http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/world/europe/17arctic.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic
By
C. REVKIN
Published: August 16, 2008
A growing array of military leaders,
experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol
and safeguard Arctic waters even as
change and high energy prices have triggered a burst of shipping and oil
and gas exploration in the thawing region.
The
Academy of Sciences, the Coast Guard and others have warned over the past
several years that the United States' two 30-year-old heavy icebreakers,
the Polar Sea and Polar Star, and one smaller ice-breaking ship devoted
mainly to science, the Healy, are grossly inadequate. Also, the Polar Star
is out of service.
And this spring, the leaders of the Pentagon's Pacific Command, Northern
Command and Transportation Command strongly recommended in a letter that
the
Chiefs of Staff endorse a push by the Coast Guard to increase the country's
ability to gain access to and control its Arctic waters.
In the meantime, a resurgent
has been busy expanding its fleet of large oceangoing icebreakers to around
14, launching a large conventional icebreaker in May and, last year, the
world's largest icebreaker, named 50 Years of Victory, the newest of its
seven nuclear-powered, pole-hardy ships.
Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, who toured
Arctic shores two weeks ago with the homeland security secretary,
Chertoff, said that whatever mix of natural and human factors is causing
the ice retreats, the Arctic is clearly opening to commerce and potential
conflict and hazards like never before.
"All I know is, there is water where it didn't used to be, and I'm
responsible for dealing with that," Admiral Allen said in a recent
interview. Given the 8 or 10 years it would take to build even one
icebreaker, he added, "I think we're at a crisis point on making a decision."
The cost of building icebreakers and keeping the older vessels operating
until the new ones have been launched could easily top $1.5 billion,
according to several estimates. Arguments for new ships include the
strategic, like maintaining a four-seasons ability to patrol northern
waters, and the practical, like being able to quickly reach a disabled
cruise ship or an oil spill in ice-clogged waters, Admiral Allen said.
Even with the increasing summer retreats of sea ice, which many polar
scientists say probably are being driven in part by global warming caused
by humans, there will always be enough ice in certain parts of the Arctic
to require icebreakers. Admiral Allen and members of the presidential U.S.
Arctic Research Commission have been pressing lawmakers for support and
urging the White House to issue a presidential directive that emphasizes
the need for increased oversight of the Arctic and for new ships.
Shipping traffic in the far north is not tracked precisely. But experts
provided telling snapshots of maritime activity to legislators and other
officials from Arctic countries at an international conference last week in
Fairbanks, Alaska. For example, Mead Treadwell, who attended the conference
and is an Alaskan businessman and the chairman of the research commission,
said officials were told that more than 200 cruise ships circled Greenland
in 2007, up from 27 in 2004.
Lawson W. Brigham, chairman of the three-year Arctic Marine Shipping
Assessment that is scheduled to finish work this year, told the gathering
that more than 5,400 vessels of 100 tons or larger operated in Arctic
waters in the summer of 2004. During that summer there were 102 trips in
the Northwest Passage and five complete transits of that legendary route,
he said.
The growing Pentagon support for the Coast Guard, which is within the
of Homeland Security, followed several highly publicized maneuvers by
Russia aimed at cementing its position as the Arctic's powerhouse,
including sending a pair of small submarines to the seabed at the North
Pole a year ago.
White House officials said they have been reviewing Arctic policies for
several years and were nearly finished with a new security policy on the
region the first since 1994. Bush administration officials said last week
that it could be issued within a few weeks, but they declined to discuss
what it would say.
The enduring question is where the money would come from for rehabilitating
the older ships and building new ones. The Department of Homeland Security
is still mainly focused on preventing terrorist attacks. The Coast Guard is
stretched thin, Admiral Allen said, protecting facilities in the Persian
Gulf, seeking drug smugglers and patrolling coastal waters elsewhere.
In Congress, the issue has mainly been championed by lawmakers from Alaska
and Washington State. The Polar Sea, Polar Star and Healy are based in
Seattle.
As early as 2001, the
issued reports saying that it had limited ability to operate ships and
planes reliably in the Arctic. But with two costly wars under way, the
region has remained a low priority with Navy budgets for polar analysis
declining.
The letter from the three military commands to the Joint Chiefs last spring
said reliable icebreakers were essential to controlling northern waters and
to maintaining American research stations in Antarctica. But the Arctic was
clearly the commands' biggest concern, with the letter citing "climate
change and increasing economic activity" as reasons for upgrading the
icebreaker fleet.
With no current program aimed at upgrading ships and no new ones planned,
the letter said, "The nation's icebreaking capability has diminished
substantially and is at risk of being unable to support our national
interests in the Arctic regions."
On Friday, a Pentagon spokesman said that the military's leadership
recognized the importance of the issue and was arranging for Admiral Allen
to give a presentation to the Joint Chiefs on Arctic security this year.
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