The problem for U.S. agencies in determining where to establish a port or base in the Arctic is that it’s such a dynamic environment. Last year, because of the activity in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, off the North Slope, District 17 moved its assets to Barrow. “But based on our analysis from last year,” said Cmdr. Kirsten Trego, the Arctic Policy coordination officer with the Coast Guard’s Marine Transportation Systems Directorate, “we expect the majority of activity to be in the northwest region, through the Bering Strait.” Traffic through the strait has doubled over the last eight years, to an average of 400 trips annually.
The Coast Guard signed an agreement to lease the hangar, a former Alaska Army National Guard facility on the edge of town, from July 1 to Oct. 31, over a period of five years – the first time the Coast Guard has established such a long-term arrangement. Cmdr. Mark Wilcox, who leads the planning and coordination of Arctic operations, said the service was careful to build flexibility into the arrangement, given the pace of change in the Arctic. “It’s most easily described as a five-year lease,” he explained. “But it’s a one-year lease with four options to renew.”
The CGC Polar Star approaches Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf Feb. 4, 2016. The Ross Ice Shelf, a glacial mass extending into the Ross Sea dozens of miles off the continent, is the subject of modern research in global climate change. Polar Star, built in the ‘70s and now a decade beyond its intended service life, is used mainly for research and to resupply McMurdo Station, the U.S. research center in Antarctica. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Grant DeVuyst
Alaska stakeholders, including the Coast Guard, have contributed to studies investigating the possibility of a deep-water port in the Arctic. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a feasibility study of the issue in 2011, and last year proposed the expansion of the Port of Nome, just south of the Bering Strait – a change that would have shortened Arctic vessel transits by around 1,500 miles round-trip, and offered larger ships, such as national security cutters (NSCs), a safe harbor. After Shell halted Arctic operations, however, the Corps of Engineers temporarily suspended the study. For now, Dutch Harbor remains the U.S. deep-draft port closest to the Arctic.
- Capable Platforms
Given the service’s understandably cautious approach to establishing a permanent Arctic base, it makes sense, for the foreseeable future, to rely on a seagoing mobile platform as the command-and-control center for offshore operations. Arctic Shield operations have relied on the NSC – the only cutter built to serve as a command-and-control headquarters for complex interagency operations involving the Coast Guard and its partners.
The NSC can go almost anywhere in the world. But “almost” is an important limiting factor. Wilcox often refers to the Arctic as a “new ocean,” but it’s an ocean full of ice that’s constantly moving, melting and refreezing, opening and closing routes. The only cutter that guarantees access in the Arctic is an icebreaker.
The Coast Guard has two icebreakers: The Polar Star, a heavy icebreaker, is used primarily for research and to resupply McMurdo Station, the U.S. research center in Antarctica. The Healy, a medium icebreaker, was designed specifically for scientific research in the Arctic. Though the Healy and its crew participate in Arctic Shield operations, providing a platform for equipment evaluations or training exercises, science remains its primary focus.
The price tag for a new heavy icebreaker is currently $1 billion, making a six-icebreaker fleet a distant prospect for an agency struggling to recapitalize with a proposed acquisition budget of $1.2 billion. But the issue has been taken up by Congress and debated intently, and the service’s 2016 appropriation included $6 million for “pre-acquisition” activities for a new heavy icebreaker.
Last summer, when President Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to travel north of the Arctic Circle, he raised an issue that the Coast Guard has been talking about for years now: Having only two icebreakers, operating at opposite ends of the world – and one of them arguably on its last legs – puts the service in a precarious position. The Polar Star, commissioned in 1976, is now 10 years past its intended 30-year service life, and has been kept in service, in part, by borrowing parts from its sister ship, the Polar Sea, which was taken out of service in 2010 after a massive engine failure.
Much is made of the Russian Federation’s seemingly outsized icebreaker fleet – 41 of them, six powered by nuclear reactors – and the United States certainly hasn’t kept pace with other Arctic nations in guaranteeing itself access to the Arctic. But perspective is important: Russia’s Arctic coast is many times larger than Alaska’s. Its icebreakers primarily facilitate intrastate commerce. Icebreakers should be designed and built after a careful evaluation of the nation’s needs.