Speaker 1: Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Speaker 1: Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
Speaker 1: for a discussion of national security issues and all things
Speaker 1: maritime and good to everybody. Welcome board for another edition
Speaker 1: of mid Rats, and for those that are with us
Speaker 1: live if you are so inclined, as always, we have
Speaker 1: the live stream chat up and running. Paul's already there
Speaker 1: ready to welcome you. And if you have some observations
Speaker 1: you wanted to share during the course of the show,
Speaker 1: are even a question you would like for us to
Speaker 1: direct to our guests, that is the perfect place to
Speaker 1: do it because we'll monitor it during the course of
Speaker 1: the show. And if you don't already, go over to iTunes, Spotify, spreaker,
Speaker 1: wherever you aggregate all your podcasts. And if you don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to mid Rats, go ahead and subscribe to us
Speaker 1: that way. If you can't join us live, we'll be
Speaker 1: waiting for you. When you do have time for us
Speaker 1: and today's show, let's just go ahead and dive into it.
Speaker 1: As things just starting to get chilly, there's not a
Speaker 1: better topic out there then, I think the ice around us,
Speaker 1: and when you look at the US territory. One of
Speaker 1: the most militarily and energy strategic spaces we have is
Speaker 1: up in Alaska. We are in our tech nation, and
Speaker 1: we have extensive economic interests with our allies as well, Canada, Denmark,
Speaker 1: Norway up in the Arctic region. But when you look
Speaker 1: at in twenty twenty four, what ship that we have
Speaker 1: icebreakers and not just up there, we have Antarctica requirements
Speaker 1: as well. It's old, it's broken, and decisions were made
Speaker 1: years ago that we needed to get back into the
Speaker 1: icebreaker game.
Speaker 2: I mean, and so we got started, but we're.
Speaker 1: Still not there. And a lot of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we're not there will sound familiar to those that have
Speaker 1: looked at other US industrial based ship building issues. And
Speaker 1: we're bringing on today, I think, just just a great
Speaker 1: guest to talk about this topic and plus one of
Speaker 1: our new allies area as well, and that's Peter Ribsky.
Speaker 1: Pete is a retired nuclear trained service warfare officer whose
Speaker 1: last job on ACTI duty was the US Naval attache
Speaker 1: to Finland, and he loved Finland so much he decided
Speaker 1: that he was going to stay right there and say
Speaker 1: hi to the Russians from a little over one hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, Pete, Welcome.
Speaker 2: To mid Rights.
Speaker 3: Thanks so Mark, happy to be here. It should be
Speaker 3: a pretty good conversation today.
Speaker 1: I think it's great to have a full hour because
Speaker 1: you can fill up a lot of time on icebreakers
Speaker 1: and it seems like kind of a bespoke, unique topic.
Speaker 1: But I think, as the listeners will see over the
Speaker 1: next hour, it touches every bit of your day to
Speaker 1: day life. It's one of those things that goes on
Speaker 1: in shadows that you really don't appreciate it and its
Speaker 1: capabilities and the risks associated with it until you start
Speaker 1: digging into it. But just as a backgrounder, I'm curious
Speaker 1: what takes a nice American nuclear trained swow and decides,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to retire and plant my flag.
Speaker 2: Way up north in Finland. Talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: how you decided to stay.
Speaker 1: Put and how are you transitioning to a language nobody
Speaker 1: can really understand.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty good question, and I have kind of
Speaker 3: This story starts with the typical Navy situation for those
Speaker 3: of us who've been around for a bit, this happens
Speaker 3: in everyone's career. So I was coming off with c duty.
Speaker 3: I was the auxiliaries officer around the George W. Bush,
Speaker 3: and I had had a short job lined up. I
Speaker 3: was going out to Damn Neck, Virginia to teach leadership
Speaker 3: to a bunch of reservists for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: And it was Thanksgiving a week and I was just
Speaker 3: PCSD and my phone rang one of those Sunday phone
Speaker 3: calls that said, we need to talk about where you
Speaker 3: think you're going next, Like, well, I've already left. Well,
Speaker 3: what had happened is over on the Theodore Roosevelt, which
Speaker 3: was in refueling overall at the time. Their assistant reactor
Speaker 3: officer had felt some severe back problems. To make a
Speaker 3: long story short, my short tour became three years on
Speaker 3: the Theodore Roosevelt, from taking out of overhaul to a deployment.
Speaker 3: The fortunate thing was the same. I had the same
Speaker 3: detailer when that happened as when I left Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 3: three years later. So part of the deal, he looked
Speaker 3: at me and said, well, where do you want to go.
Speaker 3: I'll help you get there. And I've always wanted the
Speaker 3: Navy to teach me a foreign language, so I volunteered
Speaker 3: for the at HAS Shape program. I got released, went
Speaker 3: to interview and compete, and there were two spots open
Speaker 3: at the time, at least two spots where the family
Speaker 3: didn't have to take malariy pills. One was Athens, Greece,
Speaker 3: and one was Helsinki, Finland. At the time, Athens was
Speaker 3: pretty much on fire. People were bernie tires in the streets.
Speaker 3: You couldn't get cash out of the ATM. So the
Speaker 3: wife and I talked about it and decided we'd try
Speaker 3: out the Nordics for a bit. I'd already been in
Speaker 3: the area with a short tour that I did in
Speaker 3: London when I was a young lieutenant at the former
Speaker 3: Naval Forces Year of Headquarters, the Year of Language, six
Speaker 3: months of at that say school, and packed the bags
Speaker 3: for Finland. I was in the atche job for about
Speaker 3: three and a half years. It was three years and
Speaker 3: I extended because of COVID they couldn't move folks back
Speaker 3: and forth so easily, so it took an extra year,
Speaker 3: and then retired in twenty twenty one. In the interim,
Speaker 3: my wife picked up employment here in Helsinki. She works
Speaker 3: for the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats,
Speaker 3: where they do a lot of counter Russian disinformation in
Speaker 3: the Balkans and in the Eastern Europe. And she's the
Speaker 3: US rep there working right now as a DoD contractor.
Speaker 3: So she has a great job.
Speaker 4: She likes it.
Speaker 3: The kids are well planted in their schools, so when
Speaker 3: retirement came along, it just was natural just stick around.
Speaker 3: So it's been now three years since retirement. Then we
Speaker 3: just bought a house here last year. So everyone asked
Speaker 3: when we're coming back to the US, and the answer is,
Speaker 3: I just don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, that's a good answer. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about about your interest in icebreakers and how you developed
Speaker 5: that interest. I know from your substack location, which the
Speaker 5: Lake will put up in the chat room. But what
Speaker 5: got yours in icebreakers?
