Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss. I was not able to respond to every single one, but my wife and I took great comfort from reading them.
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The U.S. has interests in regions all around the globe. Perhaps none are more remote than the polar region: areas near or in the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Roughly 1/3rd of Alaska is within the Arctic Circle, and though only around 4% of Alaska citizens live there, that’s still tens of thousands of people. There are also significant natural resources in U.S. Arctic territory, including untapped oil and gas deposits, the largest zinc mine in the world, and (potentially) minerals on the Arctic seabed, such as “gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, platinum, tin, zinc, and diamonds.”
In the Antarctic, the U.S. operates three research facilities: McMurdo Station, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, and Palmer Station. McMurdo Station is the largest research station in Antarctica, with a population of up to 1,000 people (20-25% of Antarctica’s total population).
The U.S. isn’t the only country with major polar interests. Roughly four million people around the world live above the Arctic Circle. Russia has 15,000 miles of coastline along the Arctic ocean, and an estimated 10-20% of Russia’s GDP comes from activities above the Arctic Circle. And as climate change reduces the extent of sea ice and makes polar regions more accessible, international interest in the polar regions is expected to increase. In 2014, Xi Jinping stated that China planned on joining the ranks of “the great polar powers,” and in 2023 Russia and China sent a naval force to patrol near the coast of Alaska. By shipping goods through shorter, previously inaccessible Arctic Ocean routes, China could potentially reduce its ocean-based transportation costs by 40%, saving hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Because polar bodies of water are often covered in ice, accessing these regions by ship requires specially designed ships which can break up the ice and create a path for other ships to follow. The need for icebreaking vessels will remain even as climate change reduces the extent of sea ice: paradoxically, as new polar routes become accessible and sea ice becomes more mobile, the demand for icebreakers is likely to increase. Russia has an aging fleet of more than 40 icebreakers, with several under construction. China has somewhere between 5 and 7 icebreakers (depending on exactly how you define “icebreaker”), with more under construction.1
The U.S., on the other hand, has allowed its icebreaking capabilities to wither. The Coast Guard has handled all U.S. icebreaking since 1966, and estimates that it needs 8-9 polar icebreakers (4-5 heavy and 4-5 medium) to fulfill its needs. But it currently has only two: the heavy icebreaker Polar Star, and the medium icebreaker Healy. The U.S. hasn’t built a heavy icebreaker since 1976. In fact, no existing U.S. shipyard has built a heavy polar icebreaker since before 1970. A 2017 National Academies report stated that “The nation is ill-equipped to protect its interests and maintain leadership in these regions and has fallen behind other Arctic nations, which have mobilized to expand their access to ice-covered regions.”
And while the U.S. is trying to remedy this with a Polar Security Cutter program to build a series of new heavy polar icebreakers (to be followed by a series of medium icebreakers), the program is going poorly. When the contract was first awarded in 2019, the plan was to have the first icebreaker completed by 2024. But as of July this year, the design of the ship was still incomplete. If and when the ships are completed (currently 2029 for the first vessel at the earliest), they are expected to cost $1.7-1.9 billion apiece, roughly four to five times what a comparable ship would cost to build elsewhere. Icebreakers, then, are another unfortunate example of the costs inflicted by binding national interests to an inefficient shipbuilding industry.
How an icebreaker works
An icebreaker is exactly what it sounds like; a ship designed to break up ice, either to create a passage for itself or to create a channel for other ships to follow. A ship might be designed primarily for icebreaking (like the Polar Star) or designed for icebreaking and other duties. The French Le Commandant Charcot is a cruise ship with icebreaking capabilities. Modern icebreakers are rated based on their ability to break through ice and operate in various ice conditions. Higher-rated icebreakers can continuously break through ice nearly 10 feet thick, and can ram through even thicker ice.
Breaking ice requires a host of specific design features. Traditional icebreakers pair high-powered engines with specially shaped hulls designed to create downward pressure over the top of the ice, breaking it apart under high tensile forces, as ice is weak in tension. For particularly thick ice, or ice ridges, the entire front of the icebreaker may be driven up onto the ice, breaking the ice beneath it. The hull and ship structure must be strong enough to withstand the impact of ice, and a heavily reinforced “ice-belt,” often made of special high-strength steel, is installed near the level of the waterline. Things like air bubbler systems (which blow bubbles of air up around the ship from beneath the water) and low-friction paint reduce friction as the ship forces its way through the ice. Traditional icebreaking hull shapes, while well suited to breaking through ice, perform poorly in open ocean operations; the Polar Star has been dubbed “The Polar Roller” due to its tendency to roll constantly.
