Rural Alaska

Military flight exercises planned Wednesday near Bethel and McGrath

BETHEL – People along the Kuskokwim River between Bethel and McGrath on Wednesday may hear or see fighter jets flying close to civilian planes during military training.

Northern American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, announced Wednesday morning that it expected to conduct training exercises between the Bethel and McGrath airports between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Fighter pilots in low-flying F-22 jets will be practicing "intercept and identification procedures," according to NORAD.  The jets will fly near a civilian plane participating as "an aircraft of interest." NORAD has conducted these types of exercises since the 9/11 terror attacks.

The civilian plane is a Piper PA-34 Seneca, according to NORAD. The command wouldn't provide more detail and wouldn't address whether the Piper pilot had undergone special training or what happens at the point of the intercept, said Capt. Ashleigh Peck, a NORAD spokeswoman.

The command released some information "so people aren't alarmed," said Peck, on Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

NORAD operates as a joint Canadian and U.S. command. One of its three regional headquarters is at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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