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Podcast

Sea Control 558 – The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare with Tuneer Mukherjee

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By Walker Mills

Tuneer Mukherjee, a researcher of Asian security with a focus on the maritime domain, joins the program to talk about his recent article “The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare,” published by the Observer Research Foundation.

Download Sea Control 558 – The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare with Tuneer Mukherjee

Links

1. “The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare,” by Tuneer Mukherjee, ORF, July 16, 2024.

2. “Sea Control 422: Artificial Intelligence in Naval Operations with Tuneer Mukherjee,” by Jared Samuelson, CIMSEC, March 26, 2023.

3. Tuneer Mukherjee biography, Observer Research Foundation.

4. Tuneer Mukherjee biography, Stimson Center.

Walker Mills is Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at [email protected].

Book Review

Mao’s Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China’s Navy

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Toshi Yoshihara, Mao’s Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China’s Navy, Georgetown University Press, 2023. 176 pages, $34.95.

By Brandon Tran

This review discusses the content and implications of Toshi Yoshihara’s book, Mao’s Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China’s Navy, starting with the author’s background and followed by chapter breakdowns. This review also evaluates the implications of Yoshihara’s research, considering how the historical circumstances behind the creation of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy (hereafter PLA Navy, or PLAN) informs its present-day actions vis-à-vis Taiwan.

As detailed by Yoshihara, the complexity and difficulty of conducting combined arm/joint multi-domain amphibious assaults dispels the idea of a set, determined timeline in the near future for when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) takes action against Taiwan. The failure of Communist forces to take Jinmen in the Chinese Civil War of 1949 and other outlying islands held by Nationalist forces also refutes the notion that a rapid Chinese seizure of Taiwan is a foregone conclusion. What these findings portend is that Taiwan, with its allies and partners, do have time to take action and overcome the pacing threat. Whether this window of opportunity is only a few years, or more than a decade is not certain, and so preparations must be executed in earnest.

Toshi Yoshihara was a Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College,* with a long history of studying seapower and naval strategy in the Indo-Pacific region. He is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies (CSBA). In Mao’s Army Goes to Sea:, Yoshihara expands on his previous research, exploring the decisions made by the PLA to establish a navy and conduct operations to drive out Nationalist forces towards the end of the Chinese Civil War. Utilizing Chinese language sources, Yoshihara illustrates how navy-building, sea combat, and contested amphibious assaults have had a lasting influence on the PLA Navy. This work situates China’s recent maritime developments in the proper historical context and provides insight into how the PLAN may operate in the future. 

 Mao’s Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China’s Navy is composed of nine chapters, including an introduction and conclusion. Yoshihara has included maps to illustrate the areas of contention and the progress of the campaigns. The author’s intended audience includes all who have a vested interest in defense studies, East Asian history, and Indo-Pacific affairs. His writing is clear and straightforward, free of the excessive technical details that would preclude those unfamiliar with naval warfare and China studies from grasping his key points.

The introduction takes the reader through a brief overview of the conditions that characterized the People’s Liberation Army as it drove the Nationalist forces from the Chinese mainland in campaigns from 1949-1950, along with the leaders that were instrumental in laying the foundations for the PLA Navy. The introduction also outlines Yoshihara’s salient points, that is, the events surrounding this time period inform the current state of the PLA and the PLA’s specific evolution is a direct result of the outcome of Mao’s littoral campaigns. Subsequent chapters recall the actions taken by the PLA to construct a navy practically from scratch, a chronological account of the littoral campaigns, and lessons learned in the aftermath of the campaigns. Yoshihara concludes with areas for future research and places where study of Chinese history intersects with current US assessments of the PLA.

