Homeland Security Outlook

On July 23, the German merchant vessel Beluga Fraternity left the South Korean port of Ulsan, laden with components for a Russian power plant. The vessel's cargo and destination were nothing special. But her route to Siberia's Novy Port was something revolutionary -- and a harbinger of big challenges for US Homeland Security.

Beluga Fraternity reached Siberia through the so-called Northeast Passage across the North Pole. The Northeast Passage was once choked with ice year-round and too dangerous for merchant vessels. But warming waters and shifting weather patterns have melted the ice, opening up several summertime passages through Arctic waters.

Beluga Fraternity was the fist commercial vessel to traverse the Northeast Passage, but others are bound to follow as nations increasingly turn their attention to a periodically ice-free Arctic. In addition to shorter trade routes, Arctic waters promise rich mineral deposits for any nation that can stake a legal claim to them. "A large portion of the remaining global endowment of oil and gas resources has long been thought to exist in the high northern latitudes of Russia, Norway, Greenland, [the] United States and Canada," the US Geological Survey reported last year. That endowment might represent as much as a quarter of world oil and gas reserves, USGS claimed.

The northward rush has US Homeland Security officials worried. Safe and legal trade depend on a foundation of law enforcement, resource and environmental protection, search-and-rescue coverage and customs -- all purviews of the Department of Homeland Security. The Coast Guard plays the biggest role in securing America's Arctic claims, but the Coast Guard has no permanent Arctic presence, and isn't sure yet how to establish one.

"We must be prepared to address the impacts of more open water, an increasing population of maritime users operating in a fragile and challenging environment, and assertion of claims to the vast natural resources of the region," Admiral Thad Allen, the Coast Guard Commandant, said August 20  in Senate testimony. In several interviews with Homeland Security Outlook, Allen cited a litany of equipment shortages and capability shortfalls the Coast Guard must address as it expands northward, especially regarding icebreakers, helicopters and bases.

The Final Frontier

In many ways, Alaska's North Slope borough is America's final frontier -- a swath of rugged Arctic coastline totaling some 100,000 square miles, populated by just 7,400 people, according to the 2000 census. The North Slope represents the United States' claim to Arctic resources and shipping routes. But the borough is one of the most daunting operational environments in the country for Homeland Security. Some parts of the region experience freezing temperatures more than 300 days per year.

On August 17, Allen accompanied a group of White House representatives and Commerce and Interior Department officials on a tour of the North Slope, using Coast Guard and other military aircraft, plus vessels borrowed from the oil industry. The tour doubled as a test of Coast Guard Arctic aviation capability, and added to a growing body of operational experience gleaned from a series of North Slope exercises launched last year.

Allen and his party traveled to Nome, in western Alaska, where they transferred to three H-60 helicopters: one each from the Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. The H-60s ferried the party to Point Barrow, on the North Slope, where the Coast Guard temporarily stages aircraft and boats during its annual summer exercises. From Point Barrow, Allen and others boarded a Coast Guard HC-130 (usually based a thousand miles away in Kodiak) for a patrol along the North Slope. To survey oil facilities, the officials had to hitch a ride on a hovercraft belonging to British Petroleum.

Returning to Washington a week later, Allen told the Senate that the "lack of land-based infrastructure continue[s] to challenge our capabilities." A dearth of radio relay stations means aircraft have to bounce each other's radio signals back to shore facilities. Incredibly, there are no suitable launches for Coast Guard boats anywhere on the North Slope, Allen said. He also highlighted the lack of de-icing gear on some Coast Guard aircraft, and the shortage of icebreakers to protect shipping and military vessels from the odd icebergs that inevitably survive the summer thaw.

"Critical National Capability"

The United States possesses just three icebreakers, all of them operated by the Coast Guard. Two, Healy and Polar Sea, are in active service in Arctic waters and occasionally make forays to the Antarctic. A third, Polar Star, has been laid up, awaiting repairs, since 2006.

