Today, the US Arctic icebreaking mission falls entirely upon the Coast Guard. Other federal agencies such as the US Navy and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are reliant on the Coast Guard to provide icebreaker access to the Arctic region. The current US “fleet” consists of one recently-renovated heavy icebreaker built in the 1970’s, the Polar Star, and one medium icebreaker, the Healy, that is more of an ice-capable research vessel than a heavy-duty icebreaker. Built in 1976, the Polar Star is a powerful ship, though it is seriously outdated and its latest round of renovations will only extend its service life another 9 years at best. The Healy is a weaker icebreaker, though it is newer and more technically advanced as it was built in 1999. However, the Healy is more of a research vessel than an icebreaker as evidenced by its extensive laboratory spaces and plush accommodations for up to 50 live-aboard scientists in addition to its crew of 75 sailors.

The Coast Guard maintains a third icebreaker, the Polar Sea, that was also built in the 1970’s as the Polar Star’s sister ship, though it has been inoperable since an engine failure that occurred in 2010. The incapacitated Polar Sea has since been ordered to be decommissioned, though Congress has thus far stayed its execution. The NSF currently maintains a chartered, privately-owned ship, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, which is occasionally described as an icebreaker but in reality is really a research vessel that is less ice-capable than the Healy.

According to a recent estimate made by the commander of the Coast Guard’s Alaska district Rear Adm. Daniel Abel, the current “fleet” of two vessels may be sufficient to fulfill the Coast Guard’s bare minimum mission in the Arctic for another five years, or until about 2020. At the same time, the Coast Guard’s 2010 High Latitude study predicted that to fulfill future missions, the Coast Guard will require a fleet of at least six ships: 3 heavy icebreakers and 3 medium icebreakers. Former Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp (ret.) has recently stated that the Coast Guard needs at least one new heavy icebreaker immediately. Although the estimates of the Coast Guard’s icebreaking needs vary, one timeline is clear: the earliest a newly constructed heavy icebreaker could enter service is probably 2026–2028, well past the service life of the Polar Star, the nation’s only heavy icebreaker.

USCG Photo by Rob Rothway

Though Rear Adm. Abel’s recent estimate suggest that the current icebreaker “fleet” could be sufficient to meet the Coast Guard’s current minimum needs, there is an increasing strain being placed on the fleet from other US government agencies requesting icebreaking services. The NSF needs icebreakers to access research bases in Antarctica — a hemisphere away from the Arctic — as well as support a range of other research missions in the Arctic, many of which concern climate change.

Highlighting the strain placed on the nation’s icebreakers, the DoD is forced to charter icebreakers from the Canadian Coast Guard in order to perform missions such as the annual resupply of the Air Force’s Thule Air Base in Greenland. The NSF often relies on contracting Russian- and Swedish-owned icebreakers in order to fulfill missions like the annual “break-in” to resupply McMurdo Station in Antarctica. As more US government agencies and American companies are forced to contract foreign-owned icebreakers, critical missions will increasingly be beholden to foreign partners, most notably the owner of the world’s largest and most powerful icebreaker fleet, Russia. Key missions that are likely to increase in frequency, most notably territorial sovereignty enforcement, simply cannot be contracted out to foreign-owned icebreakers, particularly Russian-owned vessels.

Meanwhile, other Arctic nations, and even some non-Arctic nations with interests in the region such as China, are falling over each other to place orders for large, advanced icebreakers. The United States’ “icebreaker gap” is real and growing, particularly compared to the US’s most likely Arctic adversary, Russia, and its fleet of 40 icebreakers, several of which are nuclear-powered. The Russian government itself owns 18 of those icebreakers and six are classified as heavy icebreakers. The country is currently constructing six more heavy icebreakers that will be the largest and most advanced in the world, and five other icebreakers are in the planning phase. In the recent words of US Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), given the current balance of icebreakers in the region, “the control of the Arctic is in the hands of Russia.”