Speaker 3: Well, icebreakers were in the news as I came over
Speaker 3: here in mid twenty seventeen. The Coastguard was there. It
Speaker 3: kept talking about funding an icebreaker, funding an icebreaker. Finland
Speaker 3: is known for its sort of icebreaker. The infrastructure for
Speaker 3: the designers, the shipyards, the equipment manufacturers, they are all
Speaker 3: located here. So I had a passing. Well, I had
Speaker 3: an idea when I got here that icebreakers would play
Speaker 3: a large role. But the first visit I actually did.
Speaker 3: I got here in June of twenty seventeen. The first
Speaker 3: visit we had was the comment to the Coastguard who
Speaker 3: came here in November of twenty seventeen. Right around the
Speaker 3: same time the Second of Defense made a visit. So
Speaker 3: as a young at Shay, I handled the Coast Guard
Speaker 3: visit on my own, which is fine and one of
Speaker 3: the things that the Finns did, and as they've been
Speaker 3: doing for years, is well to back up a second
Speaker 3: cooperation between Finland and the US and ice breakers goes
Speaker 3: all the way back. A friend of mine here has
Speaker 3: been researching it and found stuff from the Ford administration
Speaker 3: which talks about it. But he we some of the
Speaker 3: other ice breakers in our inventory are based on Finish design.
Speaker 3: There's intellectual property changes and all this sort of things.
Speaker 3: So with Coastguard icebreakers in the news and the command
Speaker 3: of the Coast Guard here, the first thing we did
Speaker 3: was tour basically one of Finland's ice breakers who went
Speaker 3: to the company that operates their ice breakers, toured the
Speaker 3: polarists toward another one of the ice breakers went to
Speaker 3: the design company, saw their ice test tank, talked to
Speaker 3: some of the naval architects went to where they manufactured
Speaker 3: the azipods down the east side of of Helsinki, or
Speaker 3: they assembled them all.
Speaker 4: They have a simulator there that we test drove around.
Speaker 3: So right from the get go, icebreakers were in front
Speaker 3: of me, and as a good Navy nuke and an
Speaker 3: interested engineer, and I just dove right in and we
Speaker 3: went to the engine room on a couple of these
Speaker 3: ice breakers, and everyone's walking around and listening to the
Speaker 3: crew give us the briefing. I'm there peering underneath the
Speaker 3: diesel engines, is looking for lou Boy leagues, and I
Speaker 3: can't help myself. The engine rooms were pristine, the machines
Speaker 3: were so well maintained, and that sort of brought about
Speaker 3: this interest, and well, I should learn about this. And
Speaker 3: because of the persistent interest in icebreakers by the Coast
Speaker 3: Guard by congressional delegations during the Trump administration, this just
Speaker 3: built up from there. So it started quite with that
Speaker 3: one visit, and then every time we'd bring a Coast
Speaker 3: Guard officer here, which was quite frequent early on because
Speaker 3: Finlan was chair of the Coast Guard Arctic Forum at
Speaker 3: the time, we'd go ahead and do something icebreaker related.
Speaker 3: So I've I think I've had many many coast Guard
Speaker 3: business during my time in the Cetus and Naval Atsche,
Speaker 3: and we'd bring the navy folks out as well to
Speaker 3: see some of the technology involved in modern ice breaking.
Speaker 3: So that's what really sparked the interest, because I find
Speaker 3: them fascinating and just learning how they operate, Learning how
Speaker 3: the more modern machines operate and how the development happened
Speaker 3: from these sort of older idea to the more modern
Speaker 3: ships has been a fascinating stuff for me.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that struck me as I started
Speaker 1: to do my show prep and to dig into this
Speaker 1: a little bit more is, you know, we're a nation
Speaker 1: of three hundred and thirty five million souls. We've got
Speaker 1: the big Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, we have property up
Speaker 1: in Alaska that the borders on the Arctic Ocean. You know,
Speaker 1: we're big. We're a big nation. We're all over the place,
Speaker 1: and you have Finland, little Scandinavian country with an interesting
Speaker 1: language tucked away five and a half million souls. Yet
Speaker 1: from a couple of the articles that I've dug up,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of the ice breakers in the world were
Speaker 1: designed in Finland, and they actually build sixty percent of them,
Speaker 1: so you would think that it is. The Coastguard took
Speaker 1: over the ice breakers from the Navy back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, so nothing new for him. So as you know,
Speaker 1: we as a nation, we're deciding that, you know, we
Speaker 1: need to go go ahead and build our ice breakers
Speaker 1: and go out and start bidding it. That process started.
Speaker 1: I think in like twenty ten that Finland would be
Speaker 1: one of our at that time friendly nations. Now as
Speaker 1: a NATO ally we would really lean on. But it
Speaker 1: hasn't quite turned out that way in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: with what we're trying to do with ice breakers, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate. And talk for a little bit for the
Speaker 1: listeners that might not be aware that it's not an accident.
Speaker 1: Why Finland really knows icebreakers? Knows icebreakers?
Speaker 4: Well, right, it's definitely not.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: If you could pull up some of these ice charts
Speaker 3: which show the persistent sea ice, and you'll see the
Speaker 3: maximum extent. For example, you'll see ice off Alaska. You
Speaker 3: won't see much ice in the Northern Atlantic. But if
Speaker 3: you peel into the Baltic and go to sort of
Speaker 3: the north up there, which is called the Gulf of
Speaker 3: Bothnia at the Day of Basnia. Around Finland, you will
Speaker 3: see ice indicated every year sort of on that western
Speaker 3: coast of Finland. And what happens is that the Baltic's
Speaker 3: a little less salty than the Atlantic Ocean, so the
Speaker 3: ice form is a little bit quicker, and then you
Speaker 3: have a persistent wind that blows west to eat so
Speaker 3: it's not only the ice forming, but the ice that
Speaker 3: hits the land and stacks and stacks and stacks has forms,
Speaker 3: large ridges and large bits of ice that are quite
Speaker 3: quite difficult to penetrate. So with an environment like this,
Speaker 3: if you want to import and export goods twelve months
Speaker 3: out of the year, you need a way to keep
Speaker 3: the ports open. And it's really only been since the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies that that's been a national thing where they're
Speaker 3: able to actually keep the designated ports open for import
Speaker 3: and export during the winter. So what you have is
Speaker 3: these rather difficult ice breaking conditions, even by some of
Speaker 3: the polar standards, just with the way the ice blows
Speaker 3: around and the pressure on the ice and how it
Speaker 3: stacks up. So you need that if you want to
Speaker 3: eat fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter, if you
Speaker 3: want to export goods, particularly lumber and other goods from
Speaker 3: the North back to the other parts of Europe because
Speaker 3: the rail connections don't work these days. I mean, I
Speaker 3: didn't know what I got here, but the rail here
Speaker 3: is all Soviet gauge and there's only one narrow connection
Speaker 3: to Sweden, so most stuff has to come by sea.