The development of rotatable “azimuth” thrusters in the late 1980s, sometimes known as azipods, changed the mechanics of icebreaking. Icebreaking ships with azimuth thrusters are often designed to break ice by moving backwards, using the propellers to break ice from below and to flush the hull with water to reduce friction. Not only does this reduce the power required to break ice, but it allows for the front (bow) of the ship to be designed for better open water performance. Some modern icebreakers are designed to use azimuth thrusters to move forward at an oblique angle to create an especially wide channel.
The specialized design requirements and equipment make icebreaker ship design and construction a specialized field of expertise. A relatively small number of shipbuilders are responsible for the lion’s share of icebreaker design and construction. By far the most experienced icebreaker builder in the world is Finland. Because Finland’s entire coast can freeze during the winter, and because Finland depends on sea transport for over 90% of its imports and exports, it maintains a large fleet of Baltic icebreakers to keep shipping channels open. As a result, Finland has developed unrivaled expertise in icebreaker construction. Finnish firms have designed roughly 80% of the world’s icebreakers and built 60% of them.
History of U.S. icebreakers
Ships designed to break up ice became possible with the advent of steam power. The U.S. built the first icebreaker in the world, the steam powered City Ice Boat No. 1, in Philadelphia in 1837 to break ice on the Delaware River. Icebreakers designed to operate in the arctic were built as early as 1898 in Russia with the Yermak, but the U.S. didn’t acquire oceangoing icebreaking ships until 1942 with the light icebreaker Storis, which became the first U.S. ship to traverse the Northwest Passage. The Storis’ icebreaking capabilities were minimal (one source described the ship as “dainty”), and America’s first true icebreakers were the subsequent Wind-class ships. Built at the behest of President Roosevelt, who asked for “the world’s greatest icebreakers” to help support air bases in Greenland and to help transport lend-lease cargo to Russia’s Arkhangelsk port, the U.S. built eight Wind-class icebreakers between 1942 and 1946. At the time, they were considered the most technologically advanced icebreakers in the world. The Wind-class ships were followed by an even more powerful icebreaker, the Glacier, in 1954.
In the 1960s, as the Wind-class ships aged, the Coast Guard began to consider their replacement, and in 1971 awarded a contract to Lockheed shipbuilding for the new Polar-class icebreakers, designed to be “the world’s most powerful icebreakers.” The first Polar-class ship, the Polar Star, was commissioned in 1976, followed by the Polar Sea in early 1977. When the Polar-class ships launched, the U.S. had five icebreaking ships. And as the Wind-class ships continued to retire, this number fell. By 1989, the U.S. had just two icebreakers.
In the 1990s, funding was allocated for another icebreaker, the medium icebreaker Healy, which was completed in 1999. Since then, no new polar icebreakers have been built in the U.S. Both the Polar Sea and the Polar Star continued to operate until 2010, when the Polar Sea suffered a catastrophic breakdown of its engines. Since then, it has been in drydock, acting as a source of spare parts for the Polar Star, as many of those parts are no longer manufactured. The Polar Star is far past its original service life, and it must spend nearly all its time between McMurdo Station missions being repaired. During a major refurbishment of the Polar Star in 2010, the head of the Coast Guard stated that “it’s a little uncertain to me how many more years we can get out of her in her current condition.” That was 14 years ago; today the Polar Star remains America’s only heavy icebreaker, and the only U.S. ship that can clear a path through the ice to resupply McMurdo Station.
The Polar Security Cutter program
To replace its aging icebreakers with a new, larger fleet of ships, in 2013 the Coast Guard initiated its Polar Security Cutter program to construct a series of new heavy icebreakers. The Coast Guard solicited bids in 2017, and the first contract was awarded in 2019, to VT Halter Marine, with an expected delivery date of 2024 for the first ship. But the program has gone poorly. While most icebreakers are custom designed using proven concepts, the team of TAI and Halter Marine used a German icebreaker that has yet to be built as a ‘parent design’, intending to modify it for Coast Guard needs. After five years, this modification still isn’t complete; as of July 2024 the design was only 59% done, and construction has not yet started. While the original delivery date for the first ship was 2024, that has now been pushed back to 2029.
In a report and testimony, the GAO described some of the problems during the program:
U.S.-based designers and shipbuilders generally lacked experience designing and building heavy polar icebreakers.
The ship design is complex, including that it used a specialized steel alloy that required technical study and development of new welding procedures before use.
