China Advances, America Improvises
News headlines flashed red and bated Beltway breaths were anxiously held as China deployed its (dubiously) menacing armada of five icebreakers – the Xue Long 2, Tan Suo San Hao, Zhongshandaxue Ji Di, Ji Di, and Shen Hai Yi Hao – into America’s extended continental shelf (ECS) in August.
- China Advances, America Improvises
- Delays Mount as Rivals Surge Ahead
- Skip the Icebreaker Race—Dive Deeper With Submarines
- The Icebreaker Gap Is a Mirage, Not a Threat
- Submarines Over Icebreakers: More Presence, Less Cost
- Canada Questions Icebreakers : Submarines Make More Sense
- Less Pomp, More Power: Rethinking Arctic Strategy
- It’s Time to Break Free From the Icebreaker Gap
- America Doesn’t Need More Icebreakers. It Needs Vision
Ever ready for the moment (Semper Paratus, Latin for “always prepared,” after all is its motto!) the United States Coast Guard proudly deployed its newest icebreaker – alongside its medium polar icebreaker Healy and a cutter – the reconditioned Storis, whose new name is Old Norse for “large ice,” even though this newest member of America’s icebreaker fleet is most famous for being swamped on its maiden voyage to Alaska in 2012 as the (formerly) private vessel Aiviq.
With a history this inglorious, our misguided top brass at US Coast Guard headquarters made a questionable decision. After sinking $2 billion into the much-delayed and much over-budget Polar Security Cutter (PSC) program — which built upon the 2012 launch of a USCG heavy polar icebreaker acquisition effort and the subsequent 2016 establishment of an integrated program office with the Navy — the goal was to “Build Back Better” with a new fleet of American-made icebreakers.
If Washington seeks to assert a more mobile and persistent maritime presence off Alaska’s shores, a fleet of my proposed Hickel Class subs could keep the Chinese in line.
This effort ended up spending more than the cost of an Ohio-class nuclear submarine, with (so far) nothing to show for this mini-Manhattan Project of American innovation other than a deepening pool of red ink.
In response, the Coast Guard decided to buy the controversial Aiviq and refurbish it, design flaws and all. This was intended as a quick fix to its growing PR problem: that America, the sovereign power that has possessed Alaska for almost 160 years, somehow has an inadequate “Arctic presence” — and is so desperate to remedy this (mis)perception that even an ill-designed icebreaker with a dubious haunted history will do.
The Aiviq is not just any icebreaker. It may well be the worst icebreaker for the job. A ProPublica investigation finds the troubled Aiviq was infamous for its “troubled history” starting a “maiden voyage to Alaska” that “ended in a rescue at sea and a Coast Guard investigation.”
The report also notes an “influential donor” who “has made more than $7 million in political contributions since 2012” during which they “sought to sell or lease the ship,” culminating in the “Coast Guard’s $125 million purchase of the Aiviq, made under congressional pressure” following “the service’s failure to get its preferred, $1 billion model built.” Asks ProPublica, “So how would the U.S. Coast Guard use the Aiviq beyond flag-waving and general presence in the near Arctic? According to [Lawson W.] Brigham, the former icebreaker captain and polar-shipping expert, ‘No one that I know, no study that I’ve seen, no one I’ve talked to really knows.’”
Delays Mount as Rivals Surge Ahead
As Malte Humpert reported last year in High North News, “The U.S. Polar Security Cutter program continues to face headwinds. Five years after signing a construction contract the vessel continues to exist only on the drawing board with the design still waiting to be finalized. Delivery will now occur no earlier than 2029.”
America is the undisputed sovereign of Alaska and need not counter Beijing’s flotilla with its own.
With Beijing’s choreographed deployment of five icebreakers to polar waters America claims as part of its ECS, it is both ironic and potentially tragic that our leaders have embraced the controversial Storis for our collective salvation. Humpert more recently reported in the pages of gCaptain, citing Australian military scholar Elizabeth Buchanan, that:
“The U.S. might be an Arctic nation but decades of taking their eye off the prize are coming home to roost – and the next decade is certainly not going to be smooth sailing in the contested maritime domain. No matter the policy commitment, Washington simply can’t magic capability overnight.”
But rather than throw two billion dollars at the PSC program, or even $125 million for the Storis, there are other paths to a more secure Arctic and a more robust, meaningful and sustained American Arctic presence.
