Across one of the coldest, most remote and strategically exposed corners of the United States, American forces are practicing how to fight on land, at sea and in the air — rapidly moving rocket systems into western Alaska, sending F-35s and F-16s toward simulated threats, and coordinating U.S. and Canadian warships in the Bering Sea.
The operations are part of Tundra Merlin, an enduring U.S. military campaign aimed at proving that even across Alaska’s vast distances and extreme Arctic conditions, American and allied forces can rapidly assemble combat power to defend the northern approaches to the homeland.
And behind that show of force is a changing security environment increasingly shaped by Russia and China.
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“I think what’s changed is primarily two things,” Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, commander of Alaskan Command, told Fox News Digital. “One is that the melting sea ice has made the Arctic more accessible. And we’re seeing increased activity both commercially and militarily in the Arctic, particularly during the summer months.”
“The other factor is that China and Russia and others are continuing to advance their military capabilities and capacity with an interest in showing that they can use them in the Arctic as well,” Davis said.
The Pentagon has reached a similar conclusion. Its 2024 Arctic Strategy warned that growing Russia-China cooperation could “alter the Arctic’s stability and threat picture,” and called for greater U.S. presence, exercises and military preparedness in a region becoming increasingly accessible. Defense officials have said forces operating there must be able not merely to train in extreme conditions, but survive them.
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Few places illustrate the stakes better than Alaska.
The state sits at the intersection of the Arctic and Pacific and serves as a critical hub for homeland defense and a platform for projecting U.S. military power toward the Indo-Pacific and beyond. The Russian and American mainlands are only about 55 miles apart at their closest points across the Bering Strait, while Russia’s Big Diomede Island and Alaska’s Little Diomede Island are separated by roughly 2.5 miles.
Alaska also hosts major air bases, early-warning and missile-defense infrastructure, and tens of thousands of military personnel. U.S. Northern Command says Alaskan Command has more than 22,000 active-duty personnel from across the services, along with approximately 4,700 Guard and Reserve members.
Air Force officials have described Alaska as the “crossroads of the Arctic and the Pacific,” providing U.S. forces with reach and domain awareness for both homeland defense and global power projection.
Davis put that geography in even starker terms.
Pointing to the fifth-generation fighters positioned in Alaska, he told Fox News Digital that U.S. forces can “project from the Arctic to almost anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere in about 10 hours of flight time.”
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Tundra Merlin is designed to turn that geographic advantage into combat capability.
Davis described the operation as a collection of military options — essentially “plays in a playbook” — that can be activated either to deter an adversary or respond if one begins acting aggressively.
“Our hope is that we don’t have any adversarial activity because we’ve effectively deterred it,” Davis said. “But if we do see it and we have kind of a play in the playbook ready to go. For a response.”
One of the most striking demonstrations came recently, on Alaska’s western edge.
U.S. and Canadian forces rapidly moved a U.S. Army HIMARS mobile rocket system and an AN/TPQ-53 radar into western Alaska aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force C-17, then connected those ground forces with American F-35s, F-16s and a KC-135 tanker operating overhead.
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The mission brought air defense and long-range offensive firepower together in a single operation. F-35s and HIMARS synchronized against a simulated ground target approximately 135 miles away, while F-16s simultaneously intercepted F-35s acting as simulated incoming aerial threats, according to U.S. Northern Command.
Davis said the point was not simply to prove the individual weapons worked, but to show how quickly forces could be moved into a remote part of Alaska and linked together.
The operation demonstrated that U.S. forces can rapidly move capabilities into Alaska “both to defend Alaska, but also, if necessary, to put other adversary targets at risk,” he told Fox News Digital.
Tundra Merlin pushed that same concept out to sea in September.
From Sept. 18–22, U.S. and Canadian forces conducted a joint maritime strike scenario roughly 100 nautical miles north of Dutch Harbor, integrating U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Navy surface and subsurface vessels with Canadian maritime patrol aircraft and Alaska-based U.S. Air Force F-35 fighters and E-3 airborne warning and control aircraft.
The forces practiced multiple simulated maritime target engagements, testing whether information collected by different ships and aircraft could be rapidly passed across the force and used to identify, track and engage a potential threat.
“The most impressive part to me was seeing the high degree of cooperation and integration among units that day in and day out don’t necessarily operate together,” Davis said.
“To see the joint nature on the U.S. side integrated together with the inter-agency of the U.S. Coast Guard and with our allies, with Canada as an example, was just an amazing thing to see,” he added.
That ability to operate at scale is complicated by Alaska itself.
Extreme cold can affect equipment and personnel, while the enormous distances and limited infrastructure of the North American Arctic make moving and sustaining forces unusually difficult. The Pentagon’s Arctic Strategy specifically identifies those distances and the region’s infrastructure limitations as obstacles to military operations and says maintaining infrastructure in Alaska is essential for missile defense, surveillance and rapid power projection.
Davis said military equipment brought into Alaska cannot simply be expected to function as it would elsewhere.
“It needs to be conditioned. It needs to be properly outfitted to operate in sub-zero temperatures for a long period of time,” he said, adding that troops also require specialized clothing, training and procedures to avoid cold-weather injuries and continue fighting in Arctic conditions.
The pressure to master that environment comes as Russia and China increasingly demonstrate their own ability to operate near North America.
In July 2024, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, detected and intercepted two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers flying together in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. It was the first time NORAD had intercepted Russian and Chinese military aircraft operating together in the zone. The aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter U.S. or Canadian sovereign territory, and NORAD said the flight itself was not considered a threat.
The episode nevertheless highlighted the very kind of cooperation U.S. defense planners are watching.
For now, Davis said Alaska is positioned to deal with the military threats commanders expect under normal conditions.
“We’re postured very well for any of the anticipated threats that we think would come our way in the very near term,” he said. But if commanders saw indications of a significant escalation, Davis said Alaskan Command would likely request additional forces and capabilities.
That, ultimately, is what Tundra Merlin is intended to prove: that in a theater defined by enormous distances, punishing weather and growing Russian and Chinese activity, the United States can move forces across Alaska, connect them across land, sea and air, and have combat power ready before a potential adversary decides to test the northern edge of the homeland.