In Chapter 2, Yoshihara describes the sources and methodology he used for this historical study. Drawing upon open-source Chinese language sources from the PLA, he presents a new perspective on Chinese military affairs. Chapter 2 also includes a literature review, where Yoshihara contends that Western scholarship on the PLA Navy is incomplete, outdated, and consisting of erroneous assumptions. He notes that previous scholarship neglects the 1949-1950 offshore islands campaigns that he covers, and that the literature draws excessively from a few English language sources. What hindered scholarship on the PLA Navy is the assumption that the PLA only began considering naval problems in the 1980s, and unquestioningly took on Soviet naval doctrine. By his study of the offshore islands campaigns, Yoshihara refutes this notion, and instead illuminates the fact that the PLA is self-aware and consistently reviewing its performance. His work then serves to illustrate how the PLA sees itself and explains what actions it has taken in response to its own perceptions.

Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 detail the institutional formation of the PLA Navy and its earliest battles. After ousting the Nationalists from mainland China, Mao’s officers now had the task of creating a completely new armed service. These officers had to undertake a paradigm shift, as the PLA up to this point has been a ground-focused fighting force, with many of its personnel having never even seen the ocean. In constructing the PLA Navy, the communist party officials found that the skills, attitudes, and expertise that had served them well on land, must be reevaluated for nautical operations. PLA Navy planners found themselves having to rely on Nationalist defectors for expertise, needing to compromise the ideological purity of the revolution in order to achieve practical results on the battlefield. The PLAN’s formation is a story of pragmatism and compromise, and as time passed, the navy bears the marks of its hybrid influences. 

Chapters 5 and 6 detailed the progression and outcomes of the major littoral campaigns. Emboldened by their riverine victories, the PLA Ground Force and PLA Navy embarked on operations to take offshore islands from the Nationalists. Starting with Xiamen, the Communist forces swiftly took the island garrison, and made preparations to besiege Jinmen. The Xiamen campaign revealed underlying issues that the PLA had still not reconciled when planning for amphibious assaults, but the speedy nature of the battle prevented any reflection. As a result, the PLA was dealt a significant and conclusive defeat at Jinmen and suffered heavy casualties in the subsequent campaign to take Zhoushan. In the aftermath of these setbacks, Mao exercised increased control over the PLA and ardently advised his commanders to recall the oversights that surrounded Jinmen and Zhoushan. With these lessons in mind, the PLA embarked on its first large-scale amphibious operation and its first joint army-navy operation, capturing Hainan and Wanshan respectively, and dealing heavy blows to the Nationalists.

Chapter 7 synthesizes the major themes that were found in the preceding chapters with an institutional assessment of the PLA Navy and Chapter 8 considers how lessons from the past manifest themselves in the PLAN’s present behavior. Yoshihara asserts that the PLAN was not an afterthought, but rather carefully organized with compromises and support from many sources in order to confront the very particular set of challenges that faced the PLA with regards to decisively defeating the Nationalists. With such a nuanced origin, Yoshihara notes that much can be gleaned about the PLA just based on how they tell the story of the PLA Navy and Chinese seapower. The tactics, strategies, and doctrine employed by the PLA at the time inform present-day PLAN’s operations, such as the application of People’s War in naval operations resulting in a consistent emphasis on winning the psychological fight. Also, the PLA’s requisition of civilian maritime vessels has morphed into the employment of the Maritime Militia and the concept of Military-Civil Fusion. Balancing the need for competence with party loyalty has remained a consistent struggle for PRC leaders.

Yoshihara leaves us with avenues for future research and concluding thoughts on assessments of the PLA. He encourages the study of PLA offshore campaigns that take place during the Taiwan Strait Crises, Taiwan’s reporting of the 1949-1950 campaigns, and how the PLA assesses amphibious assaults by other militaries. Yoshihara makes it clear that when talking about China’s maritime goals, the point of emphasis should not be on strictly naval operations and assets, but rather a broad look at how China projects its seapower through both conventional and irregular means. His goal with this book and the accompanying study is to dispel disparaging misconceptions surrounding PLA history and capabilities, and in doing so, promotes further research and discourse on the topic to enable proper appraisals of PLA seapower. Failure to understand this crucial part of the PLA’s identity will consistently lead to distorted assumptions and underestimations of the PLA, all to detrimental effect.

