A push for additional icebreakers to protect Alaska’s border continues in Congress, to assure about $1 billion for what will be the first new heavy polar icebreaker built in the United States in over 40 years.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, noted during a Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee during a budget meeting this past week that in the past sea ice has acted as a shield to provide the nation’s most northern border. The omnibus bill government funding for the fiscal year that runs to the end of September, was signed into law in March, with $150 million for construction of a new polar icebreaker. The Trump administration’s $750 million budget request for fiscal 2019 would fully fund that new polar icebreaker, which would likely not be completed before 2023.
Now given rapid diminishment of that sea ice and heightened international interest in that region, the importance of protecting America’s political, economic, energy, environmental and other interests in the region needs to be a priority, she said.
“We also recognize that what the Coast Guard needs to achieve its statutory mission in the Arctic is a fleet of icebreakers, and it has been recommended that there be three heavy and three medium icebreakers,” she said.
During the subcommittee hearing, Murkowski questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about expediting construction of the two remaining heavy icebreakers and the subsequent three medium icebreakers needed.