Skip the Icebreaker Race—Dive Deeper With Submarines
Since its inception, I have instead proposed America abandon the money-pit of the PSC program altogether and instead create a new class of “cheap and quiet” diesel-electric submarines. These would be modeled on Sweden’s Stirling engine (a quiet and enduring air-independent propulsion (AIP) system). They have run circles around our own carrier strike groups (CSGs) in allied training missions and war games, during which the Swedes’ feisty $100 million diesel-electric sub easily dispatched our $6 billion aircraft carrier.
I dub these new, nimble budget-friendly vessels “Hickel Class” subs in tribute to Wally Hickel, the famed two-term Alaska Governor and former Secretary of the Interior in President Nixon’s cabinet who famously promoted resource-rich Alaska as part of the global commons.
Why settle for tracking and monitoring icebreakers the way America does now, and the way the Russians did when America sent the Healy two years ago through the Laptev Sea just north of the coastal shipping lanes of the Northern Sea Route, enroute to Tromso, Norway on a science mission that Russia closely tracked but otherwise did nothing to obstruct?
Why be content with the misguided rivalry of the current “icebreaker gap,” reminiscent in all the worst ways of the (John F.) Kennedy-era “missile gap,” which was predicated on a misperception (or outright fabrication) that the Russians were ahead of America in ICBMs, and which led to an expensive and dangerous proliferation of strategic nuclear weapons and their launching platforms – putting the world on a brittle hair-trigger one mistake away from World War III and, potentially, human extinction?
The Icebreaker Gap Is a Mirage, Not a Threat
The “icebreaker gap” and the current race to restore balance in Arctic presence may not be nearly as dangerous as that was, and will likely never be as expensive or wasteful either. Icebreakers, as everyone acknowledges, are refreshingly dual use, of value not just for sovereign assertion and polar presence but a wide range of practical endeavors such as SAR, intel gathering, and science missions.
But given the widening PSC hole into which the American taxpayer has already tossed $2 billion with nothing to show for it, enough to purchase a strategic nuclear sub with the capacity to not only deter aggression against America but to end the sovereign existence of any foe unwise enough to challenge America militarily. The program’s capacity to waste money is already sadly well established.
Adding further doubt to the wisdom of investing any further funds is the dubious nature of the mission for which the PSC program was conceived: asserting an Arctic presence. That’s because America owns Alaska, and the country that sold Alaska to the USA, Russia, has long acknowledged our sovereign possession.
It was no coincidence that President Trump’s peace summit with Russian President Putin was hosted there, on an American military base, with American air supremacy on full display. America not only owns Alaska, but Russia fully endorses its ownership of its former Russian-American Company colony. Full stop.
And yes, China can now deploy (as it recently did) a flotilla of five icebreakers into America’s ECS adjacent to Alaska. But this is not the first time Beijing has deployed a flotilla to Alaskan waters. During President Obama’s symbolic visit to the 49th state in 2015, Beijing choreographed another five-ship flotilla, this one comprised of warships, which were dispatched to the Aleutian Islands just in time for the President’s arrival in Nome.
Five is definitely Beijing’s go-to number for dramatic flotillas. And while impressive, it’s not that impressive. Five because Beijing lacks ten assets to deploy at once. Five compares modestly to Russia’s more robust 40. It’s important to recall that Russia’s vast, 2-million square mile Arctic region greatly dwarves America’s own 663,000 square miles of Arctic, which itself infinitely exceeds China’s zero square miles of Arctic territory.
Submarines Over Icebreakers: More Presence, Less Cost
If America had such a fleet of inexpensive Hickel Class subs, ideal for the noisy, ice-choked waters of the region, to assert our sovereign maritime Arctic presence on or beneath the surface, it could easily track Beijing’s flotilla every inch of its journey.
Its dual use advantages would also multiply beyond surface research and diplomatic displays of Arctic maritime presence to include subsurface research as well as a wide variety of SAR and ASW missions.
And if war ever did break out, these scrappy little subs could readily sink a rival icebreaker fleet (as well as a well-protected carrier strike group) from below without incriminating fingerprints, the sort of “dual use” America might really need one day.
America could, for the same amount of money blown on the much over-budget and long-delayed PSC program (which has yet to yield a single PSC), instead own 20 Hickel Class subs at a thrifty $100 million each. Instead of an IOU for a future heavy icebreaker that may or may not meet the promises of its ambitious marketing materials, America would instead have a fleet of useful dual-use polar subs with diverse mission potential, and a more muscular capacity to not just demonstrate presence but deter aggression. That’s money better spent.
