RAPIDLY CHANGING PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT IS THE "ARCTIC SECURITY CATALYST"

RAPIDLY CHANGING PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT IS THE “ARCTIC SECURITY CATALYST”

More than just an icebreaker, the polar security cutter is a multi-mission Coast Guard cutter that breaks ice.

BY EDWARD LUNDQUIST

The Coast Guard’s polar security cutter (PSC) program wants to make it clear: The ship is more than an icebreaker – it is a multi-mission cutter.

While the special polar-class design will give it the capability to work in and around ice and carry out the ice breaking function in both the Arctic and Antarctic, it must also support all mission areas across a spectrum of environmental conditions.

There are existing ice-capable ships for research and commercial purposes. But the ability to carry out law enforcement and defense missions makes this cutter much more than what is currently available today.

The Coast Guard’s operational polar ice breaking fleet currently includes one 399-foot heavy icebreaker, CGC Polar Star (WAGB 10), which was commissioned in 1976; and one 420-foot medium icebreaker, CGC Healy (WAGB 20), commissioned in 2000. A second heavy icebreaker, Polar Sea (WAGB 11), is currently out of service and is being used for parts to keep Polar Star operational.

The other U.S.-flagged icebreakers are the R/V Sikuliaq, R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, R/V Laurence M. Gould, and the offshore supply ship Aiviq.

The 261-foot, 3,700-ton research vessel R/V Sikuliaq is owned by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The 6,200-ton, 308-foot ice-capable research ship R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer is owned by Offshore Service Vessels LLC, operated by Edison Chouest Offshore, Inc., and supports the National Science Foundation’s work in the Antarctic. It was built in 1992. The 230-foot, 3,000-ton R/V Laurence M. Gould was launched in 1997, and is also operated by Edison Chouest Offshore, Inc., to support the NSF Antarctic research program. The 360-foot, 4,200-ton Aiviq is an ice breaking anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessel owned by Edison Chouest Offshore and was built to support oil exploration and drilling in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. While these ships are ice capable, none are built to break more than 3 feet of ice, and none are capable of carrying out the full range of Coast Guard missions.

So why do we need to be operating in the extreme latitudes? America is an Arctic nation, and has long held interests in operating in both polar regions. But the environment is changing, and the result is less multiyear ice and more open water. The diminishing ice environment is an incentive for increased human activity. But while there is less sea ice in the summer months, it still covers most of the Arctic on at least a seasonal basis.

But ice operations are just one of the 11 statutory missions for the Coast Guard.

“A polar security cutter has to be capable to do all the Coast Guard missions,” said Cmdr. Cory Riesterer, director of the polar operations division with Cutter Forces Pacific Area. “Ice breaking is a key capability to get us up there, but once we’re up there, we’ve got to be able to do everything else, as well.”

According to Riesterer, ships can only operate in the Arctic at certain times of year. “Even Healy isn’t capable of being in the Arctic year-round, because they’re a medium icebreaker. There’s just too much ice in the winter. So basically, we’re trying to operate the ice breaker up in the summer. That’s when we most need to be there because that’s when the fishing and shipping is up there, and when our competitors are up there.”

Riesterer said that the first-year ice – the ice that freezes every year and then goes away in the summer – is not the big issue. The multi-year ice that remains in late summer and early autumn breaks apart and is pushed against the Northern Canadian islands and the North Slope of Alaska. “It’s a huge amount of ice, and so thick that no ship is going to break it. You can predict that it will happen, but not exactly how or where it will be packed the most.”

Designed more than 40 years ago, the CGC Polar Star, with 75,000 horsepower and 13,500-tons displacement, is guided by its crew to break through Antarctic ice en route to the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Jan. 15, 2017. Polar Star is the United States’ only operational heavy icebreaker.

U.S. Coast Guard Photo By Chief Petty Officer David Mosley

Commercial interests are always going to push the limits of the frontier, looking for the newest or best resource or easiest access resource, tourists wanting to see the Arctic, or knowing what’s up there to make a claim. Riesterer said that people will always be there to operate on the edges of the ice and that’s why you need the ice-reinforced or ice-capable and rated vessels to be able to be there.

Retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Randy Kee, executive director of the Arctic Domain Awareness Center at the University of Alaska, said the rapidly changing physical environment is the “Arctic security catalyst” that allows increased seasonal activity, which in turn drives higher defense, security, law enforcement, environmental protection, and safety needs.

According to Kee, complicating matters is the fact that more mariners are taking more risks in sailing vessels into Arctic areas where sea ice conditions change frequently. “What may appear to be an apparent ‘icefree’ area can change very quickly and beset vessels who are little prepared to cope with ice conditions. Further, as great powers and a host of other actors conduct navigation across the Arctic, USCG icebreakers are needed to project U.S. sovereignty in order to secure U.S. territorial waters and protect U.S. national interests in the ice-laden waters of the Arctic that will remain seasonally a factor for many decades to come.”

