A joint patrol of Russian and Chinese warships traveled near Alaska this week, prompting the U.S. to mobilize aircraft and ships in response, officials revealed over the weekend.
“NORAD and USNORTHCOM actively monitored the Russian and Chinese combined naval patrol that operated near Alaska earlier this week,” a spokesperson for U.S. North Command confirmed to National Review in a statement this morning.
The Wall Street Journal first reported yesterday that eleven Russian and Chinese ships sailed near the Aleutian Islands without entering America’s territorial waters and were tracked by four U.S. warships and reconnaissance planes. The vessels subsequently left the area.
“Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat,” the spokesperson said.
While the U.S. recognizes the prerogative of countries to practice freedom-of-navigation operations, the patrol also raised alarm about the extent of military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. The Journal reported it was likely the largest such joint Sino-Russian operation near the American homeland.
In a statement on Saturday, Alaska senator Dan Sullivan referred to the joint patrol as an “incursion” and “yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by dictators in Beijing and Moscow.”
Sullivan added that the response to a similar operation last September was “tepid,” as the U.S. responded to a patrol of seven Chinese and Russian vessels near Alaska with a single U.S. Coast Guard ship. “For that reason, I was heartened to see that this latest incursion was met with four U.S. Navy destroyers, which sends a strong message to Xi Jinping and Putin that the United States will not hesitate to protect and defend our vital national interests in Alaska,” he said.
Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, said that she and Sullivan had “received detailed classified briefings about the foreign vessels that are transiting U.S. waters in the Aleutians” for days from Alaska Command.
It was not immediately clear precisely how far from territorial waters the Russian and Chinese patrol operated. Their appearance near Alaska came amid a series of drills spanning the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk, the Journal reported, citing a Russian defense ministry statement issued on Friday. The exercises involved helicopter drills and a joint anti-submarine exercise in the Bering Sea.
The U.S. military had been tracking the fleet last month. The top U.S. commander in the Pacific, Admiral John Aquilino, referred to it during a speech at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20, just as the patrol launched. “We’ll see where that ends up, whether it’s off the Aleutian Islands, whether it’s in the Philippine Sea, whether it goes to Guam, whether it goes to Hawaii or whether it goes off the west coast of the United States,” he said.
“I only see the cooperation getting stronger, and boy that’s concerning,” Aquilino said, pointing to an increased number of joint operations.
China has repeatedly objected to Washington’s freedom-of-navigation operations, which the U.S. conducts throughout the Indo-Pacific pursuant to international law. Beijing has characterized the U.S. actions as provocative and illegal, even as it engages in similar operations.
That’s come with provocative behavior to counter other U.S. activities in the region. A recent incident, in May, saw a People’s Liberation Army jet fly directly across the flight path of an American reconnaissance plane, forcing it to fly through the Chinese jet’s wake, Indo-Pacific Command revealed. Then, in June, a PLA Navy vessel sailed directly in front of a U.S. destroyer as it passed through the Taiwan Strait.
Americans with contacts within the Chinese government have indicated that Beijing is trying to get the U.S. to conduct fewer such operations. Steve Orlins, the president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, said during a panel with Aquilino this year that his Chinese military contacts complain to him about what they characterize as an uptick in the number of U.S. surveillance flights in the region. “The Chinese say, well, there’s an easy answer: Run fewer surveillance flights [and] there will be fewer dangerous intercepts.”
The increase in joint Chinese and Russian operations follows the 2022 “no-limits” partnership that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced in Beijing, just ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.