It would be interesting to know how the other bidders reacted when they heard that Fincantieri had teamed up with both western icebreaker design specialists.
More problems for the worldâs largest diesel powered icebreaker while still under construction:
Thatâs about the size of Mackinaw, though. A lot of Russiaâs current IB fleet is going to expire in the coming decades.
âWhen I was the commandant, the National Security Council approached me and said, âHey, we ought to sent the Polar Star through the Northern Sea Route and do a freedom of navigation exercise,ââ Zukunft, who retired as an admiral in 2018, said this month at a Wilson Center event focused on the Arctic.
âI said, âAu contraire, itâs a 40-year-old ship. Weâre cannibalizing parts off its sister ship just to keep this thing running, and I canât guarantee you that it wonât have an catastrophic engineering casualty as itâs doing a freedom of navigation exercise, and now Iâve got to call on Russia to pull me out of harmâs way. So this is not the time to do it,ââ Zukunft said.
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Mother Russia planning big and long term:
Looking forward to those new icebreaker projects :3
Mexico is far from the Arctic in distance but not in controversy:
Illegal immigrants cost many many billions of dollars per year: health care, public education, crime, uninsured auto accidents, various forms of welfare, etc. Then there are the social costs of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from the poorest Americans.
$25 billion to build a wall/fence in strategic locations to significantly reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, drugs, human trafficking, terrorists, and reduce the costs of health care, crime, courts, etc. is dirt cheap. Itâs the most fundamental reason for having a defense. Itâs a tiny fraction of annual defense spending.
Iâve seen the fence in Israel, it reduced illegal immigration by over 95%. Walls and fences work. Thatâs why humans have been building them for centuries.
Ice breakers would be good to have, but securing the border areas that have actual ongoing illegal incursions is a much higher priority.
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Iâm not really a wall supporter, but the story isnât telling the whole truth. The Icebreakers (now called Polar Security Cutters) will get built whether or not DHS money is appropriated. The first $300M has already been appropriated, but not through DHS. The money came through DoD funding with the expectation that enough would follow in Navy SCN accounts to at least pay for the first of three.
Câmon, already. We all know that drugs come in via containers more than anything else, and no terrorists responsible for any attacks here in the US came in via the border. They flew in on airplanes, legally, with visas. Large groups of prospective immigrants make for great video on news channels, but there are people overstaying tourist visas every day.
The wall in China was not one wall, but a series of walls, built over centuries . Some of the sections were only a few feet tall and it was not a continuous structure . It didnât stop them from getting repeatedly invaded.
Israelâs wall doesnât stop people from tunneling under it or from rockets being fired over it.
The only effective was was in Berlin, and that was taken down.
The money for a border wall would be much better invested in a fleet of new ice breakers to protect our interests in the polar regions, not to fulfill a political promise out of mass hysteria and fear. Besides, wasnât Mexico supposed to pay for it?
I was in Dresden a week ago and my friend pointed out the new âgates communitiesâ with disgust.
What I really donât understand is the continuous under-funding of the USCG. 750 million dollars isnât really that much for the richest country in the world. I bet all these delays and fighting over the budget have already cost more than that over the yearsâŚ
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Iâm in favor of having a fleet of the Worldâs best ice breakers, but itâs not really necessary, or a priority for Congress. There really isnât any national security function for them. There isnât much US shipping, and none in the Arctic. The Greenies are not going to allow and Arctic development in Alaska.
No one is going to slow steam through the ice to invade remote frozen wasteland in Alaska. In a shooting war, an ice breaker would be a sitting duck that would be promptly sunk by a missile fire from a plane 50 miles beyond the horizon.
We donât really need to do freedom of navigation joy rides to nowhere in the ice.
With 50,000 people a month being apprehended illegally crossing the southern border, that is a much bigger national security priority.
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There is a difference between illegal immigrants and asylum seekers,
The famous âcaravanâ consists mainly of people seeking protection under the UNHCR Convention and attempts to enter through legal border crossings = Asylum seekers,not Illegal immigrants.
Asylum seekers who are found not to warrant protection by a legal process can be sent back, but they are NOT criminals by normal definition.
Those who cross illegally at remote parts of the border are economic migrants and can be sent back according to the same UN rules.
Building a wall through the badlands all along the border is not likely to stop determined people from getting across, as proven many times in other parts of the world, incl. Israel and even Berlin.
Most of the opioids that causes such problems are produced there and prescribed by doctors in USA. That will not be stopped by building walls, or icebreakers.
Can problems only be solved one at a time? This reminds me of the common argument that space exploration should be put on hold until we have solved all of the problems on this planet. Whatâs a realistic timescale for that?
In my opinion, the main issue is that the USCG does not have the ability to reach all corners of its domain and carry out the full range of its statutory missions in US waters year round. How about dropping one of those dozen DDGs currently on order and build two heavy polar icebreakers instead?
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What a load of crap, Bugge. First, the problem with the majority of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. is that they are using it as a pretense for initial entry into out county. Once in, it is very hard to get them out even if the asylum claim is denied. But ALL of the caravan already illegally entered Mexico. Then they made an illegal run at the U.S. border and had to be forcefully pushed back.
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I donât think that our government spends our tax money very wisely in the first place. But if there ever was a WW3, I would much rather have a single destroyer over even three Polar Security Cutters. The main mission for those are freedom of navigation and scientific experiments. Both important to a degree, but would not be needed at all if we didnât have a navy to defend us.
The USCG is actually not under-funded by any global measure of reasonableness. Back in the 90âs when they began the current stream of asset recapitalization, the were trying to justify to Congress the need for new ships (and aircrafts). When they tried to explain how old the ships were, they were forced to compare the USCG fleet to the naval fleets of all other counties (i.e., something like the USCG is the 30th oldest naval fleet in the word). That is because NO other countries in the world have a coast guard fleet as large and capable as USCG. In fact, I venture that most other navies in the world are not as large and capable as our Coast Guard fleet. When did USCG take on the mission of global presence via NSC, OPC, and now PSC that we have now? We are stretching the Coast Guard a long way from our coasts and wondering why we canât afford to have two navies.
âŚa lot of the resources spent on anything else except military would go waste anyway.
How about leaving the DDGs but dropping a few LCSs? Wasnât it so that even the navy doesnât really want more of them?
The USCG is way overfunded in relation to the amount of â-public service with a smile â that it provides.
The USCG isnât what it use to be. Today, itâs an incompetent, ineffective, and wasteful, military bureaucracy that treats its traditional public constituents like the enemy.
The USCG is only interested in being âthe militaryâ and law enforcement. Basically, drugs and terrorism.
About the only thing left that the USCG does well is helicopter rescue at sea. The USCG has needed more helicopters and more permanent bases for decades. No place needs a good helicopter base more than Dutch Harbor and St Paul. But thatâs not a budget priority.
Ship inspection, accident investigation, Mariner licensing, and even drug enforcement (they donât interdict 1%) are an ineffective joke.
At the moment the most serious and deadly drug problem is fentanyl. Nearly all of it is made in China (by government controlled factories) and shipped to the US by ordinary mail.
A fleet of ice breakers would be nice to have, but itâs no priority. The USCG would probably screw it up anyway.
The USCG no longer has the competence, good public image, and strong public support that it had 50 years ago. Who wants to buy them a few billion dollars worth of ice breakers?