaska in 2021 and stayed on as an employee and a new Alaskan. She will be losing her job, which is funded through AmeriCorps dollars.
“I was able to find my whole career (through AmeriCorps),” said Tegner, whose educational background was in engineering. “Also, the thing that I keep thinking about is — Alaska became my home because of AmeriCorps. And I don’t want to leave.”
Twenty-three-year-old Morgan Scherrer didn’t want to leave, either, when her team of eight received notice that their 10-month stint in Alaska as young adult AmeriCorps volunteers was prematurely up on April 14.
They’d been stationed in Alaska since Halloween, with plans to stay through July in rotating service projects in Fairbanks, Anchorage and Yakutat. The team had just completed four months of work with the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, Anchorage re:MADE and the Fur Rendezvous, Scherrer said. They were scheduled to fly to Yakutat on April 24, to work for three months with the U.S. Forest Service doing habitat restoration and stream management in the Tongass National Forest.
“I can say without a doubt: My team was most excited for that project,” Scherrer said by phone this week.
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Instead, she was on a plane to her hometown in Colorado on April 16.
Since returning to their respective homes, Scherrer and her team have been searching for a way to finish their service work, despite a lack of federal support. In just over a week, they had fundraised over $2,000 — about $500 shy of their goal to pay for food and gas, and just a third of the money they would have received in stipends from AmeriCorps. She said she’s in talks with the Forest Service, which may still be able to provide housing, and the City and Borough of Yakutat, which had promised her team a vehicle, she said.
If they meet their fundraising goal, she said they’d look to book flights on their own dime as soon as possible.
“Theoretically, our project would have started (on April 28),” Scherrer said. “So the sooner that we can get up there, the faster we can jump into the work that they need to get done.”
Another team of young service workers was days away from their flight to Anchorage to work at two Girl Scouts of Alaska camps in Chugiak for the summer when they were demobilized. They are also looking for a way to complete their service work, team leader Alani Rose said by phone from New Jersey this week. But Girl Scouts of Alaska CEO Jenni Pollard said the loss of federal support has made it trickier to host the AmeriCorps members, even if they do make their way back up to Alaska.
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“We’re still trying to figure this out,” she said.
For the last several years, Pollard said, AmeriCorps teams have provided “really valuable capacity” in helping the camps with property maintenance, preparing for camp season and teaching programming to campers.
“To not have the AmeriCorps support is very disappointing for Alaska and the organizations that rely on all the services they provide,” Pollard said.
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The U.S. military has released new details about the massive Fightertown Recapitalization (FTR) program at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), in Anchorage, southeastern Alaska. This is a huge effort valued at approximately $7 billion that would effectively create an entirely new fighter hub to support future Air Force operations in the strategically important Arctic and Pacific regions.
The details emerged in a special notice announcing an upcoming virtual industry day, where government officials plan to brief contractors on the scope of the program and gather feedback on construction risks, industry capabilities, and acquisition strategies before moving toward a formal procurement process.
A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson flies over the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. James Richardson
While the notice, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is intended primarily as market research, it offers one of the clearest looks yet at the scale and ambition of the Fightertown recapitalization effort.
According to the notice, existing airfield facilities cannot support the program’s requirements, prompting the selection of a new site to expand the current airfield infrastructure. Rather than a collection of isolated projects, the government describes the effort as a “complete campus approach” intended to synchronize facility construction with aircraft procurement, personnel movements, and logistical requirements.
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The envisioned campus would include aircraft hangars, squadron operations facilities, corrosion control facilities, maintenance shops, and other aviation support infrastructure. Extensive airfield improvements are also planned, including new taxiways, aprons, shoulders, and specialized aircraft operating surfaces.
A picture of a so-called “elephant walk” readiness exercise at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson showing 24 of the resident 3rd Wing’s F-22s, as well as a C-17 and an E-3. U.S. Air Force
Highly likely to be included in the recapitalization efforts will be measures to help reduce vulnerability and ensure critical operations could continue in wartime. After all, in a potential fight against China or Russia, JBER would be high on the list of priority targets in the opening phases of a large-scale conflict. As we have repeatedly outlined in the past, aircraft shelters with varying degrees of hardening are suddenly very much back on the agenda in response to growing drone and missile threats.
Beyond flight-line infrastructure, the project encompasses a substantial support ecosystem. Plans call for a munitions complex, petroleum operations facilities, warehousing and supply functions, dining facilities, visitor control infrastructure, firefighting facilities, training centers, simulators, and housing for unaccompanied airmen.
