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Allen: CG expedition to assess Arctic waters

As part of the Coast Guard’s exploration into how it will operate in the Arctic, the service plans to deploy a buoy tender north of the Bering Strait this summer to assess the state of navigation in waterways that previously had been buried under ice, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Wednesday.

Allen said he didn’t want to get into the political debates about the human role in or potential consequences of global warming, but whatever its cause, “I have water now where I had ice before,” he said, meaning the Coast Guard will be expected to ensure safe navigation and provide rescues over an increasing area.

In the coming years, Allen said he expects a spike in exploration for energy and mineral resources in the Artic, so the Coast Guard will need to mark and maintain channels, establish transit separation schemes in the new waterways, and expand its hardware and fleet so that it can operate in the brutal cold.

The first step will be the navigation and buoy expedition this summer, to be managed by Rear Adm. Arthur “Gene” Brooks, commander of the Coast Guard’s 17th District in Alaska, who Allen said would be responsible for working out the specifics of the mission. The expedition will likely take place during a warm-weather window of a few weeks, Allen said, giving the Coast Guard its clearest picture yet of what its navigation jobs will be in the melting Artic Circle.

A next step would be making sure that the Coast Guard had the aircraft and vessels needed to extend its responsibilities into the Arctic, Allen said. He said he agreed with a 2006 finding by the National Science Foundation that recommended the U.S. operate a fleet of three icebreakers, but he said that two of the Coast Guard’s three icebreakers — the Polar Star, commissioned in 1976, and the Polar Sea, commissioned in 1978 — were “tired and worn out.”

Allen rejected the ideas of a bigger icebreaker fleet or possibly building nuclear-powered icebreakers, such as those operated by the Russian navy.

In addition to vessels that can navigate ice-choked Arctic waterways, Allen said the Coast Guard needs aircraft that can survive in the polar air — planes with skis and heated fuel tanks, especially — in order to do its job farther north. When a Coast Guard C-130 patrol plane flew over the North Pole for the first time in October 2007, it almost had to turn back because its fuel nearly froze, Allen said.

A final longer-term goal is for the U.S. to have a “national policy discussion” about the Arctic, Allen said, addressing which geologic resources the U.S. will claim and whether to build a bigger and newer icebreaker fleet. The Coast Guard effectively operates now with two icebreakers, the Polar Sea and the Healy (which Allen prefers to call “an ice-strengthened research ship”) because the Polar Star is in a state of reduced readiness.

Allen’s address at the national symposium of the Surface Navy Association outside Washington, D.C., also touched on Coast Guard shipbuilding and other issues.

On the shipbuilding question, Allen sought to downplay a recent proposal that the Coast Guard and the Navy buy an identical ship for use as both the lifesaving service’s national security cutter and the Navy’s littoral combat ship. On the exhibition floor not far from where Allen spoke, shipbuilder Northrop Grumman was showing off its design for a “National Patrol Frigate,” illustrated by a photograph of the first NSC, the cutter Bertholf, digitally altered to have a haze-gray paint scheme.

Allen said he plans to discuss the common-hull question in February, when he meets with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, but he stressed the differences in the requirements and capabilities for the NSC and LCS.

The Coast Guard’s need for a high-endurance ship that can cruise and loiter for long periods doesn’t jibe with the Navy’s need for a faster, shorter-range ship intended to operate as part of a task group that includes oiler support, Allen said. He acknowledged there might be times when those requirements would overlap, and he also said that even though the hulls might be different, there will likely be many commonalities between the two ship classes, including their 57mm gun and fire-control systems.