US Air Force Reactivates Its Base in the Aleutian Islands

F-16 fighter jets doing an elephant walk on the runway at sunset. Source: iStock.com/guvendemir

Following a long hiatus, US Air Force F-16s were temporarily deployed to Eareckson Air Station during Operation Noble Defender, from October 18 to October 26, 2026. They carried out a combat patrol mission in this remote part of the Aleutian Islands—located 440 km from Russia’s Commander Islands and 1,000 km from the Russian Pacific Fleet’s naval base at Vilyuchinsk—far removed from the Alaskan mainland.

Noble Defender is a recurring NORAD air defense operation that demonstrates the command’s ability to defend the United States and Canada against threats from every approach.

From the news coverage in Russian media, an attentive observer might have formed the impression that the US intends to maintain a permanent combat aircraft presence on Shemya Island—located just a short distance from Russia’s Commander Islands. This impression stems from reports regarding the deployment of single-engine F-16s—an aircraft type not particularly well-suited for operations over vast oceanic expanses.

This impression is incorrect, as evidenced by the American sources cited below. However, these sources also fail to fully capture the significance of this temporary deployment, which lasted only nine days, on Shemya—one of the Aleutian Islands furthest from mainland Alaska (situated 2,350 km from Anchorage).

For comparison, China’s Heilongjiang province—the closest Chinese territory to Shemya—lies only slightly further away, at a distance of 2,800 km.

A broader geostrategic dimension of this temporary F-16 deployment—during which the aircraft conducted combat patrols in this northwestern corner of the Pacific—has gone largely unaddressed in the global press.

The brief stationing of aging F-16s on Shemya served as a signal to the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, demonstrating the US capability to use military force to block access to the Bering Strait and the Northern Sea Route for the naval and merchant vessels of potential adversaries.

This implicit signal is directed not only at potential adversaries but also at US allies in Southeast Asia—most notably South Korea, which has shown great enthusiasm for utilizing the Northern Sea Route for trade with Europe, and Japan, which has approached the prospect with greater caution.

The United States has been gaining daily experience with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which began on April 13, 2026—more than six months ago. A potential blockade or restriction on the movement of vessels from other nations within the oceanic corridor stretching from the Commander Islands to the Bering Strait would represent a “simplified” version of the Hormuz blockade for the US.

Any attempt to blockade or inspect civilian vessels—including those belonging to the “shadow fleet” of a state deemed undesirable by the US—would be far easier to execute near the approach to the Bering Strait, specifically within the narrow passage between the Commander and Aleutian Islands. This is due to the proximity of Alaska and Canada, whose air forces regularly conduct exercises in the northern Pacific Ocean.

In the near future, the US will possess more effective military assets to carry out such an operation.

The US Air Force has signed a $694 million deal with Lockheed Martin for the manufacture of the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) hypersonic missile, marking a significant shift from the testing phase to production of the missile.

The contract, which was signed on September 29 and revealed on October 26, 2026, represents a drastic turnaround for a program that the Air Force had previously planned to scrap by 2023. Neither the Air Force nor Lockheed has released details regarding the quantity of missiles ordered or the expected delivery date.

A permanent presence of US Air Force combat aircraft on Shemya Island is unlikely to be part of the US military command’s strategic calculus: it is prohibitively expensive, the island’s harsh natural and climatic conditions are ill-suited for stationing permanent flight and technical personnel, and sophisticated, high-cost hardware—such as the F-35—has performed poorly during operations in the European Arctic.

A more practical approach would be the deployment of US Air Force combat aircraft to the Aleutian Islands during a “period of threat”—a scenario that either stems from the kind of flawed forecasting for which the US military has become notorious since World War II, or serves as a genuine reflection of an impending military conflict.

From a political standpoint, the short-term deployment of F-16s to Shemya Island acts as a veiled signal to the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, coming just ahead of a potential meeting between the leaders of the three nations on the sidelines of the APEC summit, which is set to take place in China in two weeks.

Instead of a “Colt”—which one cannot bring into a summit meeting—the American delegation is bringing a significant bargaining chip: the ability to block access to the Arctic at two points rather than one.

For China, the deployment of F-16s on Shemya Island carries an additional strategic message: the movement of the PRC’s rapidly expanding blue-water navy beyond the “first island chain” will be further complicated by a threat from the north—a threat posed by air-launched weaponry rather than by vulnerable surface naval assets.

The strategic message behind basing F-16s on Shemya Island is equally clear for the Russian Federation. Launching air-based hypersonic missiles with a range of 1,600 km—which are slated to eventually become part of the armament for the stealthy, subsonic B-21 Raider—against Russian military targets on the Kamchatka Peninsula would leave very little time for a response. Furthermore, it would obviate the need to commit valuable land- or sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) for such a task.

Thus, in the high-stakes game unfolding at the negotiating table in Shenzhen, China, the US delegation has gained a potent bargaining chip—thanks to aging F-16s that spent nine days stationed at Shemya Island—which they can now use to advance their interests in this part of the Pacific.

The United States is clearly lagging in its “Pivot to Asia”—a strategy first announced by the Obama administration in late 2011, yet never fully realized due to a lack of continuity and consistency in US foreign policy and internal fractures within the American political elite.

The proliferation of think tanks in the US has also played a cruel trick: these private entities, competing for funding and churning out contradictory strategies, have seemingly left the country’s political leadership—which is already incapable of rationally managing its remaining resources—thoroughly bewildered.

In effect, the US finds its hands and feet—its strategic assets—tied down by its involvement in the Ukraine crisis and an escalating standoff with Iran that is gradually devolving into a protracted war of attrition.

For a waning hegemon, being embroiled in two major military conflicts simultaneously—at a time when the US armed forces are only capable of effectively sustaining one major and one minor conflict—serves as a significant obstacle to its efforts to bolster its military presence in the Western Pacific.

In this light, the deployment of F-16s near Russia—and within striking distance of China—acts as a kind of “ersatz” version of the failed “Pivot to Asia.” It is akin to a card slipped from the sleeve of a dishonest player who, despite the deception, maintains a perfectly straight “poker face.”