Implications

Toshi Yoshihara’s book illustrated historical key weaknesses that the PLA is keenly aware of, and this self-awareness informs their present-day actions. To address shortcomings, Xi Jinping seeks to promote commanders with operational experience and draws from other branches of the PLA in order to bring China’s military towards its concept of Intelligentized Warfare. Under this ideal, the PLA will be able to seamlessly execute multi-domain operations with varying intensity in war and peace. The PLA still struggles to integrate its branches into a coordinated fighting machine, given decades of an entrenched “Big Army” mindset where Army officials dominated top command posts. Indeed, while the reorganization of the PLA into brigade formations and theater commands have enabled smoother function, an overwhelming number of theater commanders and political commissars hail from the PLA Ground Force, much like the composition of the Central Military Commission. In fact, there is currently only one Air Force and one Navy officer serving as a theater commander and commissar respectively. The appointment of Dong Jun then, should come as no surprise given this information.

Of the six members of the 2022 CMC, four of these officials are PLA Ground Force officers, one is a Navy officer who was originally a Ground Force officer, and one is a Rocket Force officer, with no Air Force representation in the CMC. While not yet a part of the CMC, the appointment of the PLAN commander Dong Jun as Minister of Defense replaces a staff Ground Force officer on the CMC with a Navy officer possessing operational command experience. Dong Jun’s successor as commander of the PLAN, Hu Zhongming, has decades of experience on submarines, a strategically important component of China’s maritime strategy. Taken together, the leadership transitions at the highest echelons of the PLA illustrate the strategic posture that Xi Jinping wants his military to have: aggressive commanders that can make Xi’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific come to fruition.

What has prevented the PLA from effectively enacting the already tedious military reform is the nature of the PRC’s government. Xi Jinping has had to balance prioritizing loyalty of his officers with expertise in his bids to expand his power against other Chinese Communist Party members, and so competent officials may be passed up in favor of those that Xi does not consider a threat to himself. Indeed, even if Xi was not in power, PLA reforms would still consistently consider both political and military factors. As the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, the PLA cannot be separated from it, and party loyalty will always feature prominently, sometimes even to the detriment of readiness. As Yoshihara has described, the PRC has had a land-based focus since its inception, and so a significant number of Xi’s close allies hail from the PLA Ground Force. In some cases, these officers have ties to his family and hometown since the early days of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Given these circumstances, PLA and CCP officials do not believe that the PRC is currently able to effectively contend with the United States, even admitting as such. Acknowledging historical experience, Chinese military planners recognize that the objective of taking Taiwan is quite challenging and requires a level of readiness and proficiency that the PLA current doesn’t have. Having failed to capture Jinmen at the close of the Chinese Civil War, the PRC unsuccessfully attempted to seize the island by force during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. The close proximity to the PRC and the small size of the island suggests that it would be considerably easier to capture Jinmen than Taiwan, and the PLA still proved incapable. With warfare becoming more complex and more states becoming involved in the Taiwan Strait dispute, the matter of organizing and executing a successful invasion has become more difficult than before. As well, the recent corruption purges of the technical services of the PLA make it hard for the PRC to diversify away from the Ground Force and become proficient in joint operations. Taking all of this into consideration, the U.S. and its partners must take advantage of this window of opportunity to reestablish their military capabilities in order to overcome the pacing threat. 

Conclusion

Mao’s Army Goes to Sea: The Island Campaigns and the Founding of China’s Navy provides a nuanced retelling of the history of the PLA Navy’s earliest days and the lessons derived from its engagements with the Nationalist army. This book will greatly benefit readers who seek to understand the People’s Liberation Army Navy and the military considerations and circumstances surrounding any potential conflict with Taiwan. For those interested in China studies or security studies, Yoshihara’s book provides a comprehensive review of PLA operations, utilizing Chinese documents that reported on the events he detailed.

