While Trump touts spending billions of dollars to build more F35 fighter jets, he seems not to understand even the basics of our military needs. After all, won’t global warming make the ice breakers obsolete? Seems like our opponents get a different message. As the poles melt, the Russians and the Chinese are building a navy that can exploit the new seas to the North and new land mass to the south. ,
Last February, a fire broke out on the Polar Star, an incinerator broke down, electrical systems and shipboard insulation failed. Meanwhile, a shaft leak and a nine-hour failure in the power system plagued a boat that is well beyond its 30-year service life and overdue for retirement.
“This is the only heavy icebreaker the United States has. We’re the ones that have to do the mission.” said Lt. Cmdr. Karen Kutkiewicz, who steered the ship through the ice on a trip earlier this year to resupply Antarctica’s McMurdo Station and was interviewed as the vessel returned to Seattle in March. “This is 43 years old. This takes a lot of TLC.”
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell has pushed for years to secure funding for new icebreakers in a century when climate change is forecast to greatly increase vessel traffic in Arctic waters. The Coast Guard also plans to build three medium icebreakers. It has not been determined where they would be homeported.
We haven’t built new icebreakers for the past 20 years during Republican and Democratic administrations. Ice breakers are not sexy, and frankly predictions of ice free Great Lakes, ect have not turned out that way. With the action in the Middle East rather than the Baltic sea since the end of the cold war is part of the reason. No ice breakers is part of the peace dividend.
Was the picture picked out for the Seattle skyline or that is an ice breaker?