Alaska

America’s Coast Guard Marches North With A Big New Alaskan Base

Published

2 years ago

August 25, 2024

America’s Coast Guard Marches North With A Big New Alaskan Base

Juneau’s busy waterfront will soon be home to big multipurpose Coast Guard homeport.

In a first hesitant step towards reinvigorating the U.S. government’s maritime presence off Alaska, the U.S. Coast Guard, in mid-August, quietly announced that the Alaskan port of Juneau will be upgraded to serve as an icebreaker homeport.

Given that this was America’s first announcement of a new “icebreaker homeport” in more than thirty years, the Coast Guard’s modest, four-paragraph news release was decidedly low-key. Coming just days after Russia announced that their second Project 235500 combat icebreaker, the Nikolay Zubov, will be launched by the end of the year, news that the U.S. Coast Guard was set to install a new, military-ready facility in Alaska merited a far bigger public roll-out.

In Washington, the announcement of Alaska’s new icebreaker homeport was dismissed as, basically, a reward for the Alaskan Congressional delegation’s unceasing efforts at expanding America’s moribund Polar power-and-presence projection capabilities.

But a big new Juneau homeport—an expansion and modernization of the Coast Guard’s busy District 17 Command Center—is no mere piece of pork. Preparations for the new homeport—improved mooring sites, crew facilities and other things—will pump millions into the waterfront and the local economy.

Homeports come with ships, as well. Once the new base facilities are operational, Juneau is slated to receive the interim icebreaker M/V Aiviq, “a U.S. registered ship originally built to serve as an Arctic oil-exploration support vessel.” An imperfect stop-gap, bought by the U.S. government as the Polar Security Cutter program continues to flounder, the Aiviq is doing good service by priming a wave of national investment in Alaskan harbor facilities, potentially readying Alaska to become a host for a range of new ice-ready presence platforms.

The newly-announced multinational Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or “ICE Pact,” is ideally positioned as a future engine to pump newly-designed ice-breaking-ready “presence” platforms into America’s Arctic and Antarctic waters.

With Russia and China joining forces to try and grab control of lightly-held or internationally-regulated maritime territories, arctic presence, delivered by Alaskan-based vessels that are tailored for the rough polar environment, is becoming a critical unmet U.S. requirement. With Juneau and Kodiak now preparing to accept and support ever-larger Coast Guard cutters and military vessels, seasonal “presence-vessel-ready” facilities in Nome and the Aleutians can follow, along with more maintenance and shipbuilding production sites on America’s western coast.

The tension at the Poles is real. In 2023, the Navy dispatched four destroyers to watch 11 Russian and Chinese vessels operate off Alaska. The U.S. destroyers—USS John McCain, USS Benfold, USS John Finn and the USS Chung-Hoon—were likely pulled from other missions, arriving from every corner of the Pacific to monitor the encroaching and semi-hostile fleet.

This was not a trivial sortie. The distances are so vast that just getting to Alaska is tough. One of the four U.S. destroyers sent north was from San Diego, and a round-trip sortie from San Diego to the Bering Sea is a rough, often ship-breaking trip of over 4,000 miles.

Once the warships arrive on station, keeping America’s front-line destroyers in Alaskan waters poses an even tougher challenge.

As robust as America’s surface combatants are, America’s missile-loaded greyhounds don’t really like heavy weather. In 2007, according to the Navy Times, “more than a dozen Arleigh Burke-class destroyers” suffered “significant structural damage in rough seas because designers didn’t account for the effect of jarring “bow slams” on the ship’s hulls.” While the damage didn’t immediately compromise the damaged vessel’s war-fighting capabilities, the enhanced wear and tear threatened to reduce the life of the hull. And, with the Navy wanting to eke a maximum possible service life out of the destroyer fleet, accountant-admirals at the Navy will be loath to send their precious destroyers into the rough waters of the Bering Sea on a regular basis.

For the U.S. Navy, Alaska operations are a drag on overall readiness. Navy leaders, still struggling to get 75 ships of their 296-ship fleet “mission capable” and ready to deploy, simply cannot meet increased Polar presence demands. But with better shore facilities—and the promise of new, ice-ready, and potentially militarized Navy surveillance craft and non-militarized Coast Guard icebreakers on the way—America will be better positioned to handle future presence demands in Alaskan waters as well as to the south, off the increasingly contested continent of Antarctica.

Source link

Click to comment

Alaska

Over $150K worth of drugs seized from man in Juneau, police say

Published

11 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Over 0K worth of drugs seized from man in Juneau, police say

JUNEAU, Alaska (KTUU) – An Alaska drug task force seized roughly $162,000 worth of controlled substances during an operation in Juneau Thursday, according to the Juneau Police Department.

Around 3 p.m. Thursday, investigators with the Southeast Alaska Cities Against Drugs (SEACAD) approached 50-year-old Juneau resident Jermiah Pond in the Nugget Mall parking lot while he was sitting in his car, according to JPD.

