Senior Department of Defense leaders in both the Biden and Trump administrations agree that the Chinese Communist Party poses the greatest threat to the United States. One senator has made it his personal mission to get the military to back that rhetoric with action.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) brings up Russian and Chinese aggression in both the aerial and maritime domains off Alaska’s coasts in every Armed Services Committee hearing, whether it’s for the confirmations of military civilian appointees or annual hearings from combatant commanders.

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He’s pushing relevant military leaders to reopen a naval base in the Aleutian Islands that closed about three decades ago, and to put more resources across Alaska.

“This is part of a broader strategic repository that our military needs to really think hard about, and in the Indo-Pacific, to be honest, their strategic thinking has been lazy,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Naval Air Facility Adak, located on Adak Island, is so far west, it’s approximately 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage and about 1,000 miles west of Hawaii. The islands are much further west than any other state within the United States, making it the closest point between the United States and Russia and China.

The Navy is preparing a report detailing the possible reopening of the base, while Sullivan has received public confirmation from the commanders of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the relevant combatant commands, that they support the reopening of the base that closed in 1997.

Navy officials recently visited the base, which originally opened in May 1942 about six months after the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor, and they “had a low, medium and high restructuring plan that they had sketched out and each one of those has more capabilities [than the last],” Sullivan said.

At its peak, there were 90,000 troops mobilized to the Aleutian Islands during World War II. U.S. forces on the island were able to launch a successful offensive against the Japanese held islands of Kiska and Attu in 1943.

“Adak is towards the end of the Aleutian archipelago, the stretch of islands that extend in a long arc from the Alaskan coast,” Dr. Joshua Tallis, an analyst with CNA, an independent not-for-profit analytical organization, told the Washington Examiner. “The island and its airfield played a role in World War II as a base from which to attack Japanese forces in the Aleutians.”

The senator said the base has three piers, two 8,000-foot runways, a big hangar, and can store 22 million gallons of fuel even if it “looks a little bit run down.”

“Opening [Naval Air Facility] Adak as a fully operational base would greatly facilitate our ability to operate and respond quickly to threats in both the Arctic and Pacific regions,” a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “The base occupies a unique strategic positioning, simultaneously abetting the Pacific and Arctic regions.”

“U.S. forces use Naval Air Facility Adak during training and exercises to enhance our ability to conduct operations from an austere environment, increasing the force’s dynamism and ability to rapidly adapt to changing operational landscapes,” the spokesperson added.

The Aleutian Islands are a chain of 14 main islands and more than 50 smaller ones off Alaska’s southwestern coast.

“It is a further western point which would enable, along with Eareckson, an opportunity to gain time and distance on any force capability that’s looking to penetrate,” INDOPACOM Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo said during a recent hearing in front of the Armed Services Committee, referencing Eareckson Air Station, which is also located in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.

Tallis downplayed Adak’s location as a maritime resupply route due to the lack of “necessary supporting infrastructure,” but noted the base’s “real potential value is in staging aircraft, and for the Navy that specifically means maritime patrol aircraft.”

Sullivan warned during a committee hearing that a Chinese shipping company, which he suspects is a front for the government, has repeatedly reached out to the Aleut Corporation to lease Adak naval base now that it’s vacant.

“It’s a Chinese shipping company that is certainly, in my view, a front company for the PLA. How embarrassing would it be to the Pentagon or the Navy — these guys would never do it; the Aleut Corporation is all patriotic — but let’s assume they weren’t, and somehow they signed a 100-year lease with a Chinese shipping company that is always out there looking at Adak,” he told Paparo.

The commander responded, “Imagine having the Belt and Road Initiative include Alaska,” referring to China’s international exploitative strategy to build foreign partnerships through infrastructure agreements that benefit Beijing primarily, often at the expense of the nation that makes the deal.

A spokesperson for the Aleut Corporation confirmed to the Washington Examiner that they “do receive inquiries from Chinese shipping companies” to lease the base. “I don’t know if it’s as routine as annually, but I can confirm there have been repeated asks.”

The U.S. military has tracked a more closely aligned Russian and Chinese military, with the two countries increasing their joint operations in the Pacific and Arctic regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to strengthen their strategic partnership during the latter’s visit to Moscow to celebrate Victory Day on May 8.

Alaska proper poses its own strategic significance with the 49th state representing the furthest north part of the country, and the closest point to the Arctic. The melting ice caps have created new strategic transportation routes that are now being contested. Eight countries are considered to have claims in the Arctic — the U.S., six other NATO members, and Russia — while a ninth, China, has unilaterally declared itself to be a “near-Arctic country.”

“Over the last year, we’ve seen a significance increase in both Russian air and maritime activity in the vicinity of Alaska, both in the Bering [Strait] and up in the Arctic.” Gen. Gregory Guillot told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, “I do think that [China will] increase their presence both independently and as well as increased cooperation with the Russians in the air, in the maritime, and undersea.”

Russian and Chinese aircrafts have increased their incursions into Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone, which is where sovereign airspace ends and is a defined stretch of international airspace that requires aircraft to identify itself in the interest of national security, to levels “not seen since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine” in 2022, according to NORTHCOM Commander Gen. Gregory Guillot.

The Russian and Chinese naval drills have also violated Alaska’s EEZ, or Exclusive Economic Zone, which is the maritime area beyond a country’s territorial waters where that country maintains special rights for exploration and exploitation of natural resources.

“Over the past twelve months, NORAD and NORTHCOM intercepted joint Russian and Chinese bombers off the Alaska coast, tracked Russian surface vessels off both coasts, detected and assessed numerous North Korean missile launches, tracked multiple Chinese dual-use military and research vessels in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean,” Guillot added. “Last year, we saw the most Chinese vessels off the coast of Alaska than we’ve ever seen and simultaneously.”

Each time an adversary’s military crosses into the U.S.’s EEZ or AZID, U.S. forces intercept them, though those missions can be dangerous, especially in the instances where the incursion is far from where U.S. personnel are located across Alaska.

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“Every single time one of these Russian bear bomber task forces or the joint Russia-Chinese task forces come into our AZID, every single time our military base in Alaska goes and intercepts them. These are F-35s, F-22s, and F-16 [aircrafts]. They do such a good job, they’re so professional that it’s almost like people yawn,” Sullivan said, noting that those pilots often have to fly hundreds of miles before they even intercept the aircraft. “That’s a risky mission and what we need is more infrastructure to support their base.”

A major warning from military officials during these hearings is that the U.S. is seeing additional cooperation between U.S. adversaries China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Each of the four have strengths and weaknesses in their militaries and the officials stressed that they could help advance each other’s capabilities.

“It’s a transactional symbiosis where each state fulfills the other state’s weakness to mutual benefit of each state,” Paparo said. “China’s unprecedented aggression and military modernization poses a serious threat to the homeland, our allies, and our partners.”