The U.S. Coast Guard headed to Capitol Hill on June 14 to lay out its plan for future resource allocations, but instead received a frosty reception from the House subcommittee on one point of contention: icebreakers.
The Coast Guard has two heavy, Polar-class icebreakers, the USCGC Polar Star and USCGC Polar Sea, which have been in the fleet since the mid-1970s.
Due to the age of the vessels — the Polar Sea has been out of service since 2010, while Polar Star was reactivated in 2012 — the Coast Guard would like to buy a new Polar-class icebreaker to give it more of a presence in the Arctic region.
Though the White House set aside $150 million for a new icebreaker in the fiscal 2017 budget request, construction of the new ship is not set to begin until 2020.
The lag had subcommittee chair Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., questioning whether a single large ship was a justifiable priority, especially when the Coast Guard could also appropriate funds for multiple medium icebreakers, like the USCGC Healy, which has been in service since the 1990s.
"You will have the ability to buy two or three icebreakers at one time," he said. "We're going to need more than one. This all considering the fact that it's going to take 10 years to get this done probably."
Adm. Charles D. Michel, the Coast Guard's vice commandant, said that the new icebreaker was a national security priority because it would give the service more reach to the Polar Regions, something that the Healey was unable to provide.
"We took [the Healey] down in the early 2000s to Antarctica to see if it can operate it down there during the summer," he said. "It got stuck in the ice, and we were lucky that we had [one of the Polar-class icebreakers] go in there and break that thing out.
"There are ice environments; you can't use medium-icebreaking capabilities there."
But Hunter wouldn't let the issue go, coming back to it on multiple exchanges and questioning how the Coast Guard handled icebreaking during the height of the Cold War, prior to Polar Star and Polar Sea's deployment.
"Why is it a national security, strategic priority to break ice," the chairman asked. "I don't care about some ship who is getting stuck, doing science stuff. Why is it a national security priority?"
Michel said the Coast Guard needs to have a presence to present sovereignty claims over region competitor Russia, which has outpaced the U.S. in icebreaking capability.
"The nation's only heavy icebreaking-capability is the Polar Star," he said.
Hunter pressed on, saying that because the Polar Star was the only ship with heavy icebreaking capabilities — and since a new ship would be at least a decade out — that the capability wasn't integral.
"If we don't have the capability right now, how can it be that big of a priority," he said. "Do we really need two icebreakers? If it's so important, why don't we have them now?"
Michel reiterated that the new icebreaker was a necessity for the fleet, but Hunter had already moved on. The Coast Guard will release a material assessment to the committee on July 24 on whether it should return the Polar Sea to service. The Coast Guard estimates the Polar Star has five to seven years of service life left.