A recurring theme in the book is that in the PLA’s operations, being able to field a joint, multi-domain force that is able to synergize effectively is of paramount importance in any undertaking. During the Cold War, the great powers raced to achieve nuclear supremacy. Today, the great powers are engaged in a race to achieve a truly joint force, with seamless interoperability as its defining characteristic. With this in mind and given the current geopolitical climate, this book is a critical read for those with a military background regardless of the service, be it Navy, Army, Air Force, or Space Force. There are no foregone conclusions when it comes to China, and the armed services must learn from history and each other to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead. 

CDT Brandon Tran is an international affairs and Chinese double major at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has interned with the Center for Naval Analyses, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army War College. At all of these places, he worked on China and Asia-Pacific defense issues and has written extensively on warfighting and Indo-Pacific security. He has been published in The Diplomat, Air University’s Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, the Modern War Institute, and more. Brandon hopes to commission as a military intelligence officer.

The views expressed are solely personal and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of West Point, the US Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

*This article originally described Yoshihara as a current professor at the Naval War College, but was corrected to include his current position at CSBA.

Featured Image: Type 903A  supply ship Kekexilihu (Hull 903) attached to a combat support ship flotilla under the Chinese PLA Navy provides liquid supply to Type 055 Destroyer Lhasa (Hull 102) via replenishment-at-sea during a multi-subject maritime training exercise. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Xu Taotao)

Latin America

Serious About Building Maritime Capacity in the High Latitudes? Look South

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By Aaron Delano-Johnson and Myles McCarthy

Introduction 

Sporting the distinctive racing stripe worn by many of the globe’s coast guards, the world’s newest polar-capable research vessel left the protected waters of the Gerlache Strait behind as it prepared to cross the Southern Ocean after completing its maiden voyage to Antarctica earlier this year. This cutting-edge vessel was not from a NATO country, Russia, or China, but Colombia, as it set sail from its homeport of Cartagena joining the ranks of South American countries operating ice-capable vessels and research stations on the seventh continent. As the United States and its allies struggle to project surface presence in the high latitudes, the ARC Simon Bolivar (PO-151) joins Chilean icebreaker CNS Almirante Viel (AGB-46) as the second domestically built polar-capable vessel to be commissioned in South America in the last 12 months. If the United States is serious about building capacity to operate at-sea in the high latitudes, it is time to look south. 

The challenge of building high latitude maritime capacity 

The National Strategy for the Arctic Region calls to expand the “U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker fleet to support persistent presence in the U.S. Arctic and additional presence as needed in the European Arctic.” Likewise, United States Policy on the Antarctic Region also identifies the need to expand the United States polar icebreaker fleet to maintain an active and influential presence in the region to support United States interests across the Antarctic Treaty System. 

The struggles to meet either goal are well-documented with critiques of the U.S. Coast Guard’s current icebreaker fleet, Polar Security Cutter program, and the broader state of United States shipbuilding continually in the news. What is not addressed in this debate about icebreaker capacity at-sea is that once the United States polar icebreaker fleet is recapitalized through new construction, or commercially procured stop-gap options, who will operate and maintain these ships in the harshest of environments?

Partnerships with traditional Arctic allies are a natural fit to build knowledge, skills and abilities of high latitude operations, but with a dearth of opportunities onboard both United States and NATO vessels operating in the polar regions, where else should the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy turn to learn from those with these skills and platforms? Look south.

South America’s Efforts in Antarctica

Stories of the Arctic and Antarctic studied in the United States tend to focus on the achievements of polar explorers from Shackleton to Amundsen, Soviet nuclear icebreakers, the indigenous peoples of the Arctic or perhaps the U.S. Antarctic Program’s work at McMurdo Station. Few are aware of the high-latitude capacity possessed by nations across South America, the same countries who are the closest partners of the United States in countering transnational organized crime, operating in the joint naval domain, and addressing illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing at sea.

