Inspectors visiting the nation’s six northernmost military bases last summer - all but one in Alaska - found none were carrying out required assessments and planning to prepare their installations and operations against long-term warming
WASHINGTON - U.S. military bases in the Arctic and sub-Arctic are failing to prepare their installations for long-term climate change as required, even though soaring temperatures and melting ice already are cracking base runways and roads and worsening flood risks up north, the Pentagon’s watchdog office said Friday.
For years, laws, presidential orders and Pentagon rules have mandated that the military start planning and work so that its installations, warships, warplanes and troops can carry out their missions despite increasingly challenging conditions as the use of fossil fuels heats up the Earth. Further, “most installation leaders at the six installations we visited in the Arctic and sub-Arctic region were unfamiliar with military installation resilience planning requirements, processes, and tools,” the inspector general reports said.that their operations lacked the training and funding to start the required work on hardening their bases.
The Arctic and sub-Arctic are important to U.S. strategic aims in part because of rising tensions and competition with Russia and China, and in part because sharply rising temperatures are melting sea ice and opening up both shipping lanes and access to the region’s oil and other resources, increasing interest and traffic in the region.
At Fort Wainwright in Interior Alaska, heightened wildfire risks in 2019 interrupted training for two Pacific Air Force squadrons, so that one was able to carry out only 59% of planned training for a period, the report said.
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