Speaker 3: So in order to keep those ports open, this is
Speaker 3: what the Fins are specialized in. I mean they built
Speaker 3: their own ice breakers. They build ice breakers for commercial use,
Speaker 3: and back when we are more friendly with Russia, if
Speaker 3: they built a lot of icebreakers for Russia and before
Speaker 3: Russia the Soviet Union. So they've taken what they've learned
Speaker 3: in the iterative designs of ice breakers to keep their
Speaker 3: own ports open, applied it to ice breaking in general
Speaker 3: and have developed quite the ability to build all kinds
Speaker 3: of ice breakers, and not just sort of Baltic c
Speaker 3: es coort ice breakers, but Arctic research vessels and the
Speaker 3: whole like. It's one of the things that the Fins
Speaker 3: focus on. It is a government support and industry. I
Speaker 3: think in order to keep for a takeover of some
Speaker 3: of the assets, the government has stepped into some of
Speaker 3: the companies and taken an ownership stake, just recognizing that
Speaker 3: it is of national interest. But basically up here everything
Speaker 3: does freeze, and if you don't have the ships, you
Speaker 3: can't keep the trade flowing.
Speaker 5: Well, let's talk a little bit about why the sudden
Speaker 5: what seems to be sudden. I know what didn't exactly
Speaker 5: like within the last ten minutes, but within the last
Speaker 5: ten years, all of a sudden, there seems to be
Speaker 5: a huge effort on the US to get back on
Speaker 5: the icebreaker game. Why is that and what are the
Speaker 5: steps that we've taken some tennity steps south and talking
Speaker 5: about the PSCs, but what other things are we doing
Speaker 5: to try and get back in that game.
Speaker 3: So if you want to get your blood pressure up
Speaker 3: a little bit, you can. We've been doing studies the
Speaker 3: Coast Guard, the government in various forms that I have
Speaker 3: tracked going back to the Reagan administration saying we need
Speaker 3: more icebreakers. You have this nineteen eighty three report in
Speaker 3: front of me that says we need four, that then
Speaker 3: we had three, and you can just read all the
Speaker 3: paper of all the analysis. But what really sparkled about
Speaker 3: ten years ago was was with the Polar Region to
Speaker 3: be the Arctics become more accessible during the summer, so
Speaker 3: you have an increase in traffic, you have an increase
Speaker 3: in ocean traffic, cruise traffic, and a lot of goods
Speaker 3: and services are starting to flow in the high latitudes.
Speaker 3: And because of that, the Coastguard needs to do traditional
Speaker 3: coast guard functions. And this really is coming in about
Speaker 3: the past ten years. It's unbelievable. But in two thousand
Speaker 3: and six they actually essentially gave funding for the ice
Speaker 3: breaker program to the National Science Foundation to support science missions,
Speaker 3: and they had to negotiate with the Coast Guard how
Speaker 3: many days each year and it would become a funding difficulty.
Speaker 4: So they gave it back to the Coast Guard.
Speaker 3: But at that point I think that you had these studies,
Speaker 3: but when it comes to priorities, Dell melting sea ice
Speaker 3: and access to the Arctic was in the future, not
Speaker 3: in the present. So that ball that can just get
Speaker 3: it kept getting pushed down the road. And with two
Speaker 3: ice breakers, are one ice breaker available at some points
Speaker 3: in time that was sufficient to do the National Science
Speaker 3: Foundation missions or the Antarctic break in mission, which is
Speaker 3: what one of our two ice breakers does right now.
Speaker 3: So there wasn't this sort of although some people saw
Speaker 3: it coming, it wasn't really a priority and didn't get
Speaker 3: the funding. And now when you look at these mission
Speaker 3: sets that the Coastguard has been ignoring for the past
Speaker 3: twenty twenty years, and some of the ideas of how
Speaker 3: they would use ice breakers to just patrol our own
Speaker 3: territorial waters, our own exclusive economic zone, patrol our extended
Speaker 3: continental shelf in the north slope of Alaska when you
Speaker 3: have significant Russian traffic going back and forth. Now there's
Speaker 3: suddenly an interest saying, well, wait a minute, we need
Speaker 3: to have ships capable of operating up there, are ships
Speaker 3: capable of ensuring that the Navy can operate up there,
Speaker 3: just because you know, that's where the Russians are, that's
Speaker 3: where the Chinese are, and they can operate rather freely
Speaker 3: up there because of the number and capability of their
Speaker 3: ice breakers and their ice capable vessels. So we need
Speaker 3: to have a presence there as well. Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 3: if you can't patrol it, if you can't control it,
Speaker 3: and it should things go poorly that you can't contest it.
Speaker 1: In the congressional testimony that you're referencing your article, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of I'll go ahead and say it,
Speaker 1: a lot of excuses in finger pointing on the US
Speaker 1: Coast Guard with the problems they have, part of which
Speaker 1: was included they did mention, you know, we haven't built
Speaker 1: an ice breaker in fifty years, like you can't pick
Speaker 1: up the phone and talk to somebody who has. And
Speaker 1: they also talk about something that has been a common
Speaker 1: point of contention for a lot of people in the industry.
Speaker 1: I know this has been an issue for the people
Speaker 1: trying to build the Constellation class frigates and others, and
Speaker 1: that has to do with having the artisans and work
Speaker 1: which if you do quality welding, that is an art
Speaker 1: you know, welders, ship fitters, you know, everybody that goes
Speaker 1: into building a ship just having trouble finding the people
Speaker 1: to do it. And the one thing that has always
Speaker 1: bothered me in the series of excuses has been the
Speaker 1: one we haven't built one in fifty years. When you
Speaker 1: look at you know, the People's Republic of China, which
Speaker 1: is not an artic nation, though they're making themselves one.