Amongst them are upwards of 30 research stations, to include year-round presence at 12, a variety of aircraft launching from Chile and Argentina to support operations on Antarctica, and numerous icebreakers or polar research vessels by their navies or respective maritime services.

In a flurry of activity over recent years, the domestic construction or commercial procurement across South America’s polar fleet includes: Argentina will double its heavy icebreaker fleet with the construction of a second Polar Class 4 vessel set for the late 2020s to sail alongside ARA Almirante Irízar (Q-5), the Peruvian Navy commissioned the BAP Carrasco (BOP-171) Polar Class 7 oceanographic and research vessel (2017), the Colombian General Maritime Directorate’s (DIMAR) ARC Simon Bolivar (PO-151) Lloyd’s Register Ice Class 1C FS (2023), the Chilean CNS Almirante Viel (AGB-46) Polar Class 5 was commissioned in July, while the Brazilian Navy awaits delivery of its next-generation, and domestically built icebreaker, dubbed the Antarctic Support Ship expected to be launched in 2025. Finally, Uruguay procured the R/V Mount Whitney, an ice-strengthened research vessel re-flagged in September as the Oyarvide (ROU-22), to reinvigorate support for scientific investigation and logistics for its Antarctic operations.

Polar expertise can also be found ashore. The School of Marine Sciences of the Argentine Navy hosts the International Maritime Organization (IMO) certified courses of Basic and Advance Navigation in Polar Waters while their Chilean Navy counterparts at the Maritime Training and Instruction Center offer a similar Basic and Advanced Polar Water Operations Course. Both courses are requirements for senior officers serving on their nations’ respective Polar Icebreakers, and each routinely welcomes international students, principally from Europe. 

While the United States’ ongoing attempt to recapitalize the ice breaking fleet languishes with delays, it is clear that United States Allies, partners, and adversaries continue, with greater frequency, to put ships into the ice.

Icy Operations: How U.S. Forces Are Engaging the Polar South

Collaborating with South American partners allows the United States to take advantage of a simple fact of geography: when summer precludes cold weather training in the Northern Hemisphere, opportunities abound south of the equator.

Who has looked south to expand opportunities for gaining proficiency in extreme conditions? The U.S. Army’s storied 10th Mountain Division, the 1st Marine Division, U.S. Special Operations Command South, and U.S. Army Mountain Warfare School have all attend the Chilean Mountain Warfare School while U.S. Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center instructors have trained alongside the Argentinian Marines in Ushuaia practicing cold weather tactics and exchanging experiences. Likewise, troops from the Argentinian Mountain Warfare School and Chilean Marines have trained with their U.S. Army counterparts at the Northern Warfare Training Center and the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center. In addition to ongoing activities in Chile, recent key leader engagements with Argentina have advanced discussions on additional cold weather operations subject matter exchanges. 

The U.S. Coast Guard of course does have partnerships and conducts international engagements across the region from exercises to Security Cooperation. But for as much success as USCGC James’ had during its recent port visits along the east coast of South America as the ship conducted illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing operations in the South Atlantic, efforts by the U.S. to bolster polar cooperation in the region have been much more limited.

Most recently, while returning from their annual mission to re-supply McMurdo Station during the 2023 Antarctic season, USCGC Polar Star deviated from their normal trans-Pacific route to visit Punta Arenas and Valparaiso, Chile. These were the first visits to Chile by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in over seven years and the first to Punta Arenas since 1987, and though the ship enjoyed a warm reception by their Chilean hosts including bilateral engagements, no repeat visit to the continent was made during the ship’s 2024 deployment. 

How to Build High Latitude Bench Strength at Sea

What would polar partnerships in South America offer to the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy? To begin, the need for added bench strength of operators with high latitude experience is real. Currently the U.S. Coast Guard’s high latitude efforts focus on preparing the heavy icebreaker USCGC Polar Star and medium icebreaker USCGC Healy for annual missions to Antarctica and the U.S. Arctic respectively. Healy and Polar Star represent the only two platforms in the United States’ combined fleet capable of training ice pilots, the essential qualification for operating ships in ice. On average, each qualifies just four to five new ice pilots a year, and given the rate of attrition in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Cutterman community, this leaves a very small candidate pool from which to fill current command cadre needs. And projected forward, this trajectory will leave the service critically short of the crews necessary for the nation’s envisioned future icebreaking fleet of Polar Security Cutters.

