We recently posted an incomplete list of some of the great things that the US Coast Guard was doing while not getting paid during the government shutdown. One of the missions was the resupply of the US McMurdo Station in Antartica by the US heavy icebreaker USCGC Polar Star. The Polar Star broke through ice as thick as 21 feet to clear a path to allow a resupply ship to get to the outpost. This is the sixth year that the Polar Star has successfully undertaken the mission, dubbed Operation Deep Freeze. 

Unfortunately, after 43 years of demanding and often brutal service, the Polar Star is continually breaking down. Only the hard work, skill, and ingenuity of the 141 officers and crew keep the old ship going.

This year on the Polar Star, the electrical system overheated, damaging a switchboard. One of two evaporators failed. A shaft leak stopped the ship, requiring divers to be put over the side to perform emergency repairs. Later, power outages stopped the ship again, requiring a nine-hour reboot of all systems to get the ship back online.

If that sounds bad, it was actually somewhat better than last year when, in addition to a shaft seal failure, one of the ship’s gas turbines failed.

Likewise, in 2017, the Polar Star completed Operation Deep Freeze, but not without mechanical issues and another evaporator failure.

Why not just send another ice breaker and put the Polar Star in a shipyard for repair and refurbishment? The Polar Star is the only operational US heavy icebreaker. That’s right, the only one. 

If the Polar Star should break down in the Antarctic, the US has no other heavy icebreaker to come to its aid. The Coast Guard does have the medium icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, which can only cut through ten feet of ice. As the Healy is often stationed in the Arctic while the Polar Star is in the Antarctic, if either ship should break down, geography may rule out mutual assistance. 

The Russians have over 40 icebreakers with 8 more on order. The US has the largest navy in the history of the world and yet hasn’t seen fit to build new heavy icebreakers. 

It would be nice to say that new icebreakers will be built, that money has been appropriated for their construction. Indeed in February of 2018, the Senate tentatively approved $750 million to build one new heavy icebreaker. 

Then in August, the Department of Homeland Security stripped the funds from their proposed budget. What did they propose to do with the money? To help fund a border wall, of course. In the meantime, the US is one major breakdown away from having exactly zero operational heavy icebreakers.