The U.S. Army on Sept. 12 sent 130 paratroopers and portions of three Army units, along with a M142 mobile artillery rocket system to Shemya Island, a small island in the western Aleutians, as a show of force after several Russian and Chinese military jets patrolled the area.
Shemya is about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage and is one of the farthest west islands in the Aleutian chain; it is on HDT — Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time. The windswept tundra island is 2.73 miles long and 4.32 miles wide. A U.S. Air force radar, surveillant, weather station, and 10,000-foot runway opened on Shemya during World War II and is still in operation as Eareckson Air Station, mostly as a refueling stopover for the military. In 2018 a Delta Airlines flight made an emergency landing there en route from Beijing to Seattle after encountering mechanical troubles.
Troops with the 11th Airborne Division and the 1st and 3rd Multi Domain Task Forces, were deployed to Shemya Island during this September military activity after increased presence of Chinese and Russian war ships over the summer.