Since 2018 the U.S Coast Guard has looked to the Afloat Ice Breaking Training Program to help fill these gaps. However, the program is imperfect, and proposals to expand it are stymied by a critical factor: in an average year the United States only has one ship breaking international ice at a time, limiting space for trainees. So why not look to the rapidly expanding South American polar fleet for assistance? Precedent already exists for personnel exchanges in the region. Currently, the U.S. Navy has Surface Warfare Officers participating in two year exchange programs in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile, with some calling to expand the program even wider. 

And personnel exchanges should work in both directions, as the U.S. Coast Guard can offer invitations to join icebreaking deployments to officers from South American countries in the same way these opportunities are currently extended to their NATO, Australian, and New Zealand counterparts. Similarly, the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet recently concluded Operation Nanook, a Canadian led multinational exercise that while focused on the Arctic and NATO partnerships would certainly offer many lessons learned to South American nations with Antarctic interests. Put another way, polar officers need to know more than just the mechanics of how to operate a ship in ice, they need to understand the interests, ideology, and capabilities of all partner nations in the rapidly evolving high-latitudes. 

Potential opportunities to build bench strength are not just limited to expanding the Icebreaking Training Program. Junior officers aboard Healy and Polar Star could take advantage of their ships’ lengthy annual maintenance periods to seek temporary duty opportunities either aboard a ship or even by attending the aforementioned polar navigation courses in Argentina or Chile.

Finally, it takes herculean efforts in logistics to keep the aging U.S. icebreakers on mission. Forging mission support partnerships is often an afterthought that operational commanders scramble to expedite in times of crises. Establishing strategic logistics relationships with partner maritime services that can facilitate spare parts deliveries, conduct at highly capable shipyards across South America, and streamlined agreements for diplomatic clearances should all be a priority for engagement in the region. 

Conclusion

Afloat operations in the polar regions are fraught with risk. The United States needs to come to the region with not just capable ships, but with strong international partnerships and well-trained crews. With an icebreaking fleet that has historically relied upon on-the-job training to qualify the next generation of polar explorers, the U.S. Coast Guard’s “red hull” community currently struggles to support that model due to a lack of assets and opportunities with traditional partners. But polar force projection is of growing national significance, and the United States needs to look at the White Continent with a wide aperture lens. Logistics, memorandums of understanding, alliances, and certainly world-class ships and crews will all be essential in achieving future high latitude goals.

Aaron Delano-Johnson is an active duty officer in the U.S. Coast Guard. A ship captain and international affairs officer, he has served across Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Myles McCarthy is an active duty officer in the U.S. Coast Guard and an Olmsted Foundation Scholar completing a master’s degree at La Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. A ship captain, he hopes to return to sea upon completion of his studies.

The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or the U.S. government.

Featured Image: ARC ship “Simón Bolívar” conducts Antarctic operations. (Colombian Navy Photo)

Capability Analysis

Breaking the Naval Impasse on the U.S. Icebreaker Program

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This article originally featured on the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.

By Max Schreiber

America’s military vessels brave contested waters, hurricanes, tropical storms, and other chaos—so why is the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the Arctic so limited? The Arctic, after all, is no longer just vast icebergs floating around like sentinels of death, surrounded by silence more oppressive than its cold—it is now a major geopolitical prize in the Great Power Competition between the United States, China, and Russia. 

