This Weekend’s News: Arctic War Game Highlights Challenges for U.S. Navy

The U.S. Navy does not have the assets it needs to conduct
long-term Arctic maritime operations and will have to increasingly rely on the
U.S. Coast Guard or international partners in order to accomplish its missions,
according to a Sunday report in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

According to the report, the U.S. Navy asked the U.S. Naval
War College to conduct a war game in September 2011 to explore what the U.S.
Navy would need to execute long-term missions in the High North. “We looked at search and rescue,
oil spill response, maritime domain and maritime safety and security issues,”
Walter Berbrick, assistant research professor in the War Gaming Department at
the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “They were all fictional scenarios.”

The war game’s conclusions, according to the report, may
suggest looming challenges for America’s ability to project power and protect
its interests in the Arctic. According to the report:

[T]he Navy is not adequately
prepared to conduct long-term maritime Arctic operations; Arctic weather
conditions increase the risk of failure; and most critically, to operate in the
Arctic, the Navy will need to lean on the U.S. Coast Guard, countries like
Russia or Canada, or tribal and industrial partners.

 

To sustain operations in the
Arctic, the Navy needs ice-capable equipment, accurate and timely environmental
data, personnel trained to operate in extreme weather, and better
communications systems. Much of the environmental data will come from other
Arctic nations.

The report particularly notes the U.S. Navy’s lack of ice-capable
ships. “We have limited
capability to sustain long-term operations in the Arctic due to inadequate
icebreaking capability,” Berbrick told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “The Navy finds itself entering a
new realm as it relates to having to rely on other nations.”
Interestingly, the report also notes that the Navy (in large part because of its lack of
ice-capable ships) will increasingly work with the U.S. Coast Guard, which has
had a greater presence in the region as of late. Yet the U.S. Coast Guard’s missions
in the Arctic are also undermined by its inadequate icebreaking capability –
although there is renewed interest in expanding the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaking
fleet, which now consists of one active and two inactive vessels.

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