Speaker 1: They and I'm going to quote a little bit from
Speaker 1: an article over g Captain that went out this August
Speaker 1: quote Chinese shipyards have constructed ice breaking research vessels at
Speaker 1: an impressive rate, albeit smaller in size than the much
Speaker 1: delayed US Polar Security cutter. The construction of the Jedi
Speaker 1: and Tensu Hung how are you prodounceing that took only
Speaker 1: around two years from first steel cutting to completion. The
Speaker 1: much larger jue Long To, China's first domestically built polar
Speaker 1: ice breaker, was completed in twenty nineteen, in under three years.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to this story than just the fact
Speaker 1: that we don't produce enough welders or that we don't
Speaker 1: know how to pick up the phone. Is that there's
Speaker 1: an undercurrent here and a lot of echoes that whatever
Speaker 1: different inputs came into how the US Navy and the
Speaker 1: US Coast Guard builds, procures, and manages a program ship,
Speaker 1: it's simply not working. When other nations who it hasn't
Speaker 1: been fifty years, they've never done it, they have the
Speaker 1: ability to turn to and make it happen. Both nations
Speaker 1: that only have five point five million people compared to
Speaker 1: our three hundred and thirty five are nations that have
Speaker 1: over a billion more people than we do in population.
Speaker 1: There's a larger issue at stake here than just a
Speaker 1: couple of program managers having trouble working with a shipyard build.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, part of it is just the mess that
Speaker 3: is us procurement when it comes to ships. I don't
Speaker 3: have a wide range of experience and knowledge of the
Speaker 3: constellation class, but I look and it just seems it
Speaker 3: rhymes quite well. One of the things, for example, you
Speaker 3: brought up the Chinese vessels. So the Shway Long two,
Speaker 3: which was built in three years, that's a finished design.
Speaker 3: It was designed right down the road here at acker Arctic.
Speaker 3: It was tested in the ice tank at acher Arctic.
Speaker 3: Than an ocher Arctic. They had a couple of guys
Speaker 3: in China who oversaw production to make sure that their
Speaker 3: brand quality was maintained and construction of the vessel. So
Speaker 3: the Chinese basically did it right. They went to the
Speaker 3: people who know how to build ice breakers and they said,
Speaker 3: we want you to design one that we can build,
Speaker 3: and Oker did, and then they overseed construction and there
Speaker 3: it came out some of the smaller vessels. I think
Speaker 3: most of the Chinese vessels these days. There's only two
Speaker 3: of their recent vessels that had been designed in house.
Speaker 3: And although they were designed in house. They're actually ice
Speaker 3: tested here in Finland in the ice tanks. So basically
Speaker 3: they went to the experts and they didn't let themselves
Speaker 3: get in the way so much. From an outside perspective,
Speaker 3: it seems to be that their own designs that they're
Speaker 3: building right now are not quite as capable as the
Speaker 3: one that they that they purchased and got from Finland.
Speaker 3: But they are making steps and producing them and there's
Speaker 3: nothing magic about making an ice breaker. One of NATO's
Speaker 3: most capable icebreaker is a French cruise ship right now.
Speaker 3: That cruise ship, the La Commandant Scharco, is a polar
Speaker 3: class two ice breaker. It's the best thing NATO has
Speaker 3: and it was built in a Romanian shipyard. The Romanians,
Speaker 3: what do they know about building ice breakers? Well, the
Speaker 3: company that does the design work and varred at the shipyard, Bonner.
Speaker 3: It came together and made sure that the design not
Speaker 3: other requirements and that it could actually be built. And
Speaker 3: I think we missed that US Coast Guard. It seems
Speaker 3: to me to use a Navy comparison that, but I
Speaker 3: think is probably still true. But ice breaking in the
Speaker 3: coast Guard is like my warfare in the United States
Speaker 3: Navy is this backwater of people who are doing a
Speaker 3: great mission of working really hard, but the broader Coast
Speaker 3: Guard could care less until they really need it, until
Speaker 3: things really keyed up there. One of the frustrating things
Speaker 3: about watching this congressional testimony over and over again is
Speaker 3: how you hear the same things and if you were
Speaker 3: to ask the same question in five consecutive hearings, can
Speaker 3: you give example of a successful commercial icebreaker program? I
Speaker 3: don't think anyone can answer it. Why the information's out there,
Speaker 3: it's not hard to find. You can look at these
Speaker 3: things and see them, but it just doesn't seem although
Speaker 3: it stated as our top priority or a top priority,
Speaker 3: it just doesn't really seem to be. I don't quite
Speaker 3: understand this. I've seen a lot of resistance since twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen when I would see some of the senior Coast
Speaker 3: Guard officials who had travel to Finland and they make
Speaker 3: comments like, oh, can you believe the Finns are trying
Speaker 3: to push their medium Baltic sea ice breakers on us.
Speaker 3: They can't build anything that we need, Like, well, you're wrong.
Speaker 3: The Finns built one of the Russians nuclear ice breakers
Speaker 3: here at Helsinki's shipyard. Of course, the reactor plants were
Speaker 3: added separately later on, but these things can be done
Speaker 3: here and again, like three days ago, I was talking
Speaker 3: to someone back in DC who said that another, perhaps different,
Speaker 3: unnamed senior official had stated the same thing. I can't
Speaker 3: believe we're talking about Finland again. They can't do anything
Speaker 3: that we need.
Speaker 4: So it just seems to.
Speaker 3: Be almost a will for willful ignorance in what we
Speaker 3: see or hear from the Coast Guard leadership on this issue.
Speaker 3: And it's not really that hard now. I think they
Speaker 3: did make it harder on themselves if you go back
Speaker 3: to the bidding process. This the polar security cutter started
Speaker 3: with with these study designs where they picked five shipyards,
Speaker 3: told them to find a partner and you know, come
Speaker 3: back with the design study. And then from there they
Speaker 3: narrowed it down and the three finalists, at least two
Speaker 3: of them involved a company that had experienced with ice breaking.
Speaker 3: The three finalists were as VT Halter, then it was
Speaker 3: Philly Shipyard partnership with ocher Arctic and Vard and it
Speaker 3: was a Bullinger and they are partnered with a Danish company.
Speaker 4: That's designed some ice capable.
Speaker 3: Vessels on which one did we pick the one with
Speaker 3: zero experience building ice breakers?
Speaker 2: And it just.
Speaker 3: Seems to me that it didn't need to be this difficult,
Speaker 3: and frankly, I do have problems sometimes understanding it. An
Speaker 3: example I can give of resistance is that the Coastguard
Speaker 3: just purchased this commercially available icebreaker, the Ivik, which was
Speaker 3: built for some offshore oil operation support off of Alaska,
Speaker 3: and they asked for the money last year and the
Speaker 3: finalized purpose of it, and they panted Coastguard icebreaker read
Speaker 3: and it should be up operating in Alaska by twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six. That was proposed almost ten years ago, but
Speaker 3: the Coast Guard kept saying, no, thank you, we don't
Speaker 3: want it, we don't need it, until about two years
Speaker 3: ago when it was, oh, thank you, Congress, please give
Speaker 3: us the money we need to buy this ship. So
Speaker 3: there are some things and solutions that are out there.