The government also notes that the campus design remains flexible and could ultimately involve modifications to, or demolition of, existing facilities as planning progresses.
Rather than relying solely on traditional military construction contracting approaches, the Army Corps of Engineers says the program intends to leverage authorities provided in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. Those authorities could allow the use of Other Transaction Authority (OTA), Progressive Design-Build (PDB), and other alternative execution methods.
The sprawling Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER), in Anchorage, southeastern Alaska, as seen in a satellite image from May of this year. Google Earth
The notice explicitly states that the government intends to capitalize on private-sector innovation while avoiding what it describes as costly and time-consuming federal contracting burdens. It also emphasizes that the execution strategy will encourage industry partners to propose novel technical and construction solutions.
The scale of the investment underscores Alaska’s growing importance as a hub for U.S. airpower. JBER already serves as one of the Air Force’s premier fighter installations and occupies a critical geographic position between North America, the Arctic, a part of the world that has only grown in strategic significance in recent years, and the Indo-Pacific theater, where strategic planning is highly focused on a potential future conflict with China.
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Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson hosts the headquarters of the 11th Air Force, the service’s top command in Alaska, and its 3rd Wing, which operates a mix of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning Control System (AWACS) radar planes, C-17 Globemaster III airlifters, and C-12 light utility aircraft. It is also home to the Alaska Air National Guard’s 176th Wing, which has additional C-17s, as well as HC-130 Combat King rescue aircraft and HH-60 rescue helicopters.
HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter aircrew assigned to the 210th Rescue Squadron, 176th Wing, Alaska Air National Guard, hoist a simulated downed pilot during a full mission profile training exercise at Malemute Drop Zone, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, March 31, 2026. Alaska National Guard photo by Alejandro Peña
In addition, in 2023, the Air Force announced the creation of the 55th Operations Group, Detachment 1 at the base, as a detachment of the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
“The new detachment will… serve as a strategic launch and recovery point for RC-135V/W Rivet Joint operations and exercises in the region,” according to the Air Force.
The move reflected increased demand for RC-135V/W Rivet Joint spy plane sorties in the Pacific, with JBER being well-positioned for these aircraft to gather intelligence on areas of interest in the northern end of the Pacific and the increasingly strategic Arctic region.
In the future, the strategic location of JBER, as well as its current status as one of the few F-22 bases, suggests that it could well eventually host the F-47 sixth-generation stealth fighter, the first of which is expected to make its first flight sometime in 2028. The F-47 could therefore well end up as the centerpiece of the Alaskan Fightertown, in keeping with the vision for the jet serving as a critical force multiplier that can bring together other crewed and uncrewed assets. With that in mind, at least some of the Fightertown Recapitalization program may be specifically tailored to the requirements of the F-47.
Importantly, JBER also serves as the focal point for the Red Flag-Alaska and Northern Edge exercises.
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The Red Flag-Alaska exercises can take place up to four times a year and mirror those flown over the Nellis Range Complex in Nevada, with some differences. Namely, the ranges in Alaska, many of which are instrumented, are enormous, and can include a more varied array of assets.
A U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry takes off during exercise Red Flag Alaska 26-1 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, April 29, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Joseph Miller
From JBER and other bases in the region, Red Flag-Alaska participants have access to the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC). Covering an area of more than 67,000 square miles and providing 77,000 square miles of airspace above, JPARC is the “largest instrumented air, ground and electronic combat training range in the world,” according to the Air Force. It is regularly used to provide a realistic training environment for full-spectrum engagements, ranging from individual skills to large-scale joint engagements.
JPARC’s role could grow further in the coming years as the Air Force pushes large-scale exercises further and further out into the broad expanses of the Pacific. Other range complexes further down along the West Coast are seeing increasing use, as well. Even very large overland ranges, such as the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) adjacent to Nellis Air Force Base, are increasingly constrained when attempting to replicate modern scenarios based on ever-growing adversary anti-access and aerial denial (A2/AD) bubbles.
Meanwhile, Northern Edge also occurs in and around Alaska every two years, with these large-scale events being used to test and evaluate new systems and capabilities from across the U.S. military.
One of the Air Force’s tiny force of semi-retired F-117 Nighthawk stealth jets, now used for test and evaluation purposes, at Elmendorf during Northern Edge 2023. U.S. Air Force
In the past, the Air Force has described Northern Edge as a demonstration of “the U.S. commitment to the region by building interoperability, advancing common interests and a commitment to our allies and partners in ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific,” as well as showcasing U.S. ability to defend the homeland from and throughout Alaska.
