Sen. Sullivan Highlights Escalating Incursions by Adversaries Near Alaska

WASHINGTON—Several Arctic policy experts at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (CST) testified strongly last week in support of increasing infrastructure investments in Alaska, which constitutes the entirety of America’s Arctic. While the hearing was focused on Greenland’s geostrategic importance to the United States, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), a member of CST, argued that Alaska offers every potential resource and national security benefit of Greenland, but has too often been treated like one big “national park” by Democratic administrations, most recently by the Biden administration. Sen. Sullivan made this argument in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Greenland is nice, but Alaska is better.”

In his questioning of the experts, Sen. Sullivan highlighted the significant escalation in incursions by Russian and Chinese military aircraft and vessels in Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Each of the witnesses agreed with Sen. Sullivan that the increasing aggression toward Alaska by America’s adversaries warrants deploying new military assets to the state, including personnel, vessels, aircraft, ports and bases.

Sen. Sullivan was optimistic about the prospect of further investments in Alaska given President Donald Trump’s focus on the state, including a comprehensive day-one executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential,” which directed many of the Biden administration’s harmful policies and actions related to Alaska lands and resources to be rescinded and many policies of the first Trump administration to be reinstated.

Officials testifying before the committee were Alexander Gray, senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council; Anthony Marchese, chairman of Texas Mineral Resources; Dr. Jennifer Mercer, section head for Arctic sciences at the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs; and Dr. Rebecca Pincus, director of the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute.

Below is a full transcript of Sen. Sullivan’s exchanges in the CST hearing.

SEN. DAN SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much for holding this very important hearing. Arctic issues are something that, as the senator representing the only Arctic state in the country, I care deeply about. I appreciate the chairman focusing on this. I want to first mention, I think the idea of the President looking to purchase Greenland has already been mentioned by a number of the panelists. Other presidents have thought about this. I think it’s a wonderful idea if we can pull it off. Truman, Andrew Johnson, others did. But I also think it’s important to remember—this is an op-ed I wrote in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago saying—hey, Greenland’s nice, good to go if we can get it, but remember our Arctic state, Alaska. Because everything that people talk about with regard to Greenland we have in spades already in America—it’s called Alaska: Arctic location, strategic and critical minerals, oil and gas, the cornerstone of America’s missile defense. It’s all there. The problem is, as the panelists know, when Democrats get in power—Biden was the latest example—they want to turn Alaska into a national park, not recognizing our state for what it is, which is a strategic crown jewel for America. The father of the U.S. Air Force, General Billy Mitchell, in testimony before Congress in the mid-1930s, called Alaska the “most strategic place on the planet.” And it is. So that’s what we’re focused on. Don’t forget Alaska. Fortunately, unlike President Biden, President Trump has already made it very clear that he’s not going to forget Alaska. On day one, the president signed an executive order called “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.” I want to thank President Trump and his team for doing that. It goes into everything that this hearing has talked about: strategic minerals, oil and gas, natural gas, getting the military involved. We just introduced my legislation called the IRON DOME Act, which is all about missile defense. Alaska is the cornerstone of our country’s missile defense, and we can build that out even better. I appreciate what President Trump is already doing on Alaska. But it’s not as if our adversaries don’t recognize the strategic importance of Alaska or the Arctic. Next slide. This is what doesn’t make a lot of news in the Lower 48. In the last [few] years, we have had an enormous amount of Russian incursions into our airspace—America’s airspace—Alaska’s ADIZ, naval incursions into EEZ. Just in the past year, these are some depictions of this. This is another slide we have. This gives you all of the Russian-Chinese joint strategic bomber incursions in our ADIZ and, very disturbingly, joint naval task forces into our EEZ. Our adversaries clearly understand the Arctic. That’s a wind up to a question I want to ask the panelists. Mr. Gray, why don’t we start with you. Given this, how important is America’s Arctic? I’ve been talking to Secretary Hegseth, the President, and others in Alaska, not just for missile defense, but to push back on what is clearly happening. We had a meeting on what we’re going to be doing on the border. A lot of discussion with the President’s team on the northern border. This is the northern border, and our adversaries are all over it. In my view, what we need is a lot more infrastructure, a lot more military, a lot more missile defense, a lot more unleashing Alaska’s critical minerals, oil and gas. We couldn’t have a better partner right now with President Trump. The contrast between him and President Biden, who wanted to make my state a national park—he issued 70 executive orders—70—singularly focused on Alaska to shut us down. President Trump’s wiped that out. What’s your sense on how we need to respond to this in America’s Arctic, which is Alaska, and the potential that Greenland could add to this, because that’s the other part of the Arctic, not the Alaska part of the Arctic?