The shipbuilder overestimated the extent to which it could leverage the original design and had to make significant design changes to meet government specifications, according to program officials. The shipbuilder also made some design errors, such as selecting the wrong height for the lowest deck of the ship, which required significant, late redesign to correct.
COVID-19 restrictions limited the extent to which the shipbuilder could collaborate and consult with its domestic and international partners.
Notably, VT Halter Marine lost $256 million between 2017 and 2021, after which it was bought for a song (just $15 million) by Bollinger, which took over the icebreaker contracts.
Originally, the Polar Security Cutters were expected to cost $800-$900 million per ship ($1.1-$1.3 billion in 2024 dollars), but current cost estimates are closer to $1.7-1.9 billion, and given that construction hasn’t started yet, this is likely to rise. And it’s unclear if that 2029 date will be hit either. The GAO report notes that “the shipyard is completing, on average, approximately three percent of functional design and six percent of transitional design every six months. At that design completion rate, it would take the shipyard approximately eight years to complete functional design.”
By contrast, a Finnish shipyard can build a heavy icebreaker for just a few hundred million dollars, and deliver it within two years, instead of 10 or more. However, the Coast Guard opted not to pursue a foreign manufacturer, instead choosing a U.S. shipyard. The culprit here isn’t the Jones Act, but another protectionist shipbuilding law that requires Naval and Coast Guard ships to be built in U.S. shipyards. It’s possible to waive this requirement via presidential authorization, but there hasn’t appeared to be much interest in this. Waiving this requirement and allowing the Coast Guard to buy icebreakers from Finland would likely save over a billion dollars per ship, as well as years of construction time.
Barring acquiring Finnish icebreakers, the next best option for the U.S. icebreaker program would have been awarding the contract to a team that had icebreaker experience. Finnish shipbuilding firms previously assisted during the design and construction of the Healy. Of the three bids submitted for the Polar Security Cutter program, two were from U.S. shipyards partnered with European firms that had previously designed and built icebreakers. The winning bid from VT Halter was, bizarrely, the only bid without an experienced partner.
The U.S. has made some gestures to try and improve its icebreaker construction with the ICE Pact, a non-binding agreement to collaborate and share information on icebreaker design and construction. But experts appear skeptical as to whether this will have much impact, as it’s predicated on attracting foreign orders for U.S.-built icebreakers that aren’t likely to materialize.
Conclusion
With icebreakers, we see a microcosm of the broader problems we looked at in U.S. shipbuilding. Icebreakers are far more expensive to build (and take much longer to build) in the U.S. than in foreign shipyards, and it’s only a series of protectionist laws that drive any icebreaker construction here at all.
We also see the same cultural issues that we saw with American shipbuilding more broadly. There seems to be a lack of motivation to take maritime issues seriously or treat them as important. For decades, the U.S. has been willing to accept an undersized icebreaker fleet – complaints about insufficient icebreakers date back to the 1980s. There appears to be little interest in trying to ameliorate this by acquiring foreign icebreakers, even though that would be comparatively simple, far cheaper, and far faster. And the Coast Guard apparently did not think icebreakers were important enough to select a team for building them that had icebreaker experience, even though it’s a niche, specialized area of marine construction.
As a result, icebreaking can be added to the list of things like dredging and offshore wind turbine installation: areas that have been shackled to America’s inefficient shipbuilding industry and have inflicted costs on the country in the process.
Much of this information comes from Peter Rybski’s substack, 60 Degrees North, which I highly recommend if you’re interested in learning more about icebreakers and icebreaker policy. Thanks to Peter for reading a draft of this. All errors are my own.
For those interested in reading more about icebreakers, and about shipbuilding, a recommended reading list is available here for paid subscribers.
Per Peter Rybski: “Icebreaker is rather hard to define. There is the 'popular' method, in which all ice-capable ships are called icebreakers. There is a 'technical' method, in which only vessels that are classified as icebreakers (as opposed to only Polar Class) are icebreakers. And there is a third method (which is sometimes used with older vessels – before the Polar Code – based on the purpose of the vessel).”
Interesting article. It seems like the US (and other Western nations) should just purchase Finnish icebreakers. With the low volumes of production, it does not make sense for each nation to build their own design. This solution is even better now that Finland is part of NATO.
What an indictment of American manufacturing and construction abilities. Like airlines, autos, defense aircraft and so much more, America has lost is way and there seems little incentive get it back, even as we sanction and war our way to de-globalization. How long can this go on before everything just sort of grinds (literally) to a halt?