Arctic Eagle splashes down into warm Nome

By Peter Loewi
About 150 participants from across the country and a variety of government agencies are in Nome as part of the Alaska National Guard’s Arctic Eagle/Patriot 2022 exercise.
During a briefing on Feb. 24 before the exercise officially began, Alaska Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Eric Marcellus explained that the purpose of the exercise is to strengthen National Guard partnerships with civil emergency response entities and local communities in the event of disaster or “homeland defense challenges.”
The joint exercise will go on for ten days in Nome, and aims to familiarize guardsmen to safeguard and assist communities in severe weather environments.
Scenarios, such as medical and emergency response, testing new technologies, and identifying and managing contamination, are happening across Nome until March 6.
As previously reported, the exercises will be taking place in the Army Aviation Operations Facility aka the National Guard Hangar, the port area, the National Guard Armory, the Norton Sound Regional hospital, the Rec Center and NACTEC.
Only one scenario, a map and compass navigation exercise, will be taking place outside of Nome, and their route has already been approved through a National Environmental Policy Act process to ensure that lands were safe to exercise on. When asked by Austin Ahmasuk about the impact on subsistence hunting or trapping, LTC Marcellus said that “people won’t be out trampling cultural hunting grounds.”
In addition to one to two C-130, large military cargo planes, flights each day, participants are out on snowmachines, or in an SUSV —a small unit support vehicle, a two-part, tracked vehicle painted in camo.
Participants also may be seen in local restaurants or in stores, as they will be eating dinners out. At a virtual town hall before the start of the exercise, Public Affairs Officer Major Chelsea Aspelund asked members of the public to seek out the public affairs team to answer questions and not to interrupt the training. There should be public affairs officers with cameras around each exercise to help answer questions.
The Alaska National Guard had originally planned to host a series of “Ted Talk” like presentations, but in an email shared with the Nugget before the start of the exercise, participants and planners were advised to refer to the events as “town halls,” citing the interest of residents in having a dialogue.
The town halls run March 1 through 4, starting at 6 p.m., and will be on Zoom. The town halls were intended to be in person but citing public safety and a rise in COVID cases, the town halls will be online.
All exercise participants were tested less than 72 hours before arriving in Nome, and a negative test was required to participate.
Before cases rose, there was one opportunity for in-person discussion, which was at a Feb. 27 “Burger Burn” held at the National Guard Armory.
On the court, tables were spaced a safe distance apart for families to eat burgers and chat with servicemembers. Exercise participants fed more than just hungry Nomeites, but also fed the imaginations of young kids wanting to know what it is like to serve.     
On Tuesday, City Manager Glenn Steckman issued a public service announcement to make clear that the joint Arctic Eagle-Patriot 2022 is not a response to the current crisis in Ukraine. Plans for the exercise began in fall of 2021 and “represent a coordinated effort among national, state and local organizations,” the statement reads.