GRAY: Senator, it’s incredibly important. I think we have to look at our hemisphere holistically, from the Aleutians to Greenland, from pole to pole, and have a—President Trump began this process in his first term—this holistic Arctic strategy that I was pleased to be involved in. We have to, from a military standpoint, we’ve talked about icebreakers, but we have to…

SULLIVAN: Wait, just real quick, on icebreakers: Russia has 54, some of which are nuclear, many of which are weaponized. We have two and one is broken. Do you think that’s “peace through strength” when it comes to icebreakers? It isn’t. Continue. Sorry to interrupt you.

GRAY: It’s obviously—the icebreakers are key, particularly when we think about what the adversaries are doing: nuclear-powered icebreakers, growing their fleet. When we think about the limited C-130 capacity that we have now for Arctic takeoff and landings, when we think about just the general attrition of Arctic warfighting capabilities since the end of the Cold War and the lack of investment in them, I know DOD will likely have its own Arctic strategy. We have to have Arctic warfighting capacity and deterrence as a much higher-level priority. I think your chart and what your state’s dealing with is a perfect example of why.

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SULLIVAN: First, going back to this chart, I want to get a sense of why you think this has been a pretty dramatic increase from Russia and China in unprecedented joint naval and strategic bomber task forces into our airspace, into our water EEZ? And related to that, Mr. Gray, you talked about presence. You can’t have presence without infrastructure. I think it’s high time that we start looking at more infrastructure to be able to address this. We’re going to have a hearing with the NORTHCOM commander in the Armed Services Committee tomorrow. I’m going to talk a lot about looking at potential bases. There’s an incredible Navy base out here, the Adak Naval Base. It was closed during a BRAC. That could be a great sub base, Naval air station base, surface warship base. Huge refueling capacity right there flanking the Russians, Chinese. Very strategic. We’re trying to get a strategic port built in Nome, Alaska, but otherwise, we have very little infrastructure from which to launch military, economic, icebreaker capabilities. So maybe just a quick question for all the panelists. Do we need more infrastructure in America’s Arctic? I’m not talking Greenland. This hearing is about strategic interests in the Arctic. We’re an Arctic nation solely because of that great state, Alaska. What’s your sense, for all the panelists, on infrastructure in the Arctic to combat what is a very aggressive move by our adversaries? By the way, just talking to the NORTHCOM commander, we had one of the busiest times ever in terms of aggressive incursions, joint Chinese-Russian operations. That’s unprecedented. He thinks this year, it’s going to be even more. We’ve got to be ready for protecting America. Now, what’s the sense of the panel on infrastructure in America’s Arctic?

GRAY: Senator, I couldn’t agree more. We have to have more infrastructure, not just from a defensive presence standpoint to protect our homeland, but also from a power projection standpoint. We’ve allowed our Arctic infrastructure, in addition to a lot of just our general defense industrial infrastructure, to atrophy. I think this would be a huge way to boost our capacity to deter in the Arctic.

SULLIVAN: Great. Mr. Marchese, do you have a view on that?

MARCHESE: Senator, I couldn’t agree with you more. You’re preaching to the converted. We, in my opinion, need significantly more infrastructure spending, not only in Alaska, but in the United States. There’s nothing wrong with fishing at your feet. We have everything we need here. It’s great that we’re going to Greenland, but let’s concentrate on what we can control, which is United States investment.

SULLIVAN: Great. Thank you. Dr, Mercer?

MERCER: Thank you for the question, sir. As I said before, America is the world’s leader in scientific research. That’s certainly true in the polar regions. We rely heavily, in order to be the leader in research in the polar regions, on Coast Guard icebreakers, the LC-130 aircraft, the C-17 aircraft, the Space Base Pituffik in Greenland. As I noted in my opening testimony, we’re in the design process to recapitalize and modernize Summit Station at the center of the Greenland ice sheet.

SULLIVAN: Great. Thank you. Dr. Pincus?

PINCUS: Thank you, Senator. I agree that we are seeing increased adversary presence in the region because they perceive weakness on their part. And so they’re pressing us there.

SULLIVAN: By the way, it’s not on this chart. I have another one that shows they’re—I think some of the witnesses said this earlier—they’re building up their infrastructure, particularly military, but also energy and critical mineral infrastructure, in a huge way in the Arctic. We’re still kind of, I agree, exuding weakness.

PINCUS: I would also note that we face multiple challenges in Alaska. In addition to extending and expanding our presence there, we have challenges with coastal erosion and some of the permafrost issues. So there’s money that needs to be put into current DOD installations to harden them. We’re also seeing the expansion of wildland fires and other novel challenges. I think efficient spending decisions to get as much bang for our buck is important, so we can meet the full range of national security through economic and community concerns related to that really wide range of challenges. I would put the Coast Guard at the top of the list, because it’s got a broad mission set and its assets can be utilized for a lot of different purposes. Obviously, DoD assets can be applied to civil disasters as well. And then, new technology that can help us respond effectively and juggle competing demands, whether it’s from a massive wildfire, a big coastal storm, like some of the storms we’ve seen in western Alaska, or military challenges. We have to do all of those at the same time. It’s a real big problem set and I appreciate you flagging it.

SULLIVAN: Good. Thank you.

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