President Donald Trump is setting the gears in motion for a significant expansion of America’s polar fleet, marked by the Monday commissioning of the United States Coast Guard cutter Storis, its first new polar icebreaker in decades.
In total, funding provided by Trump’s reconciliation bill, which he signed into law on July 4, and the Coast Guard’s Force Design 2028 will funnel more than $25 billion into expanding the polar fleet.
“USCGC Storis is a major win for the American people,” acting Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Kevin Lunday said in a statement. “The commissioning of USCGC Storis immediately strengthens our ability to control, secure, and defend the U.S. border around Alaska and maritime approaches in the Arctic. Storis is the first step of a historic investment in the Coast Guard to add critical capacity to our polar icebreaker fleet to protect U.S. sovereignty and counter malign influence throughout the Arctic.”
The Coast Guard, according to the Department of Homeland Security, is also directing portions of the $25 billion joint polar fleet fund to build out Polar security cutters, Arctic security cutters, light and medium domestic icebreaking cutters, and Coast Guard port buildouts in Alaska. However, experts do not expect the security cutters, a next-generation icebreaker, to be operational until 2030.
Before the Storis was commissioned on Monday, the U.S. had only two polar icebreakers in its combined fleet. The Coast Guard holds a fourth icebreaker, but it was taken out of commission in 2010 due to chronic mechanical problems.
And though Monday’s announcement came just days before Trump is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, the polar fleet expansion is driven by both security concerns and, perhaps even more so, economic concerns, according to the White House.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) outlined both sets of concerns in a Friday op-ed.
“Russia knows that the Northern Hemisphere is the world’s next great frontier. Lucrative sea lanes are opening for commercial shipping, and new technologies have unlocked access to the abundant untapped mineral and energy resources lying under the ice,” he wrote. “In fact, some estimate that the Arctic holds as much as 22% of the world’s untapped reserves of fossil fuels. Russia, recognizing this, has launched a major military buildup in the Arctic. China, too, is rapidly growing its presence in the region.”
Still, White House officials downplayed any imminent security threats in the Arctic and denied that the president is willing to end Putin’s war in Ukraine on favorable terms for Russia in order to avoid a conflict in the Arctic.
“I don’t think there’s any expectation or assumption anywhere that we would go to war with Russia,” one White House official told the Washington Examiner. “That’s not even on the horizon.”
Trump and Robert O’Brien, the final White House national security adviser of the president’s first term, made plans for a polar fleet expansion in late 2019, which were eventually delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
But upon entering office for his second term, Trump picked up the issue in a number of ways, taking multiple executive actions meant to boost American ship manufacturing rapidly and reiterating his stated goal to take over control of Greenland to boost American security in the Arctic.
Trump highlighted the initiative during his joint address to Congress in March, and just a few days later, he announced that he planned to commission 48 new icebreakers. For comparison, the Russian navy boasts 40 icebreakers, while the Chinese navy operates five of its own.
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“We’re in the process of ordering 48 icebreakers and Canada wants to know if they could use them,” Trump told reporters in March. “We have to have protection. We’re going to have to make a deal on that.”