The Healy is a research vessel that is a medium icebreaker. So, will the polar security cutter be an icebreaker with some additional mission capability, or will it be a multi-mission cutter that’s ice capable?

“The Coast Guard has to carry out our 11 statutory missions in Alaska just like everywhere else around America,” said Riesterer. “Wherever there is maritime activity, there is the potential for search and rescue, and as activity in the region increases, so does the likelihood that the Coast Guard will be called up to conduct urgent SAR [search and rescue] missions.”

With the presence of vessels from many countries, including Russia and China, America’s presence has to be credible. The Coast Guard is an armed service with a defense mission, so the ship should have some teeth.

Complicating all of that is the difficulty of operating in the Arctic because of low temperatures, heavy winds, dangerous ice, and high seas, and with virtually no infrastructure, such as airfields, ports, medical facilities, or robust communications.

Research vessels with science laboratories onboard are in high demand, especially those that can operate in the polar waters, like Healy. “The Coast Guard provides a multitude of support to the science community in the Arctic. The volume of science requests on Healy is growing, especially as ice recedes, to the point that we are unable to support all of the requests that come in,” Riesterer said. “The distances are vast. If we load Healy in Dutch Harbor, it’s almost a 7-day transit just to get up to where the ice starts.”

CGC Healy, a 420-foot icebreaker homeported in Seattle, Washington, breaks ice in support of scientific research in the Arctic Ocean.

U.S. Coast Guard By Petty Officer Prentice Danner

The heavy icebreaker Polar Star has a flat bottom that makes it difficult to lower or recover a boat in open water, so the new PRC will also need to have better capabilities for boat operations.

The Coast Guard and the Navy have established an integrated program office to oversee the design and procurement of the icebreakers. The objective is for the PSC to be independently capable of breaking 8 feet of ice at 3 knots continuous speed and breaking 21 feet of ridged ice (if that cannot be achieved, the threshold parameter is 6 feet of ice at 3 knots continuous and 21 feet of ridged ice), an endurance profile of 90 days underway (threshold endurance profile is 80 days underway), and the ability to exchange voice and data information with Coast Guard and its departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, and NATO, NSF, and NOAA partners.

With so few operational ocean-going ice-capable ships, the United States has been unable to participate in some research with research institutions or international organizations, or take part in some naval operations in extreme latitudes. That’s why the Coast Guard needs six icebreakers. “There is a wealth of knowledge with some of those partners. They operate in the ice all the time, and are very capable and proficient. When we talk about partnerships in the Arctic, with our current fleet strength, we can’t even discuss getting over there to work with them in the ice,” Riesterer said.

As the ice retreats, protecting living marine resources will grow in importance. “There will [be] more open and relatively warmer water, so fish stock will go north. So that mission will become more important for the Coast Guard in the region,” Riesterer said.

The Bering Sea fishery represents a significant, measurable percentage of the fish stocks that the United States takes in every year, by volume and by overall gross value. That’s why the Coast Guard already has a constant presence there.

“If fish stocks, and subsequently that fishing fleet, follow the fish northward, our support will potentially have to migrate with it,” Riesterer said. “But it could expand or stretch to a point where our one cutter there is not going to be able to respond to a SAR mission or conduct LMR [living marine resources] enforcement.”

Ecotourism has also picked up. Cruise ships are heading farther north, and in greater numbers.

Looking to the far south, icebreakers are needed to break out McMurdo Ice Station in Antarctica and escort the resupply ships that support Operation Deep Freeze each year. “That mission’s not going away, either. We have a presence there all year round,” Riesterer said. “But they get one opportunity a year for somebody to cut a hole in the ice to get the resupply ships in.

“Right now we use a 1970s-era ship that goes down there, breaks a path in the ice, comes home, and goes back into dry dock for several months to keep it alive. It’s a single point of failure. We have no bench strength,” he said. “If that ship suffers a major casualty, the United States government has no capability to backfill.”

“This past March, we released a request for proposal as a full and open competition, and we are on track to award a detail design and construction contract in FY 2019,” said Coast Guard Acquisitions Directorate spokesman Brian Olexy. “That award will include options for the construction of up to three heavy polar security cutters. We’ll know more about the specific characteristics of the PSC when the detail design and construction contract is awarded.”

A September 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office said the program faces risk due to the lack of a mature design, an insufficient review of existing icebreaker technology, and that the cost and schedule are overly optimistic. But delaying the program has risks of its own because the ice breaking capability is desperately needed.

“Presence equals influence, we must be present,” said Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Karl L. Schultz. “We need six icebreakers – three of them need to be heavy, and we need one right now to be in the Arctic, because we need to be there.”