The Arctic has relevance to every facet of this struggle. Energy? The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that one-eighth of the world’s untapped oil reserves and one-third of its natural gas reserves lie in the Arctic. Trade? The Arctic’s three trade routes—the Northwest Passage (above Canada), the Northern Sea Route (above Russia), and the Central Arctic Route (between Iceland and the Bering Strait, through the North Pole)—will soon subsume a substantial share of shipping, by some accounts five percent of global maritime traffic in 2030 and with no sign of slowing down. Political-military risk? The Russian Navy’s elite Northern Fleet recently expanded its area-of-responsibility specifically to secure the Northern Sea Route, and China proclaimed itself a “near Arctic” state as it begins to establish a “Polar Silk Road” of influence and commerce in the region (“near” does a lot of work there). In fact, China and Russia are cooperating in the Arctic, as evidenced by their joint naval patrol near the U.S. Aleutian Islands in 2023.

The Great Powers in the Arctic

The Great Power Competition in the Arctic will be won with icebreakers—highly specialized naval vessels capable of slicing directly through polar ice that would crush traditional ships and withstanding “storms that can ice over superstructures until ships become so top-heavy they capsize.” Currently, complete exploration, shipping, and patrol of the Arctic is impossible without them. Yet, there is a stark imbalance among the Great Powers in their icebreaking capabilities. China, located 800 miles away from the Arctic at its closest point, operates two existing icebreakers (with a third on the way) and is developing nuclear-powered technology for these vessels. Russia has a fleet of forty-six icebreakers, including three nuclear-powered ships for extended Arctic patrols, and has recently launched a new “class of combat icebreakers with high-speed guns and launchers for anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles.” Both Russia and China have centralized their icebreaker programs under their navies, underscoring their view of these ships as military assets.

In contrast, America’s icebreaker program is in disarray. The U.S. government has only two operational icebreakers—the decades-old Polar Star and the Healy—and neither of them are capable of year-round operations. Plans to build a new fleet of six to nine icebreakers, through the Polar Security Cutter (PSC) program, are faltering. This joint venture between the Navy and Coast Guard is vastly over budget and behind schedule, already exceeding procurement cost by 39 percent, with the first delivery expected in 2029—four years late. Unlike Russia and China, the U.S. has no serious plan to equip its developing icebreakers with nuclear power. Moreover, while the Navy has some involvement in procurement and construction of the icebreakers, the Coast Guard alone is responsible for their operations. This is important because the Navy is the U.S. military’s forward-deployed, combat-oriented force, while the Coast Guard is structured primarily for homeland defense. This organizational divide means that the purpose, posture, and operational reach of America’s icebreakers are dangerously mismatched with those of its primary adversaries in the Arctic.

The Need for a U.S. Navy Icebreaker Program

Accordingly, the U.S. Congress and the President must enact legislation requiring the Navy to build and operate its own combat-oriented icebreaker program to secure our national interests in the Arctic. The Navy is unlikely to take on this role voluntarily. In 2023, the former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, underscored this reluctance when he deflected questions about icebreaker procurement to the Coast Guard, making it clear that he did not view the program as the Navy’s responsibility. Currently, the Coast Guard is the only branch of the U.S. military legally tasked with “develop[ing], establish[ing], maintain[ing], and operat[ing] icebreaking facilities.” Without a mandate, the Navy has shown no intention to expand its footprint into the icebreaking business. Notably, Gilday’s 2022 Navigation Plan, which outlines the Navy’s strategic goals through 2045, does not even acknowledge the Arctic as a major global maritime shipping route, nor does it identify potential geographic choke points in the region. In 2020, then-Secretary of the Navy, Kenneth Braithwaite, acknowledged the importance of icebreakers in front of Congress, but stated that “it is not a mission that is central to the United States Navy” and is one it “rel[ies] on the Coast Guard to provide.” However, leaving this critical program solely with the Coast Guard—a service with less than 10 percent the Navy’s size and budget—neglects U.S. strategic interests in the Arctic.

U.S. presence in the Arctic requires a robust naval combat capability which the Coast Guard cannot provide alone. In his 2001 commentary on the differences between the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, Professor Colin Gray of the Naval War College identified three unique characteristics of the Navy, all of which are implicated by the icebreaker program. 

