US military forces have deployed about 130 soldiers to a remote Aleutian island some 800 miles west of Dutch Harbor amidst rising tensions with Russia and China, reports the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

The Alaska-based troops arrived on Sept. 12 on Shemya Island about 350 miles from Russia's Kamchatka peninsula. It was timed to coincide with Russia's military exercises dubbed Ocean 2024 and included joint maneuvers with four warships from China's navy in the Sea of Japan.

“As the number of adversarial exercises increases around Alaska and throughout the region, including June’s joint Russian-Chinese bomber patrol, the operation to Shemya Island demonstrates the division’s ability to respond to events in the Indo-Pacific or across the globe, with a ready, lethal force within hours,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Hilbert, commanding general of the 11th Airborne Division, said in the statement.

Russia's military said its global exercise included 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, over 120 naval aircraft and more than 90,000 personnel in the Pacific and Arctic oceans, Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas.

That's led to hawkish US politicians like Alaska senator Dan Sullivan to call for an additional $790 million in military spending in Alaska to counter threats from China and Russia.

“As the world becomes more dangerous, Alaska continues to be on the frontlines of authoritarian aggression,” Sullivan said in a statement.

The US Coast Guard in Alaska announced on Sept. 16 that one of its cuttters observed four Russian naval vessels cross out of Russian territory and transit through the Exclusive Economic Zone, international waters that are also US fishing grounds.

The warships were avoiding sea ice in Russian waters and operating within international rules and norms, the Coast Guard said.