Speaker 3: It just seemed like the Coastguard wanted to bet all
Speaker 3: on this one billion dollar initial cost icebreaker that was
Speaker 3: going to do everything. I guess they figured we're only
Speaker 3: going to get a couple, we might as well make
Speaker 3: them awesome, and that that perfect became the enemy of
Speaker 3: the good enough and of the icebreakers available right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been interesting. I mean, Salim, I've been talking
Speaker 5: about icebreakers almost as long as we've had this this podcast.
Speaker 5: You know, it is one of those neglected areas. We
Speaker 5: also have mentioned iron warfare and a lot of other
Speaker 5: things that like replenishment and things like that that.
Speaker 2: People just forget about.
Speaker 5: It's been interesting to watch this process because the I
Speaker 5: found it. There's a there was an old press release
Speaker 5: after VT Alter got this through twenty nineteen, so out
Speaker 5: of the US, and I knew Sam Lagron and they're
Speaker 5: talking about the ship's combat system on the on the
Speaker 5: on the proposed PCs as I guess here, and they're
Speaker 5: talking about how it would be based on the Aegis
Speaker 5: combat system, and it says the Coastguard is still mulling
Speaker 5: over the weapons load out. I'm trying to figure out.
Speaker 5: And this is the problem of the constellation A lot
Speaker 5: of other the ships that we build or attempt to
Speaker 5: build in the US is that somebody comes in the
Speaker 5: LCS class example, somebody comes in with a design and
Speaker 5: then and then all the the other people get it
Speaker 5: start adding things to it. Pretty soon you've got you know,
Speaker 5: an elephant instead of the horse you meant to design.
Speaker 5: So how much do you see that as as an
Speaker 5: impact on why we can't get this done quickly? Is
Speaker 5: it the requirements have changed and they change a midstream
Speaker 5: The Coast Guard really isn't that interested? What is the
Speaker 5: what is what are the big holdbacks on this?
Speaker 3: It's hard to say because that the process isn't very transparent.
Speaker 3: I've heard from a few folks who had who had
Speaker 3: worked at VT Altar early on, and they mentioned some
Speaker 3: of the big initial problems that there was a well
Speaker 3: to back up a second, the Coast Guard, in trying
Speaker 3: to mitigate risk, they require that all the bids be
Speaker 3: based on a parent design. Now, most naval architects I
Speaker 3: talked to think the idea of a parent design it
Speaker 3: has its place, but in general it's not worth it
Speaker 3: because for that time, especially in something like an icebreaker.
Speaker 3: I mean here in Finland, with decades of data on
Speaker 3: hull forms, hull shape sizes, propulsion needs, they can custom
Speaker 3: design use something based on proven concepts rather quickly. But
Speaker 3: the Coast Guards selected a design for a ship that
Speaker 3: still hasn't been built. It's a German research icebreaker. Called
Speaker 3: the polar Stern two, which exists in a design at
Speaker 3: some level.
Speaker 4: The ship's out.
Speaker 3: It's out forbids right now apparently, but I've been told
Speaker 3: that the German government again doesn't have any money to
Speaker 3: build it, so it's not going to go anywhere. But
Speaker 3: the problem with this design, as I've heard it, was
Speaker 3: that initially, basically the DC deck was below the water line,
Speaker 3: so they had to start from scratch. There is some
Speaker 3: change involved that created an iterative iterative changes which changed
Speaker 3: the size of the ship, the propulsion requirements, the endurance requirements,
Speaker 3: everything else, and it almost went back to square one design.
Speaker 3: And the ship guard blames COVID and all these things,
Speaker 3: but that's me. There are other shipyards in the world
Speaker 3: who do this very well. I mentioned this cruise ship
Speaker 3: Lacammandade Charcot that was five and a half years from
Speaker 3: you know, a white paper design to the north Pole.
Speaker 3: He built very quickly, even though it's it's state of
Speaker 3: the art and it has a lot of things that
Speaker 3: hadn't been done before. So I'm not certain what the
Speaker 3: problem or the backup is with Bolinger and or vt
Speaker 3: Altar before. In Bolinger now, I wish there was more
Speaker 3: transparency on it as a taxpayer, especially because the Congressional
Speaker 3: Budget Office basically says that this thing is going to
Speaker 3: cost not one billion for the first one, but probably
Speaker 3: about two billion, and then if you buy all three
Speaker 3: instead of costing two point seven, we're going to be
Speaker 3: spending over five billion.
Speaker 4: The Finns look at me and they're like what.
Speaker 3: They look at me like I'm crazy when I talk
Speaker 3: about billion dollar ice breakers as something that we had
Speaker 3: discussed in the past. Back during the Trump administration, there
Speaker 3: was a memo in twenty nineteen which are twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: which basically said at tasks the Coastguard, Homeland Security, State
Speaker 3: Department in the Navy with basically taking a look at
Speaker 3: existing ice breakers in the world for purchase, release, and
Speaker 3: then construct of new icebreakers and allied and partnership yards.
Speaker 4: Well, we went and looked at all this.
Speaker 3: We got some pretty good ideas of what it would
Speaker 3: cost to build a ship that would meet the Coastguard's
Speaker 3: icebreaking requirements. Now, it might not do all the other
Speaker 3: things that you wanted to do, but one of the
Speaker 3: arguments that I found persuasive was, well, if you spend
Speaker 3: a lot less on ice breakers, Let's say you have
Speaker 3: a billion to spend on one ice breaker, and you
Speaker 3: can get one here for let's say three hundred million.
Speaker 3: Well that frees you up to buy two national security
Speaker 3: cutters in the aggregate if you do a couple of
Speaker 3: these to buy a couple other cutters. Now you have
Speaker 3: a mission package if you have an escort capable icebreaker
Speaker 3: and you have a national security cutter. So if you
Speaker 3: want to operate off of Alaska, you put them in tandem.
Speaker 4: If you only want the.
Speaker 3: Icebreaker off of Alaska, you have that for patrol mission,
Speaker 3: you get send your cutter somewhere else. It just it
Speaker 3: made a lot of sense, but again it was it
Speaker 3: felt like we were talking to brick walls when we
Speaker 3: were bringing this up with Coastguard leadership at the time.
