Concerns about national security are heating up in the rapidly changing Arctic. In 2021, the U.S. Coast Guard opened a seasonal airbase in Kotzebue.
The community was once home to a permanent Air Force station, but that closed in 1983, as the Cold War wound down.
NANA is one of the largest Alaska Native corporations in the state. Cravalho is also a member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. She said any military buildup in Northwest Alaska should include input from Alaska Natives. That culture has become a defining feature in Nate Kotch’s life, since he arrived here from Hawaii in his early 20s.The Air Force stationed him here in in the 1970s. He is one of the last remaining Kotzebue residents that remembers when there was an active military station here. Today, it functions as a long range radar site, with minimal full time civilian staff.
Last October, the United States rolled out a new National Strategy for the Arctic Region. In a video posted to Twitter U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken included national security as one of four main pillars of a new National Security Strategy for the Arctic. The U.S. Government built an Air Force Station in Kotzebue at the beginning of the Cold War. Construction was completed in 1958. Once a radar station, it was closed in 1983, as the conflict began to cool off. Today, it functions as part of the Alaska NORAD system. Minimal civilian staff are tasked with its upkeep. There are only a handful of people in Kotzebue today who were once full-time soldiers at the station when it was fully operational.
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