Canada Questions Icebreakers : Submarines Make More Sense
Some much-needed and welcome wisdom can be found up north across the 49th parallel from which we can find helpful guidance to slow or even stop America’s present-day icebreaker madness. As CBC’s senior defense writer Murray Brewster has reported, a “former top naval commander and several defence experts have been left scratching their heads following the … recent embrace of the notion of giving the Royal Canadian Navy heavy, armed icebreakers to defend the Arctic.”
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Brewster added: “Retired vice-admiral Mark Norman told CBC News the decision to build more icebreakers seems more political than practical. … ‘I’m puzzled, because I don’t know what it is we’re trying to achieve other than the political objective of demonstrating a commitment to Arctic sovereignty.”
Brewster also cites Canadian Arctic security expert Rob Huebert of the University of Calgary who suggested instead that “Canada would be better served with investing in under-ice capable submarines. ‘If you are actually in a shooting conflict, you’re going to find out where the icebreaker is right away,’ said Huebert. ‘If you’re going to be putting money into something, put it into a submarine and give it some form of perhaps anti-missile capability.’”
Less Pomp, More Power: Rethinking Arctic Strategy
As Craig Hooper, another PSC program critic, has observed in Forbes: “Over the past several months, America’s approach to Polar security has been a perplexing mix of future commitments coupled with tough, near-term pull-backs” and, “[d]espite a lot of White House attention, America’s icebreaking fleet remains in a shambles.”
Unfortunately, “No quick fixes are in sight. Right now, America’s icebreaker shipbuilding effort is offering more pomp than product.” What America really needs to dominate our warmer, faster paced world is not $2 billion of taxpayer funded “pomp.”
Instead, it needs a new fleet of cheap (relative to our overpriced and as yet undelivered polar security cutters), quiet and impressively stealthy subs. It also needs swarms of far cheaper and more scalable long-range drones and a necklace of drone bases on Alaska’s vast coastal and insular territories, and inexpensive littoral patrol vessels to secure the always shifting interface between blue water and the ice edge.
It’s Time to Break Free From the Icebreaker Gap
Arctic security expert Jeremy McKenzie has also shed an unflattering light on the troubled PSC program: “I have long felt the USCG is focused on icebreakers at the cost of other much needed Federal investments in the Arctic … Instead we have focused on a large and vulnerable shiny new command that has absorbed an incredible amount of the available resources and attention.” (McKenzie further refines his refreshing critique of the misguided PSC program in this thoughtful analysis on West Point’s Modern War Institute blog.)
It’s time, I believe, for America to truly “Build Back Better” (as former President Biden aptly described, building upon the foundation established during the first Trump administration), and one might add, “Budget-wise” too – and not follow down the rabbit hole of hype and hysteria associated with the illogical and largely illusory “icebreaker gap.”
America Doesn’t Need More Icebreakers. It Needs Vision
Russia may well need 40 icebreakers to keep its Northern Sea Route open for business. Canada may in time need that many – if Ottawa ever decides to open its own circuitous, shallow and largely uncharted Northwest Passage (still a big if).
And while China has done diplomatic wonders with its flotilla of five icebreakers in American polar waters, this is mostly smoke and mirrors, as China has no Arctic territory at all, so its feisty flotilla is Beijing’s Arctic presence. And as I explain above: America is the undisputed sovereign of Alaska and need not counter Beijing’s flotilla with its own.
From Alaska’s southeast archipelago to the dateline-crossing Aleutian Islands chain, to the infrastructure-rich North Slope (and a deepwater port forthcoming in the south Seward Peninsula community of Nome), America has plenty of Arctic presence. If Washington seeks to assert a more mobile and persistent maritime presence off Alaska’s shores, a fleet of my proposed Hickel Class subs could keep the Chinese, or any polar interloper for that matter, in line.
Indeed, whether in time we face off against China and/or Russia as many fear, or Greenland and/or Canada as I imagine to be more likely at present, or just simply against retreating polar ice and rising polar seas as is in fact most probable, it is imperative that America achieves the vision of William H. Seward. He articulated this vision in his September 14, 1853 Destiny of America speech calling for America to become a polar power, and in so doing to become a true global power (172 years ago to the day this article was written!).
On this important and ongoing polar journey, America can and indeed must do a better job understanding the Arctic and its place in our warming and increasingly dynamic world – and more smartly defending its corner of it.
