The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that it will homeport its newest icebreaker — a commercially acquired ship to be adapted for homeland security — in Juneau, Alaska, as its 27-year-old Arctic icebreaker aborted its summer deployment following an electrical fire.
The vessel currently known as the Aiviq should be operational in 2026, according to a service announcement Wednesday. While the Coast Guard previously had said it favored Juneau as the ship’s home station, officials said as recently as June that it had not received funding to build the infrastructure needed in the Alaskan capital.
Wednesday’s announcement made it official, however.
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“As we continue to build the Polar Security cutters, acquiring a commercially available polar icebreaker will enable the Coast Guard to increase our national presence in the Arctic, and homeporting this cutter in Alaska demonstrates the service’s steadfast commitment to the region,” Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday said in a statement.
The reveal follows a summer deployment cut short for the Coast Guard’s only medium ocean-going icebreaker, the Healy. The ship suffered a fire in late July — its second in four years — Lunday said during a panel hosted by the Brookings Institution on Aug. 7.
During the event, Lunday said that if the Healy’s deployment ended early, the country would have “no icebreakers in the Arctic this summer.”
Media outlets GCaptain and KNOM Radio reported Aug. 9 that Healy cut its deployment short and made a stop in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, before heading back to its homeport of Seattle.
Healy suffered a similar fire in 2020, losing its starboard propulsion motor. A replacement was available from storage at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, but the ship may not be as lucky this time. Lunday said the recent fire poses a significant repair challenge because parts may not be available.
“If you want to get underway on a major Coast Guard cutter today, you have to do what we call a ‘controlled parts exchange’ with other ships at the pier. That’s a fancy term for cannibalization. We’ll steal parts or borrow, actually, from the other ships just to get another ship underway,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Aiviq is an Arctic oil-exploration support vessel with the capability to serve as a medium icebreaker, meaning it can traverse ice thickness of roughly 4 1/2 feet at 3 knots. The service received $125 million in the fiscal 2024 budget to purchase the vessel, and has asked for an additional $25 million for operational modifications.
The idea of buying a commercial icebreaker to fill a gap in the Coast Guard’s polar fleet dates to 2016, when the late Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and former chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure’s Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., thought the service should buy the Aiviq.
The Coast Guard commandant at the time, Adm. Paul Zukunft, said the ship didn’t meet the Coast Guard’s needs as he argued for funding to replace the service’s two heavy icebreakers, the Polar Star and the Polar Sea, which had been out of service since 2010.
“You may know, we’ve looked — I have a 13-page matrix. It looks side-by-side with the Aiviq, and that vessel will not meet Coast Guard requirements,” Zukunft said during a hearing on the service’s budget in 2016.
But this was before the Coast Guard found itself facing delays in securing replacements. The 48-year-old Polar Star is now the nation’s only heavy-duty icebreaker, since the Polar Sea was later declared to be too costly to fix and refurbish.
The service is working on a contract to build three new icebreakers, the Polar Security class, and awarded a $745 million contract in 2019 to VT Halter Marine to build the first vessel, with an intention for delivery in 2023.
The effort has been hampered by delays. In 2022, Bollinger Shipyards purchased VT Halter — an acquisition that added to delays — and the project has been stymied by design complexities. U.S. shipbuilders haven’t constructed an icebreaker in decades.
The service said earlier this year that the shipyard is building modules of the vessel for installation once the design is finalized and construction is underway. Vice Adm. Paul Thomas, the Coast Guard’s deputy commandant for mission support, told a House subcommittee that construction is expected to begin by the end of the year.
The Alaska congressional delegation cheered the official announcement of the new ship’s home port. Both the Polar Star and the Healy are homeported in Seattle, Washington.
“This is an exciting day for Juneau, for Alaska, and for America. I want to commend [Coast Guard Commandant] Adm. [Linda] Fagan for making this important announcement in our state, among Alaskans, and for keeping her commitment to homeport an icebreaker in Juneau,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Adding an icebreaker to the Coast Guard’s fleet will allow the United States to conduct important missions, project American presence, and take a leadership position in the Arctic as it opens up,” Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, told Military.com in an email. “Alaska makes the United States an Arctic nation, and Arctic issues are Alaskan issues — it’s right that this vessel is homeported here in our state.”
According to Sullivan’s office, 2.4 acres of waterfront property in Juneau owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was transferred in February to the Coast Guard to provide a location for the ship.
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