Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel unveiled an Arctic Strategy that puts the department on a slow path to incorporating Arctic-focused procurement, training, international partnerships and more into the mix of global requirements, as climate change promises to bring in more people seeking travel and economic opportunities.
Hagel, speaking Friday from Halifax, Nova Scotia, said the department will increase its investment the Arctic region slowly, but the need to start planning and monitoring activities, as well as defining interagency and international collaborative relationships, is immediate.
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| The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea, above, is among the Coast Guard’s Arctic-focused assets the Defense Department would likely rely upon as it increases its attention on the region in an interagency, international, collaborative manner, a senior defense official said Friday. |
“Climate change is shifting the landscape in the Arctic more rapidly than anywhere else in the world,” he said. “While the Arctic temperature rise is relatively small in absolute terms, its effects are significant–transforming what was a frozen desert into an evolving navigable ocean, giving rise to an unprecedented level of human activity. Traffic in the Northern Sea Route is reportedly expected to increase tenfold this year compared to last year.”
A senior defense official, speaking to reporters ahead of Hagel’s speech Friday, said that the approach takes a decades-long look at how to incorporate various Arctic activities into the military’s plans–increased search and rescue capabilities, protecting exclusive economic zones, preserving freedom of navigation and more.
“The defense strategy is really in support of the president’s strategy to further define exactly what DoD should be thinking about and looking at in the region,” the official said, noting that the president signed the National Strategy for the Arctic Region in May. “Primarily, the DoD strategy, and DoD as a department, sees these changes in the Arctic really as largely representing opportunities to work collaboratively with allies and partners in the region to keep it safe, secure and stable, particularly where U.S. national interests are safeguarded, and of course protecting the U.S. homeland.”
Doing so does come with a cost, however, as the military is largely unprepared for operations in such an extreme environment. The Coast Guard owns a fleet of ice breakers but the Navy has none, and the services are still building up the endurance of their airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets that would be useful in the vast Arctic region.
The defense official said that many of the new capabilities DoD might need for increased operations in the Arctic would have long-lead times to research, engineer and procure.
“Some of those we are looking at already: the Navy, for example, is looking at issues with regard to how to operate safely in those types of environments,” the official said.
However, budget cuts currently limiting DoD investments could mean that some research into Arctic-relevant technologies will have to wait until Congress can undo sequestration or sequestration ends on its own after a decade of suppressing investment.
“Sequestration will make it very, very difficult for us to balance the priorities we have around the world from a DoD perspective, and it’s making it particularly tough to balance near-term needs against longer-term needs,” the official said. “We are working very hard, as I think you’ve heard the secretary and the deputy secretary say in the past on sequestration, to preserve longer-term investments so that we don’t lose those.”
The department will begin talks with the Coast Guard and other federal entities, with Alaska state offices, with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and with international partners to sort out what role each organization ought to play in ensuring a safe and secure increase in activity in the region. Pending those discussions and the rate of increase in activity in the Arctic, DoD would decide how rapidly it needs to start investing in new equipment.