First, the Navy “takes its tune … from control (even command) of the high seas.” This means the first duty of “the premier navy, is to control sea lines of communication—to allow or deny access to the sea, thence across it, and finally to the land, where humankind lives.” However, without an active icebreaker presence in the Arctic, the Navy is voluntarily denying itself full access to the Arctic leaving gaps for its adversaries—namely Russia and China, to aggressively expand and militarize their icebreaker presence. 

Second, the Navy’s commitment to “boldly go … where great navies have feared to sail” is undermined by its repudiation of icebreaking operations. Failing to establish a surface presence in the Arctic with icebreakers could yield an “asymmetric [] equalizer” for adversaries, a risk that becomes more imminent as polar ice melts and access to the Arctic increases. 

Third, and most importantly, “the navy of a superpower that aspires to protect commerce and international order globally has no responsible choice other than to pursue excellence virtually wherever military science takes it, however serendipitously.” Russia and China are actively moving the Great Power Competition to the Arctic: Russia is arming its icebreakers with anti-ship weapons and cruise missiles, both nations are regularly patrolling the Arctic seas with icebreakers, and heavily investing in nuclear technology for these vessels. While icebreakers are certainly necessary for the Coast Guard’s missions—including search and rescue, navigation, environmental protection, interdiction, and ice operations—Russia and China have embraced icebreakers as dual-use assets that squarely address the Navy’s purpose. Moreover, the Navy and Air Force’s existing submarine and aircraft presence in the Arctic is inadequate for the Great Power Competition. Submarines and aircraft alone cannot “clear a path for critical shipping, respond to oil spills, or conduct maritime safety and security boardings in the U.S. Arctic”—let alone accomplish more strategic goals of sea control and power projection in the region.

Separately from the mission, Congress and the President should also require an independent Navy icebreaker program due to the Coast Guard’s ongoing struggles in procuring and constructing the vessels. This summer, the United States recently signed the ICE Pact with Finland and Canada to build seventy to ninety new icebreakers over the next decade. While this agreement will help expand America’s icebreaker fleet, it relies on Finland—which can build a polar-class vessel in two years at just 25 percent of the cost of in America—to handle construction. This outsourcing is, frankly, an embarrassment. The poor outcomes in the PSC program may stem in part from its joint structure: since the Coast Guard operates the icebreakers, the PSC program lacks the Navy’s full commitment. The Navy hasn’t fully leveraged its size, money, expertise and influence to drive efficiency or accelerate progress of the program, while the Coast Guard remains constrained by the Navy’s budget authority. Furthermore, each service can deflect blame onto the other in congressional oversight hearings, complicating accountability for the program’s setbacks.

In some ways, the PSC Program inverts the issues between space operators and Air Force leadership that precipitated the United States Space Force. There, space operators’ lack of independence in the DAF—which is traditionally led by pilots—meant space operations and acquisition were deprioritized. With icebreakers however, the lack of substantial direct involvement by the Navy—especially in operations—may be depriving the military of considerable influence that could expedite and improve the development of these critical vessels.

Conclusion

The Arctic is poised to become a critical arena in the Great Power Competition. Thus, to ensure the U.S. is strategically postured in this region, incoming-President Donald J. Trump should work with Congress to enact legislation mandating that the Navy build its own combat-oriented icebreaker fleet—which, upon completion, can sustain a U.S. surface warfare presence in the Arctic.

Max Schreiber is an active-duty intelligence officer with the 76 Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Squadron (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) and public interest attorney with the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. His academic interests include executive power in foreign affairs and the use of diplomacy and pre-conflict military power to achieve national objectives; he has published on these topics in journals such as The Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Aether (the Air Force’s official strategy journal), and The Towson Journal of International Affairs. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Duke University (electronic and computer engineering).

Featured Image: The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star operates near two seals off the shore of Antarctica, Jan. 16, 2017. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Chief Petty Officer David Mosley)