Speaker 3: They just didn't want to entertain anything except their billion
Speaker 3: dollar ice breaker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can see why Thins will just sterer at you
Speaker 1: and blink a lot five point one billion for three
Speaker 1: ships while they're talking. I just let let my fingers
Speaker 1: do the walking through Google. Here.
Speaker 2: The defense budget in Finland next.
Speaker 1: Year is going to be just a tad north of
Speaker 1: six billion, so it's you know, five to six of
Speaker 1: their annual defense budget on three ice breakers, and it's
Speaker 1: problem appreciation from our appreciation of problem department, is the
Speaker 1: acquisitions reform that everybody that we've talked to over the
Speaker 1: years about other systems, and we can throw the icebreaker
Speaker 1: program in it. It all has a common thread of
Speaker 1: the dysfunction of the system we have right now that
Speaker 1: again we control because we designed it. There are other
Speaker 1: nations with fewer assets to draw on that are able
Speaker 1: to produce more, better, faster than we do. So it's
Speaker 1: an internal problem that we have to solve.
Speaker 2: And there is a quote in that I think.
Speaker 1: Is endemic to a lot of the issues, but from
Speaker 1: your article in May, I believe it was where I
Speaker 1: got it from quote political milestones were more important than
Speaker 1: reducing program risk and getting a better product. Unquote where
Speaker 1: it looks like the goal of our system is to
Speaker 1: get the money first and figure it out later. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether that mindset has worked at all in
Speaker 1: the last quarter century. And so we're looking at having
Speaker 1: our icebreakers ready to go. It was it twenty seven
Speaker 1: or twenty nine, and it's not even a mature design yet,
Speaker 1: even though they've already cut steel on it.
Speaker 4: Is it no, it's not.
Speaker 3: And they've built a couple modules. I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: they're going to be using the final product or not,
Speaker 3: but right they haven't even cut steel. If they're promising
Speaker 3: to begin construction by the end of this year, regardless
Speaker 3: of how far along the design is. I've heard that
Speaker 3: congressional testimony couple of times. You know, it just doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to I have a hard time understanding why it's
Speaker 3: taking this long. I mean, as many people are. Just
Speaker 3: back to your cost point for one quick second. The
Speaker 3: Fins are building four ice capable corvettes right now. They're
Speaker 3: multi mission ships. They're looking into ages for them at first,
Speaker 3: but they had to decline it just because of the cost.
Speaker 3: Because the total cost for four they're really frigates but
Speaker 3: they call them corvettes is going to be about one
Speaker 3: point two billion. For four it's a three hundred milliship.
Speaker 3: And then they're not icebreakers per se, but they're enough
Speaker 3: to go anywhere in the Baltic Sea they need to
Speaker 3: go regardless of the ice conditions, so they're going to
Speaker 3: be quite capable and coming in at that cost. The
Speaker 3: cruise ship I mentioned, which I pulled into Helsinki a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago and I had the chance to
Speaker 3: go a toy. I mean it is really an icebreaker.
Speaker 4: Is powerful.
Speaker 3: It's been to the North Pole, it's been down off
Speaker 3: into the raw Sea, it's been right off of a
Speaker 3: Mcburdo station. I mean, it's been everywhere we need to go.
Speaker 4: And that was built for.
Speaker 3: About three hundred million US dollars two thousand and six
Speaker 3: dollars at the time. It's just there's something about our
Speaker 3: process that just sucks up dollars and time and produces nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm with you on the problem of appreciation problem. You
Speaker 3: can go back as I have done and watch these
Speaker 3: congressional hearings and it's just the same. It's the same,
Speaker 3: and it's the same, and it's the same, and nothing
Speaker 3: seems to change. Well, I am hopeful that things may change.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, we have restrictions on there's no reason
Speaker 5: conceivably we just couldn't tell the fence, hey, build these
Speaker 5: ships to our specifications, which are your specifications, because you
Speaker 5: know how to do it, and buy them. Except for
Speaker 5: the fact we have this requirement that we can't buy
Speaker 5: ships made in foreign countries, and so we're limited to
Speaker 5: importing the expertise buying some of the components, but no
Speaker 5: more than forty nine percent, I think, and I can't
Speaker 5: remember exact terms, but you know, talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about the impact of the Jones Act and some of
Speaker 5: these other laws have prohibit us from just simply purchasing
Speaker 5: some of these ships.
Speaker 3: Sure, so the governing law for the Coastguard isn't the
Speaker 3: Jones Zach, but it's this Title fourteen US Code, and
Speaker 3: Title fourteen US Code has a provision which basically says
Speaker 3: that all the ships a Coastguard, you know, uses Shelby
Speaker 3: built the United States. But then there's a waiver says
Speaker 3: the President of the United States may issue a national
Speaker 3: security waiver if required. He just has to provide a
Speaker 3: justification for that waiver. So there's a bit of political
Speaker 3: will on this point. This is what we started to
Speaker 3: see in back in twenty twenty at the end of
Speaker 3: the first Trumpet administration where he had President Trump had
Speaker 3: a great relationship with then finished President Sally Ninist and
Speaker 3: they would always talk about icebreakers. Ice breakers were a
Speaker 3: constant theme between the two of them, and there were
Speaker 3: several large visits on this subject and a lot of
Speaker 3: things started moving in a certain direction because the Trumpet
Speaker 3: administration was willing to issue a Title fourteen waiver, I believe,
Speaker 3: and they are working on a medium term solution because
Speaker 3: back at that point in time, the polar security cutter
Speaker 3: was still relatively new. It wasn't you know, the problems
Speaker 3: that have come to light now hadn't come to light
Speaker 3: at that point. But that was still going to be that.
Speaker 3: The long term solution was to build three or or
Speaker 3: more of these vessels. But in the interim there was
Speaker 3: a need for vessels now like there still is four
Speaker 3: years later. And to fulfill that there are two things
Speaker 3: specifically looked at. When was the least or purchase of
Speaker 3: an existing ice breaker and that's when our friend the
Speaker 3: Ivich down there, since it was US built, came to mind.
Speaker 3: And then there are two finish multi purpose ice breakers
Speaker 3: which are available for lease or perhaps purchase more light
Speaker 3: like lease I believe, depends on the politics here at
Speaker 3: the time, that can do polar missions. So that was
Speaker 3: sort of a short term solution. Medium term solution was
Speaker 3: going to build a commercial spec icebreaker in Finland or
Speaker 3: several of them in three or four years. You had
Speaker 3: to shipyard loading at the time here in Finland that
Speaker 3: was feasible if done quickly. So we had there was
Speaker 3: a short term, a medium term, and a long term.
