I recently wrote an article about the September 1983 shipping crisis in the Arctic where the Soviet Union managed to amass a fleet of 13 heavy polar icebreakers to escort the icebound ships in within a small part of the Northern Sea Route. Writing a similar article about the current USCG icebreaker fleet would be pretty sad reading: “This time the Americans took it seriously. Instead of sending just one icebreaker, they deployed the whole fleet. Both ships.”