Naval Warfare, Pentagon

Coast Guard To Deliver Nuclear Icebreaker Plan to White House

WASHINGTON: The Coast Guard is on track to deliver plans for a new generation of potentially nuclear-powered icebreakers to the White House by August 10, just two months after the Trump administration issued a surprise public directive to do so.

For decades, the US has only used nuclear power on its supercarriers and submarines. Russia has nine nuclear-powered icebreakers. The ability to go long voyages without refueling is attractive in the infrastructure-poor Arctic, especially given the immense power demands of plowing a ship through ice.

The plans to be presented next month won’t affect the acquisition, already underway, of three new conventionally-powered breakers — known as Polar Security Cutters — over the next six years. Instead, it will be a blueprint for three ships of yet-to-be-determined design that the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security will procure beyond 2026.

The June 9 statement from the White House calling for the study was the public face of work already well along, however. So the 60-day deadline was less a demand for quick action than a long-held schedule.

“It wasn’t really a new look at a new design,” one official familiar with the planning told me. “It was a more bringing together plans that were already in the works.” 

The memo “reflects the Administration’s commitment to the Arctic and Antarctica and directs the interagency to conduct a holistic analysis of icebreaking capabilities for a future polar icebreaking fleet,” Coast Guard spokesman Cmdr. Jay Guyer said in an email. “It does not however, impact the current Polar Security Cutter acquisition program.”

The plan is going through final scrubs across a variety of departments, including Defense, State, and Energy, and “we anticipate the final report will be presented to the White House via the National Security Council on or before August 10th,” Guyer added.

The White House’s call for a major rethink of its heavy icebreaker fleet comes at a critical time, as the three Polar Security Cutters are slated for delivery by 2026, and Russia and China are racing ahead with their own icebreaker building efforts that include nuclear ships, and other technologies not in USA plans.

The White House memo identified few key capabilities that are currently lacking, including the ability to launch drones, install intelligence-collection systems, considering “defensive armament” to “defend against threats by near-peer competitors,” and consider the “potential for nuclear-powered propulsion.”

It also, ambitiously, describes a new fleet that consists of “at least” three heavy polar-class security cutters capable of being “operationally tested and fully deployable by Fiscal Year 2029.” To get there, the US government is open to leasing ships from friendly nations.

As it stands now, the US icebreaker fleet is far smaller than that of Russia — which has the world’s longest Arctic coastline to keep clear — and has already been matched by China, which is not an Arctic nation at all. China has a keen interest in the fisheries in the high north, as well as potential oil and gas extraction. By 2025, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz argued in Congressional testimony earlier this year, China could have more icebreakers than the United States.

The Coast Guard currently operates only one heavy and one medium icebreaker, numbers that won’t rise until the new cutter is delivered in 2024, if the program stays on schedule.

Speaking at the Southern Commnd headquarters in Miami on July 10, however, President Trump suggested he might be in the market for more breakers than had previously been suggested.

“We’ve approved the two new state-of-the-art National Security Cutters and two Polar Security Cutters for the United States Coast Guard,” he said. “We have under construction right now the largest icebreaker in the world and we’re going to be trying to get, if we can, an extra ten icebreakers.”

As often happens, it’s not clear what the president was referring to, or how the US would ramp up to ten breakers under current budget projections. Last month’s White House memo suggested leasing some icebreakers is an option the administration would consider, but no other country operates enough breakers to lease several to the US.

In Moscow, the Russian government has made a show of its plans for dozens of new icebreakers to help clear the Northern Sea Route as the polar ice cap melts and floating ice becomes more of a problem for ships rushing to exploit new fisheries and the potential for mineral extraction in the high north.

In April, Atomflot, a subsidiary of Russian nuclear powerhouse Rosatom, and the Zvezda shipyard announced they were building the first ship of a new Leader-class of nuclear icebreakers. The first ship is scheduled to be ready by 2027, adding a major new capability to the country’s existing 40 icebreakers. Moscow plans to build dozens more in coming years, including at least 13 heavy icebreakers, nine of which would be nuclear-powered.

The Russian plans are part of a new strategy calling for modernizing four polar airports, building railways and seaports in the high north, and ramping up industrial scale exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic, particularly natural gas, oil and coal.

China is also marching ahead with its own plans to operate more consistently in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Beijing has already matched the US in the number of icebreakers it has in its fleet, though only one of the two was built domestically. Beijing has expressed a desire to float a nuclear-powered breaker at some point in the future, though plans remain unformed, at least publicly. The first ship, MV Xuelong, was built at a Ukrainian shipyard but has since been upgraded by Chinese shipyards.