Even with the accelerating summer thaw, ice dots Arctic waters like white sea mines. When the California-based Coast Guard cutter Hamilton sailed along the North Slope as part of last year's Arctic exercise, the crew "required extra vigilance" to spot ice. "Pack ice was the number one threat to the cutter. The hulls of most Coast Guard ships are not designed to withstand impact with large chunks of sea ice," the Coast Guard's 17th District in southern Alaska reported.

Only icebreakers are invulnerable to this ice. These large vessels also "have an endurance that's sorely needed up there," Allen told Homeland Security Outlook. Allen said he's worried that the existing icebreaker fleet is barely adequate for future missions, especially considering that Polar Sea and Polar Star are both more than 30 years old. "We should not diminish current capability," he said. Allen said he supports getting Polar Star fully repaired and operational. Congress appropriated $29 million last year to begin the vessel's refit, but it's not clear yet if the funding will be enough to rejuvenate the ship.

In defending the status quo, Allen seems resigned to the unlikely prospects for a new, bigger icebreaker fleet. Not so Rear Adm. Arthur Brooks, the 17th District commander. "It's my opinion that the American icebreaker fleet is inadequate -- and perhaps woefully inadequate -- for the building missions in the Arctic," Brooks told Homeland Security Outlook. "The United States is going to have to increase its capability for sovereignty, Homeland Security or, in fact, multi- mission capability in the Arctic."

The price tag for a new icebreaker, on todays market: up to $500 million, if Canadas plans for new icebreaking vessels are any indication.

Nightmare Scenario

The Coast Guard's Arctic aviation force is also struggling in light of new Arctic missions. For the first summer exercise last year, the Coast Guard deployed two of its small, short-range HH-65C rescue helicopters, according to Brooks. "We learned that the distances are so great that it's difficult for H-65s to reach the places we need to go to cover search and rescue or other missions in the Arctic," Brooks said after the exercise.

Plus, the H-65s do not have de-icing gear, making them vulnerable to breakdowns and accidents in cold weather. For that reason, this year the Coast Guard deployed some of its larger HH-60J helicopters, which do have de-icing equipment, in place of the H-65s, Allen said. But the Coast Guard has around 100 H-65s, and only 40 H-60s -- and the latter are in high demand around the country, owing to their superior performance.

Allen told Homeland Security Outlook that the worst-case scenario is a major shipwreck off the North Slope, perhaps involving one of the growing number of cruise ships that tour the region, colliding with ice, Titanic-style. Other countries might provide a full-time icebreaker escort for large vessels in Arctic waters, to prevent such an accident. Beluga Fraternity, for her part, was led by Russian icebreakers on her landmark Arctic crossing. But the Coast Guard has too few icebreakers to reliably provide this kind of service to US vessels.

"You could have an incident at sea and evacuate everyone off the cruise ship [into lifeboats] and still be hundreds miles off Alaska. What do you do with the people in the boats?" Allen said. The nearest Coast Guard vessel might be a thousand miles away, at Kodiak, and freezing temperatures and rough waters could kill everyone before the Coast Guard could stage sufficient H-60s to ferry survivors ashore.

Effective Homeland Security in the Arctic region requires permanent northern bases. But two years of exercises have taught the Coast Guard that year-round facilities represent a huge challenge. All the Forward Operating Locations with which the Coast Guard has experimented over the past two years "operate on a limited basis due to weather conditions, distances and a lack of shore-based infrastructure," Allen told the Senate. "We will institute changes based on lessons learned ... as we continue to develop and refine our knowledge base on operations in the Arctic," he assured lawmakers. But he didn't dare promise permanent bases anytime soon -- certainly not on todays budget.

Again, Brooks was less circumspect in his call for reform. He told Homeland Security Outlook that last year's Arctic exercise made it clear to him that "the Coast Guard was going to have to do more than it had in the past to provide maritime safety and security to northern and western Alaska."

Now Congress has to pay for it.

David Axe is an independent correspondent based in Columbia, SC and the author of WAR BOTS. He blogs at www.warisboring.com.