As planning advances, we will learn more about what this new Alaskan Fightertown will look like. What is already clear is that the Air Force and the Pentagon are preparing for a long-term expansion and modernization effort on a scale rarely seen at an operational fighter base.
More details could emerge during the industry day scheduled for June 30, when government officials will provide a comprehensive update on the program and solicit feedback from industry partners on how to execute one of the Air Force’s biggest military infrastructure projects.
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Update: 3:45 PM ET –
“We are deliberately investing in Pacific Air Force’s critical infrastructure by replacing and upgrading operations and maintenance facilities in addition to making repairs to existing buildings and funding mission-ready materiel, storage, and sustainment necessary for homeland defense and Agile Combat Employment operations,” a U.S. Air Force official has now told us in response to our queries for more information about the Fightertown plan. “We are also extending the runway and building a Joint Integrated Test and Training Center at JBER.”
“We are in the design stage now and will have a better idea of timelines once we receive an appropriation,” they added.
By Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protectionon
The Starry fire picked up today and the Fairbanks Area initial attack helicopter dropped buckets of water during the heat of the day.
Despite the brief uptick in fire activity, the fire remained at 575 acres and resources were able to get hose completely around the fire.
Pioneer Peak Hotshots Forrest Boynton and Trapper Gephart, cut saw line around the west side of the Starry Fire. – Sam Allen, DFFP
Crews on the East and South side off the fire swept 200 foot outside of the fire’s edge, and found no heats. A grid is planned for tomorrow on the North side of the fire.
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The City of Anderson is still at evacuation level, “Go.”
The Denali Borough has issued a ‘Ready’ evacuation order for “North 40” further west and across the Nenana River from Anderson, Alaska because of two other wildland fires in the wider area. The “North 40” includes residents north of Lightning Avenue and between the Teklanika River and the Nenana River.
The Type 3 Incident Management Team running the Starry Fire is prepared and planning to take on other wildfires in the area should it become necessary to engage.
‘Ready’ is the first step in the “Ready. Set. Go.” Statewide evacuation planning. Residents are encouraged to prepare necessary items such as pets, medication and important documents and monitor evacuation updates.
Firefighters completed a dozer line around the fire yesterday, they were helped in part by a burn scar from the 2013 Clear Air Force Base Fire, which helped slow the fire down.
Firefighters from Elmendorf Air Force Base helped secure a two-acre slop-over on the south side of the Starry Fire. – Sam Allen, DFFP
“The dozer line is not a scalpel,” Pioneer Peak Hotshot Sup. Kris Baumgartner. Fire activity could pick up and through embers across the line.
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Two federal contract crews, Moose Heart and Clearwater, are expected to arrive Tuesday.
‹ DFFP responding to a new fire east of Delta
Categories: Active Wildland Fire, AK Fire Info, Alaska DNR – Division of Forestry & Fire Protection (DFFP)
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A Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter crashed Monday morning during a training flight in Alaska.
A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter had four people onboard when it went down near Harbor Mountain in Sitka, a town in the Alexander Archipelago in southern Alaska several dozen miles south of Juneau. The Jayhawk and its aircrew are assigned to Coast Guard Air Station Sitka.
The crash happened Monday morning at around 10:07 a.m. local time, the Coast Guard said. It took nearly an hour for rescue crews to arrive on the scene. Rescue. However, no serious injuries were reported, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard Arctic District told Task & Purpose. All four crew members were taken by Sitka Fire and Rescue teams to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center in Sitka.
The cause of the crash isn’t known, and in a post on X, the Coast Guard Arctic District said that a “formal investigation will be conducted to determine the circumstances surrounding the event.”
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The Coast Guard Arctic District covers not only Alaska but the waters around it, including the Prince William Sound and waters in the Pacific.
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Given Alaska’s remote conditions, local and military aircraft are often used to provide emergency search and rescue operations. Both the Coast Guard and National Guard regularly dispatch helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to help people stranded or in crisis at sea.
In April, helicopters from Coast Guard Air Station Sitka and the National Guard conducted a mass casualty drill near the town, as part of what the Coast Guard called “a large joint exercise involving multiple government agencies and local organizations.”
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Firefighters from Elmendorf Air Force Base helped secure a two-acre slop-over on the south side of the Starry Fire. – Sam Allen, DFFP
