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Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) are poorly manned, trained, organized, and equipped to conduct sustained operations in the Arctic. ARSOF's current operations, referred to here as Arctic tourism, involve misaligned and episodic training combined with personnel policies that dilute Arctic expertise and hinder the retention of institutional knowledge and unit capability. This is compounded by the strained relationship between the U.S. government and Alaska Native communities, denying the U.S. military Arctic expertise and presenting a gap for malign influence. This piece explores how creating an Arctic-focused National Guard Special Forces unit can help address homeland defense gaps, Arctic capacity shor falls, historically-fraught relationships with Alaska Native communities, and natural resource vulnerabilities.
The 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy largely ignores the Arctic and specifically fails to acknowledge how Alaska's exposed frontier will be defended in great-power competition with China and Russia. Alaska has faced hybrid and irregular threats long before these concepts emerged in contemporary security discourse. The need for an Arctic-dedicated force is highlighted by the challenges of Russian and Chinese military cooperation, defense of critical infrastructure, and protection of Indigenous peoples- also known as Alaska Natives-made vulnerable by their remoteness, long history of exploitation, and infrastructure degradation due to climate change.
Alaska-based land forces currently consist of local Army National Guard and Reserve troops; various rotational units of active-duty Army Special Forces, also known as Green Berets; and the 11th Airborne Division. The 11th Airborne Division is the sole Arctic-focused active-duty Army unit in the United States but is simultaneously assigned to Indo-Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility does not encompass any Arctic territory. These forces are ill-prepared to address the security threats in the region, especially the Special Forces units, which conduct misaligned and episodic training with poor personnel policies. These policies dilute expertise and institutional unit knowledge by frequently rotating personnel out of the teams who execute Arctic training. We define this current approach as "Arctic tourism." Creating a center of gravity for Arctic expertise in Alaska in the form of National Guard Special Forces could alleviate this problem.
An Alaska-based U.S. Army National Guard Special Forces unit could be a true force multiplier to address domain awareness and homeland defense gaps, Arctic capability and capacity shortfalls, neglected Alaskan Native...