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Russia military planes spotted near Alaska after U.S. Army deployed soldiers to region
Four Russian military planes were detected and tracked off the coast of Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said Monday, just days after the U.S. Army deployed more than 100 soldiers to the region.
The Russian aircraft were operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, which is beyond U.S. sovereign air space, but an area in which aircraft are expected to identify themselves, NORAD said in a news release. Officials did not release any details about the planes but said they stayed in international airspace.
The activity was “not seen as a threat,” NORAD said. The aircraft were spotted just days after about 130 U.S. soldiers were temporarily deployed to a remote Alaska island with mobile rocket launchers amid a spike in Russian military activity off the western reaches of the U.S.
The deployment to Shemya Island involved soldiers from Alaska, Washington and Hawaii with the 11th Airborne Division and the 1st and 3rd Multi Domain Task Forces, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sword, a spokesperson for the 11th Airborne, said in an email to The Associated Press.
The deployment coincided with eight Russian military planes and four navy vessels, including two submarines, traveling close to Alaska as Russia and China conducted joint military drills. None of the planes breached U.S. airspace.
U.S. Coast Guard courtesy photo
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hilbert, commanding general of the 11th Airborne Division, has told media the deployment to the island, 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, was done at the right time.
The deployment occurred Sept. 12. NORAD said it detected and tracked Russian military planes operating off Alaska over a four-day span. There were two planes each on Sept. 11, Sept. 13, Sept. 14 and Sept. 15.
The exercise was a measure of the military’s readiness to deploy troops and equipment, Sword said.
“It’s a great opportunity to test ourselves in real-world conditions, and another benefit to being stationed in a place like Alaska,” Sword said.
The frequency of Russian airplanes entering the zone varies yearly. NORAD has said the average was six or seven a year, but it has increased recently. There were 26 instances last year and 25 so far this year.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s 418-foot homeland security vessel Stratton was on routine patrol in the Chukchi Sea when it tracked four Russian Federation Navy vessels about 60 miles northwest of Point Hope, the agency said Sunday.
Besides the two submarines, the convoy included a frigate and a tugboat. The Coast Guard said the vessels crossed the maritime boundary into U.S. waters to avoid sea ice, which is permitted under international rules and customs.
In 2022, a U.S. Coast Guard ship came across three Chinese and four Russian naval vessels sailing in single formation about 85 miles north of Kiska Island in the Bering Sea.
In August 2023, the U.S. Navy sent four destroyers to the Alaskan coast after 11 Chinese and Russian warships were spotted patrolling in international waters within the Exclusive Economic Zone.
HUNTSVILLE — A Texas man who had waived his right to appeal his death sentence was put to death Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week’s time in the U.S.
AP
Travis Mullis, 38, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT. He was condemned for stomping to death his son Alijah in January 2008.
Mullis was the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Another execution was carried out Tuesday evening in Missouri, and on Thursday, executions were scheduled to take place in Oklahoma and Alabama. South Carolina conducted an execution Friday.
Authorities said Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to nearby Galveston with his son after fighting with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began to cry uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.
The infant’s body was later found on the roadside. Mullis fled the state but was later arrested after surrendering to police in Philadelphia.
Mullis’ execution proceeded after one of his attorneys, Shawn Nolan, said he planned no late appeals in a bid to spare the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Texas would be executing a “redeemed man” who has always accepted responsibility for committing “an awful crime.”
“He never had a chance at life being abandoned by his parents and then severely abused by his adoptive father starting at age three. During his decade and a half on death row, he spent countless hours working on his redemption. And he achieved it. The Travis that Texas wanted to kill is long gone. Rest in Peace TJ,” Nolan said.
Mullis declined an offer earlier in the day to phone his attorney from a holding cell outside the death chamber, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney. His lawyers also did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In a letter submitted in February to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he had no desire to challenge his case any further. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for his son’s death and has said “his punishment fit the crime.”
At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.
Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. At times, Mullis had asked that his appeals be waived, only to later change his mind.
Nolan had previously told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during a June 2023 hearing that state courts in Texas had erred in ruling that Mullis had been mentally competent when he had waived his right to appeal his case about a decade earlier.
Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis has been treated for “profound mental illness” since he was 3 years old, was sexually abused as a child and is “severely bipolar,” leading him to change his mind about appealing.
Natalie Thompson, who at the time was with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, told the appeals court that Mullis understood what he was doing and could go against his lawyers’ advice “even if he’s suffering from mental illness.”
The appeals court upheld Hank’s ruling from 2021 that found Mullis “repeatedly competently chose to waive review” of his death sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.
If the remaining executions in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma are carried out as planned, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
The first took place Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.
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