The U.S. Has Prime Real Estate for Fighting a War: Alaska
Melting ice caps and longer-range threats are reshaping the way America s 49th state plays into U.S. security.
Here s What You Need to Remember: The geopolitics of Alaska isn t just about the Arctic. Asia’s “first island chain” as extending from northern Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Indonesian archipelago. This reflects our southerly bias toward East and Southeast Asian affairs, not to mention the far north’s heretofore mostly inert character as a geopolitical region.
Alaska is much in the news during this incipient age of great-power strategic competition. Almost daily, it seems, U.S. Air Force fighter jets scramble to intercept lumbering Russian bombers approaching North American airspace to the extreme northwest. This spring the air force activated its first squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters in the Pacific, emplacing the stealth warbirds at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. Around the sa
Credit Courtesy of the Alaska Volcano Observatory
Scientists have downgraded the alert level for an Aleutian volcano that began showing an increase in signs of eruption and emitting harmful ash late last week.
According to Dave Schneider, a geophysicist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, over the last several weeks, satellites and pressure sensor data revealed ramped up activity at Semisopochnoi Volcano, which is located on an uninhabited island in the Rat Islands about 600 miles southwest of Unalaska.
Scientists detected steady ash emissions coming from the volcano Thursday, prompting them to upgrade the aviation color code to red and alert level to warning.
Island Hopping In the Pacific: America s PT Boats in World War II
Fast-moving, heavily armed U.S. Navy PT boats harried enemy forces in the Pacific and European Theaters in World War II.
Here s What You Need to Know: During the island hopping in the Pacific, PT boats blocked enemy vessels shelling U.S. positions and intercepted Japanese vessels transporting troops to islands.
Late in the day on October 24, 1944, all of the available 39 patrol torpedo (PT) boats of the U.S. Seventh Fleet were traveling at high speed into the Mindanao Sea just south of Leyte Gulf. By dusk they had taken up position in a patrol line. The journey of the boats from New Guinea to Leyte Gulf, which was approximately 1,200 miles, presented a difficult problem for the U.S. Navy. The distance was considered too far for the boats to complete in one hop, even if they were escorted by tender, so the Navy set to work to devise a more viable plan.
Laguna Pueblo photographer s great eye renowned worldwide » Albuquerque Journal abqjournal.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from abqjournal.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.