The United States Navy is drawing up a plan to operate in what is rapidly becoming a seasonally-open Arctic Ocean, and thus a new theater of operations.
The amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean at the end of melt season in September has receded by about 3% per decade since 1981, with a record low set in 2012. Less sea ice means more open water, and rapid Arctic climate change has essentially created new international waterways for shipping and resource extraction activities. The area of seasonally ice-free waters is likely to continue to widen over the coming decades, and Navy wants to keep tabs on it.
That's because Arctic has the potential to become one of the more geopolitically important bodies of water on Earth, due to the shipping routes it may unlock as well as oil and gas resources it may free up. As summer sea ice continues to decline in response to global warming and natural climate variability, Alaska's 1,000 miles of Arctic coast could become important to maintaining a vigilant defense as well as search and rescue and oil spill response capabilities.
The U.S. government believes the Arctic Ocean contains 30% of Earth's undiscovered natural gas, and 13% of the planet's undiscovered oil, both resources that would be of significant interest to the U.S. and other nations.
Canada made a case for extending its Northern border at the United Nations this past December, and Russia responded by declaring it would ramp up its military presence in the region. Even China has realized that new Arctic shipping lanes could bolster its economy, and has made moves to be recognized as a “near-Arctic state."
America's knowledge of the Arctic Ocean needs to increase if it wants to keep up with other countries, and for the Navy, that means a lot more than taking a few routine trips up North. The Navy outlined what it would take last week in an updated version of its Arctic Roadmap (below), which was first released in 2009, and it details an effort that is very much a work in progress. That's okay, because the major trade routes through all that Arctic ice aren't going to be well-trafficked for at least a couple decades, but the Navy believes it understands so little about how to operate in the Arctic that it has to start learning more now.
What the Navy does know about this expanding ocean is that conducting routine operations there will be a challenging task. Bob Freeman, a public affairs officer for the Navy's Office of the Oceanographer, told Mashable that storms can flare up from nowhere, huge chunks of ice float aimlessly and no one has plotted where the deep water ends and the dangerous shallows begin. Freeman even heard that a Coast Guard vessel sent to the Arctic found itself in water so cold that its fuel turned to sludge.
That's a problem that would have been hard to foresee, and there will likely be many more, which is why the Navy's roadmap talks about gathering knowledge in the area.
“They’re pretty clear with the uncertainty they’re facing and how that’s complicating their planning in the region," Kevin Casey, a senior fellow at the The Arctic Institute, told Mashable.
That means the Navy will want to send more planes to fly above the ice, more submarines to cruise below it, and even a few surface vessels to travel on top of it. By 2020, the roadmap says the Navy wants to "increase the number of personnel trained in Arctic operations," and it also wants to run more joint military drills with other Arctic nations such as Russia and Norway.
"In a way we look at the Arctic environment as a common enemy," Freeman said. "We've heard from all of the other Arctic nations that navies are welcome in the Arctic."
It would also help to have some infrastructure in the Arctic and some ships that are equipped for the conditions. Compared to other Arctic nations, such as Canada and Russia, the U.S. has relatively few ships and aircraft devoted to Arctic patrols. Worse, it doesn't operate any icebreakers, instead relying on two aging Coast Guard vessels.
Right now, the closest Naval base to the Arctic Circle is in Kodiak, 