Speaker 3: Part of that midterm wasn't just going to be We're
Speaker 3: just going to open purchase three ice breakers. There was
Speaker 3: an idea of a partnership where you'd have a U
Speaker 3: S shipyard come over here, work with the fins of
Speaker 3: the finished shipyard and partnership on design and building.
Speaker 4: A hull one toll. They toe hull one to.
Speaker 3: The US for a final outfitting in assembly, and then
Speaker 3: you'd begin building whole two in filland or the US wherever,
Speaker 3: with experts from both sides to ensure sort of the
Speaker 3: crawl walk run approach to building a type of ship
Speaker 3: that our shipyards to start experience in building and designing.
Speaker 3: And that was going to be the mid term solution,
Speaker 3: and then these polar security cutters are going to be
Speaker 3: the long term solution. Because the Coast Guard ultimately says
Speaker 3: it needs eight or nine vessels, and that's pretty consistent
Speaker 3: with its mission analysis over the years. It sometimes drops
Speaker 3: to four or five when it gets rid of the
Speaker 3: DoD aspect of that, and by that I mean the
Speaker 3: naval operational concepts for a while.
Speaker 4: So the Coast Guards should.
Speaker 3: Guarantee the Navy twenty four to seven three sixty five
Speaker 3: access to the Arctic and the Antarctics simultaneously. You throw
Speaker 3: those two requirements in here, four to five goes to
Speaker 3: eight or nine, So eight or nine is pretty much
Speaker 3: a consistent numb But if you look at the Coast
Speaker 3: Guard right now, we have two that are one that's
Speaker 3: falling apart. Well, that still has some life left in her,
Speaker 3: but it's not the most capable vessel, and we're playing
Speaker 3: on building three. So if all goes well, we'll sit
Speaker 3: here at twenty forty with three ice breakers and say
Speaker 3: we need eight or nine. So what gets me on
Speaker 3: this is the lack of a long term plan. You
Speaker 3: can criticize the Navy's thirty year shipbuilding plan, but you
Speaker 3: could look at the Navy's thirty year shipbuilding plan. You
Speaker 3: can't look at the Coast guards thirty year shipbuilding plan
Speaker 3: because it doesn't exist, at least publicly.
Speaker 1: One of my little pet hobby horses is not that
Speaker 1: I covet my neighbor's ice hardened corvettes, but I do
Speaker 1: the Danes have an ice hardened I don't know if
Speaker 1: they call it a corvette or an offshore support vessel,
Speaker 1: but it's armed to the teeth. The Fins they are
Speaker 1: what you described as their ice breaking corvette. It also
Speaker 1: is armed to the teeth. The Russians have a new
Speaker 1: was let me dig it up here, Rovius. Here we go,
Speaker 1: Project twenty three five fifty ice class missile armed ice
Speaker 1: capable corvette. And you can look back even to the
Speaker 1: US Navy's history. We had the Wind class ice breakers
Speaker 1: that were built from forty two to two, which for
Speaker 1: their time were armed like a destroyer destroyer escort type
Speaker 1: ships of the same era. But we have that report
Speaker 1: from twenty ten that said we needed six which is
Speaker 1: three of which needed to be heavy. We're working on
Speaker 1: the heavy part and you outline you depend upon how
Speaker 1: you define your terms. We need an additional three doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be heavy, but more ships. Is if the
Speaker 1: Russians have over forty ice breakers, seven of which are nuclear.
Speaker 1: And we know how important Alaska is, we know the
Speaker 1: China's going up there more and the fact that relations
Speaker 1: aren't getting friendlier with either China or the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China, is there any appetite or at least acknowledge
Speaker 1: it of the fact that whether we build three or
Speaker 1: nine icebreakers, at some point that they need to be
Speaker 1: prepared to defend themselves in the Arctic, because all of
Speaker 1: our potential enemies, in some of our allies, seem to
Speaker 1: have done the analysis of the situation such that they
Speaker 1: are going into Arctic armed while we're not.
Speaker 3: Well, most, if not all, polar ice breakers currently are
Speaker 3: not armed beyond the small arms levels.
Speaker 4: The small arms level.
Speaker 3: The Danes and then the Norwegians they have a couple
Speaker 3: of patrol vessels that are armed, but they have a
Speaker 3: specific purpose. So the Danes have greenland they have to
Speaker 3: sort of patrol, and those waters when you're getting close
Speaker 3: do you get they do get icy and you can
Speaker 3: that candle limit access. So the days they haven't need
Speaker 3: to patrol sort of their territory, and their Awegians go
Speaker 3: up this fall Bard they have the same thing. So
Speaker 3: they have to have a ship capable controlling in those areas.
Speaker 3: But those are those are patrol. Those are harder patrol ships.
Speaker 3: They're not true ice breakers. They're not going to go
Speaker 3: up into the hard ice and they're not really going
Speaker 3: to be able to bring anyone with them. Up into
Speaker 3: into hard ice, or into any ice for that matter.
Speaker 3: It's just not the way it is. There is a
Speaker 3: recent exercise and name of it escapes me, but they're
Speaker 3: doing a search and rescue exercise with a cruise ship
Speaker 3: up off of Greenland, and they used the Commandante Charcot,
Speaker 3: this French cruise ship, and that actually broke the ice
Speaker 3: for the patrol vessels to come on in and do
Speaker 3: the rescue operations at one point because the vessels couldn't
Speaker 3: penetrate the ice back around Greenland. So there's when we
Speaker 3: talk about ice breakers. I think this is a good
Speaker 3: point for me to bring this up, that not all
Speaker 3: ice breakers are created equal. I mean, saying icebreaker is
Speaker 3: like saying warship, and that covers your small harbor patrol
Speaker 3: boat and your aircraft carrier with the same turn. So
Speaker 3: when you look at ice breakers, you got to look
Speaker 3: at really two things. One is the function and the
Speaker 3: other is the classification function. I feel a good example
Speaker 3: of this is I mentioned these patrol ice breakers, which
Speaker 3: are designed to sort of take themselves up and control
Speaker 3: areas in shore. National sovereignties maintained maybe enforce the law,
Speaker 3: provides some search and rescue and then you have research
Speaker 3: ice breakers which are similar, but they took the le
Speaker 3: go to the polar regions. So you're going to send
Speaker 3: a ship up to the Arctic or down to the Antarctic,
Speaker 3: and they are going to conduct scientific research solely on
Speaker 3: that vessel. The Heale falls into this category are medium
Speaker 3: ice Breaker, which was commissioned or built in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: and actually Healey is based on a Finnish icebreaker design.
