Military

The U.S. Army has identified the 11th Airborne Division soldier killed in a collision late Sunday on Arctic Valley Road as Pfc. Arath Esau Martinez-Arguelles, 20, of Sherman Oaks, California.

People gathered to honor and remember.

Several ceremonies and remembrances are scheduled for Monday.

From a headstone cleanup Sunday to several ceremonies and remembrances Monday, Alaskans have multiple opportunities to gather and honor fallen service members.

The refueling stop at JBER comes as first lady Jill Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland are set to visit Bethel.

The Arctic Edge and Northern Edge exercises will wrap up later next week. State officials warn drivers to expect a four-hour highway closure Wednesday near Broad Pass.

Gen. James C. McConville presented awards and the oath of reenlistment for 11th Airborne Division soldiers Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused two U.S. Army helicopters to collide over mountainous terrain in Interior Alaska, a spokesman said.

Investigators planned to fly out Monday to the site near Healy where two U.S. Army helicopters crashed, killing three soldiers and injuring a fourth, who remains hospitalized.

The helicopters were headed to Fort Wainwright from a mission in the Donnelly Training Area when they crashed at 1:39 p.m. Thursday, about 50 miles east of Healy.

The Army on Saturday identified the soldiers who died when two AH-64 Apache helicopters crashed. A fourth soldier was reported in stable condition in a Fairbanks hospital.

The two AH-64 Apache helicopters from Fort Wainwright were returning from a training mission when they collided in flight near Healy, Army officials said.

Compounding the rescue was not only lingering fog from sea ice, but also a power outage at Little Diomede, an island in the Bering Strait located 2 miles from Russia.

The Alaska National Guard held a ceremony in Gambell honoring 16 Alaska Scouts who saved a Navy aircrew after a Soviet attack.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of U.S. Northern Command, said there’s a need for more icebreakers and bolstered radar capabilities in Alaska.

In a yearlong study of almost 900,000 service members who flew on or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that air crew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer.

President Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to retired Col. Paris Davis, one of the first Black Green Berets, almost six decades after the Army lost his original 1965 nomination.

The Japanese weapons, called fu-gos, were mostly benign and had no real impact on the outcome of the war.

U.S. fighter jets were scrambled Tuesday to intercept Russian warplanes flying near Alaska’s coast for the second consecutive day, military officials said Thursday.

NORAD officials described the intercept as routine and professional.

In the hours after an unidentified object was shot down off Alaska’s Arctic coast, some Alaskans saw flights canceled while state leaders said the incident underlined the state’s strategic position.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and her colleagues asked why the balloon was able to fly over Alaska without the military shooting it down. Defense officials said its flight path didn’t bring it near sensitive infrastructure in the state.

Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters Monday that he could not take immediate action because the balloon was “not demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent.”