A probation search of the car revealed a container holding about 7.3 gross grams of a substance that tested presumptively positive for methamphetamine, as well as about 1.21 gross grams of a substance that tested presumptively positive for fentanyl.

As part of the investigation, investigators executed a search warrant at Pond’s residence, during which they found about 46.63 gross grams of ketamine, 293.56 gross grams of fentanyl, 25.84 gross grams of methamphetamine and 25.5 gross grams of MDMA.

In all, it amounted to just less than a pound of drugs worth $162,500.

Investigators also seized $102,640 in cash and multiple recreational vehicles believed to be associated with the investigation.

Pond was lodged on charges of second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance, two counts of third-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance, five counts of fourth-degree misconduct involving a substance and an outstanding felony probation warrant.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

Source link

Alaska

Sand Point teen found 3 days after going missing in lake

Published

23 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Sand Point teen found 3 days after going missing in lake

SAND POINT, Alaska (KTUU) – A teenage boy who was last seen Monday when the canoe he was in tipped over has been found by a dive team in a lake near Sand Point, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Alaska’s News Source confirmed with the person, who is close to the search efforts, that the dive team found 15-year-old Kaipo Kaminanga deceased Thursday in Red Cove Lake, located a short drive from the town of Sand Point on the Aleutian Island chain.

Kaminanga was last seen canoeing with three other friends on Monday when the boat tipped over.

A search and rescue operation ensued shortly after.

Alaska Dive Search Rescue and Recovery Team posted on Facebook Thursday night that they were able to “locate and recover” Kaminanga at around 5 p.m. Thursday.

“We are glad we could bring closure to his family, friends and community,” the post said.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated when more details become available.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com

Source link

Alaska

Opinion: Homework for Alaska: Sales tax or income tax?

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Opinion: Homework for Alaska: Sales tax or income tax?

iStock / Getty Images

This is a tax tutorial for gubernatorial candidates, for legislators who will report to work next year and for the Alaska public.

Think of it as homework, with more than eight months to complete the assignment that is not due until the November election. The homework is intended to inform, not settle the debate over a state sales tax or state income tax — or neither, which is the preferred option for many Alaskans.

But for those Alaskans willing to consider a tax as a personal responsibility to help fund schools, roads, public safety, child care, state troopers, prisons, foster care and everything else necessary for healthy and productive lives, someday they will need to decide on a state income tax or a state sales tax after they accept the checkbook reality that oil and Permanent Fund earnings are not enough.

This homework assignment is intended to get people thinking with facts, not emotions. Electing the right candidates will be the first test.

Alaskans have until the next election because nothing will change this year. It will take a new political alignment led by a reality-based governor to organize support in the Legislature and among the public.

But next year, maybe, with the right elected leadership, Alaskans can debate a state sales tax or personal income tax. Plus, of course, corporate taxes and oil production taxes, but those are for another school day.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of a state sales tax is that visitors would pay it. Yes, they would, but not as much as many Alaskans think.

Air travel is exempt from sales taxes. So are cruise ship tickets. That’s federal law, which means much of what tourists spend on their Alaska vacation is beyond the reach of a state sales tax.

Cutting further into potential revenues, state and federal law exempts flightseeing tours from sales tax, which is a particularly costly exemption when you think about how much visitors spend on airplane and helicopter tours.

That leaves sales tax supporters collecting from tourists on T-shirts, gifts for grandchildren, artwork, postcards, hotels, Airbnb, car rentals and restaurant meals. Still a substantial take for taxes, but far short of total tourism spending.

An argument against a state sales tax is that more than 100 cities and boroughs already depend on local sales taxes to pay for schools and other public services. Try to imagine what a state tax piled on top of a local tax would do to kill shopping in Homer, already at 7.85%, or Kodiak, Wrangell and Cordova, all at 7%, and all the other municipalities.

Supporters of an income tax say it would share the responsibility burden with nonresidents who earn income in Alaska and then return home to spend their money.

Almost one in four workers in Alaska in 2024 were nonresidents, as reported by the state Department of Labor in January. That doesn’t include federal employees, active-duty military or self-employed people.

Nonresidents earned roughly $3.8 billion, or about 17% of every dollar covered in the report.

However, many of those nonresident workers are lower-wage and seasonal, employed in the seafood processing and tourism industries, unlikely to pay much in income taxes. But a tax could be structured so that they pay something, which is fair.

Meanwhile, higher-wage workers in oil and gas, mining, construction and airlines (freight and passenger service) would pay taxes on their income earned in Alaska, which also is fair.

It comes down to what would direct more of the tax burden to nonresidents: a tax on income or on visitor spending. Wages or wasabi-crusted salmon dinners.

Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal public policy work in Alaska and Washington, D.C. He lives in Anchorage and is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.

• • •

The Anchorage Daily News welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.

Source link