I have no real opinions about ice breakers one way or the other. If you say they’re needed, then I’m inclined to believe you.
My company could use icebreakers on runs up to St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea. Sometimes we load cargo in Seattle for St. Paul and by the time we get there the polar ice pack has moved south, and closed off access to the island. Which is a big deal for us because all the cargo we loaded for the port has to then be offloaded in Dutch Harbor, and stored somewhere, and then transloaded onto another ship at such time as the Good Lord blows the wind north for a week. Big headache for the captain, and angry customers (Why they get angry I don’t know. They can see the ice from their windows…)
But no one thinks of icebreakers to get to St. Paul, because the financial cost doesn’t bear the effort. Like everything else its a cost/benefit calculation. My guess is the U.S. doesn’t have more icebreakers because its cheaper to have commercial ships wait for the services of those that we have, or it is cheaper in the long run to use an alternative form of transportation for shipping the cargoes impacted by icing.
But like I said, I’m no expert on the cost/benefit calculation of icebreakers for U.S. commerce. If you say they’re needed, I’m inclined to believe you.
To my knowledge, USCG icebreakers are not used to support commercial traffic outside of the Great Lakes; the 2012 mission to Nome was an exception. That’s why everyone should stop talking about “keeping the Arctic shipping lanes open”.
…and on the Lakes it is only to maintain the Federal channel. Work around the docks is for the tug companies if the asset is “available and adequate” (the wording may be a bit off) to assist.
Maybe two big icebreakers and a couple more little ones should do quite well. Any more than that is pure election year campaign bullshit. There probably won’t be any more ice by the time one could be built anyway except for the wind driven pack ice like Freighterman described.
I don’t think we will be fighting WW2 in the Arctic again in any event no matter what the hawks and admirals claim.
It got so bad on the Chesapeake in 77 that they had to use buoy tenders to break the ice. Maybe we just need a few more buoy tenders for the couple of weeks every year that someone’s river mouth gets iced in.
The USCG could contract out ice breaking. Privatize it. Why should the taxpayer fund commercial shipping? Let the shipping companies pay to break the ice. If the Navy needs ice broken they can hire private contractors too. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I’m from the government I am here to help.”
While the Great Lakes winter icebreaking operations and the McMurdo break-in could definitely be contracted out, the USCG would still need icebreakers for its other missions in the ice-covered seas.
How are missions such as “search & rescue”, “marine safety”, “defense readiness”, “marine environmental protection” and “law enforcement” not relevant also during wintertime, particularly considering the increasing activity in the Arctic?
What kind of platform(s) would you propose as an alternative to an icebreaker (icebreaking cutter) to perform USCG’s ten remaining statutory missions at times when the water gets hard?
That’s not the statute for missions—it’s 14 USC 102.
And subject to interpretation. Ever heard of Sea Tow? Why are taxpayers paying for ‘rescue’ if there is a statutory mission that says ‘rescue’?
Same goes for nuance in all mission areas, it’s not all in the eye of the beholder.
At the end of the day, the US should have three polar icebreakers, all sisters for value of construction and support, two under CG operation one under Military Sealift Command. These are mostly optional, like a lot of government support it should pace industry not precede it. For some reason the North Slope has gotten by without since inception as have all the other Alaskan polar communities minus one event. The remainder of the US polar missions are in hand or as unnecessary as foreign military adventurism and satisfied under the dwindling NSF budget and contracted assets.
If the US needed icebreakers, it would have them. We’re where we are cause we don’t really need them more than we have save as porn projects. Or am I misreading the Dow Jones Index—the apparent sole indicator of whether the American experiment is working?
The National Science Foundation has 1 icebreaker & 1 ice capable vessel on long term charter with oil field service giant Edison Chouest Offshore. That’s the government chartering from the private sector as had been suggested above. But from reading gCaptain Forum for 15+ years I know many of the left-of-center frequent commenters hate oil field service giants & private military contractor companies providing services to the US government. The only logical reason I can figure why left-of-center commentors would now want companies like Raytheon & ECO to provide long term icebreaker contracts to the government is because Trump says he wants the USCG to have their own new ones. It’s like that “Trump Travel Band” thread at the beginning of the Covid19 crisis. The same fellas who now want to contract out icebreakers & government research to private companies were the same ones who thought a travel ban to prevent the spread of coronavirus was a terrible & racist idea. It’s just politics. No matter the subject, if Trump is for it people who don’t like him will be against it.
Sounds off topic… should be deleted without approaching the poster for edits or identifying rulebreaking if @john cares to be even handed. I had a post that factual debunked a post of SP yesterday that was deleted without notice despite being completely factual and supported while the comment that drew the rebuttal was deemed ‘on topic’.
You can either discuss and make an argument for need or use the topics as political footballs. The moderators shouldn’t take a hand absent egregious posts.