Speaker 3: The Icebreaker also and there was intellectual property exchange in
Speaker 3: her construction with Finland. There were fins on the ground
Speaker 3: at Avondale Industries when they are building the ship. Cooperation
Speaker 3: going on during that process. But these ships are designed
Speaker 3: for independent operations. They're not designed to assist other vessels
Speaker 3: in the ice and can they perhaps, but it's not pretty.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of a way to illustrate
Speaker 3: this when someone reminded me of what happened to Noam
Speaker 3: Alaska back and I think it was twenty twelve when
Speaker 3: they missed a fuel large delivery before the winter ice
Speaker 3: came in, so they were there out they needed to
Speaker 3: get some more petroleum products shipped in there, but the
Speaker 3: whole area was iced up and Heally was the only
Speaker 3: available vessel to escort in a tanker, so we got
Speaker 3: this Russian tanker. They did a Jonzact waiver because it
Speaker 3: went from the Illusions up into Nome. And Healey escorted
Speaker 3: this tanker for about three hundred miles according to some
Speaker 3: of the reports that I've read from the ice pilot,
Speaker 3: they made some days only five or six miles. And
Speaker 3: part of the problem, I mean Heally could handle that
Speaker 3: ice level at a relatively good speed, and the tanker
Speaker 3: she was escorting did have an ice hardened double hole,
Speaker 3: so she was going to survive. But ice, it's like water, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it is water, but when you have wind
Speaker 3: over ice, it creates pressure, just like wind over water
Speaker 3: creates your waves. It has a definite effect. So when
Speaker 3: you have strong wind blowing, the ice is under a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure. So if you're breaking the ice, even
Speaker 3: if you're just a little bit, you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: yards in front of the ship behind you, the ice
Speaker 3: go reform right behind you. So as you break the ice,
Speaker 3: you know, you try to break a channel for another vessel.
Speaker 3: So what he Y saws, she'd break ice, cut a
Speaker 3: swath and freeze up right behind her. Now he use
Speaker 3: an older model ice breaker, so she's not quite as
Speaker 3: maneuverable as the modern potted ships. So it was a
Speaker 3: lot of work for her to turn around and keep
Speaker 3: breaking the ice to keep this vessel moving. It was
Speaker 3: it was a grind for three hundred miles to bring
Speaker 3: this ship in. Meanwhile, here in Finland, that's what the
Speaker 3: ice breakers do day in and day out. They do
Speaker 3: that close aboard work. They're very very maneuverable. A lot
Speaker 3: of the ships, they're not just opening a channel, they're
Speaker 3: bringing the vessel in. They have a toe notch. They
Speaker 3: have a great towing capability, so they'll they'll let that
Speaker 3: big merchant vessel go right up into their stern notch,
Speaker 3: tie them off and pull them in through the ice
Speaker 3: as a single vessel to eliminate that sort of surging problem.
Speaker 3: And just what they do day in and day out,
Speaker 3: and they're very good at it. So you can take
Speaker 3: an esport ice breaker and you can do another mission.
Speaker 3: You can send the ship to show the flag wherever
Speaker 3: you want to go, but you can't necessarily take a
Speaker 3: control ice breaker and do one of these other missions.
Speaker 3: I seem to have lost roles going with this in
Speaker 3: answering your question. But this is one of those differences
Speaker 3: that's out there when it comes to the Russian ice breakers.
Speaker 3: The Russians have a major sea route north to seventy degrees.
Speaker 4: They need their.
Speaker 3: Fifty to sixty depending on how you count ice breakers.
Speaker 3: It's do very various different things. The nuclear ones are
Speaker 3: there primarily for northern sea route escort. They want to
Speaker 3: keep that northern sea route open in the future all
Speaker 3: year round, including during the winter. So having ten nuclear
Speaker 3: ice breakers at the hard points will enable a lot
Speaker 3: of their liquid natural gas shipments to get out directly
Speaker 3: to China and to the east from the Yamal Peninsula
Speaker 3: and other locations, and they're seeing quite the increase in
Speaker 3: traffic there. So the Russians have ice breakers to keep
Speaker 3: that route open to support their oil and gas industry.
Speaker 3: So that's the broader reason for all their ships, and
Speaker 3: very few of them are armed. I know the Project
Speaker 3: two three, five five zero gets a lot of attention,
Speaker 3: but it's a talk of the any ship cruise missiles.
Speaker 3: This is a modular system for the caliber. It's these
Speaker 3: containerized missiles that it's supposed to have space for and
Speaker 3: power for. But I don't think we've actually seen these
Speaker 3: modular caliber missiles deployed anywhere at all despite them being
Speaker 3: being listed as available. So I'm not so concerned. I
Speaker 3: think at this point it's just a ship that's well
Speaker 3: armed with guns, which the Norwegians have, and the Canadians
Speaker 3: are building their offshore patrol vessels, offhore patrol ships which
Speaker 3: have small arms as well. You're not really talking about
Speaker 3: arming icebreakers yet. I don't think there really is any
Speaker 3: movement for that, for sort of these polar missions, rather
Speaker 3: for these sort of local patrol missions that involve extending
Speaker 3: sovereignty and off Greenland small Barred, the northern parts of
Speaker 3: the Bay of Botanya, the eastern parts of the Baltic Sea.
Speaker 3: These are where you're seeing a lot of the ice
Speaker 3: hardened vessels be built.
Speaker 5: Back in July, it looks like we signed a pack
Speaker 5: with Canada and Finland called the This is Clever, the
Speaker 5: Icebreaker Coalition Effort or ice Packed, which allows, as I understand,
Speaker 5: we're going to try and get everybody interested in buying icebreakers,
Speaker 5: all our allies, some built in Finland, some built in Canada,
Speaker 5: some built in the US, and there's gonna be a
Speaker 5: lot of cooperation. Are you familiar with that and what's
Speaker 5: it all about.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, I've heard of the ice packed as I'm
Speaker 3: sure you can imagine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: At first, I was wondering if this was sort of
Speaker 3: a continuation of the efforts that I saw during Trumpet
Speaker 3: administration to build or least fog icebreakers to fill this
Speaker 3: short to medium term gap. But it's not, at least
Speaker 3: not yet. It's something different, and right now it just
Speaker 3: appears to be a good idea. As someone wrote down,
Speaker 3: there's no concrete projects involved. I mean, the idea as
Speaker 3: I heard some one of the National Security Council officials say,
Speaker 3: was something about if we can all get better together,
Speaker 3: we can drive the cost down, then we expect a
Speaker 3: large increase in orders of ice breakers and ice capable
Speaker 3: vessels up to ninety over the next decade or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I honestly, I don't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: The market for.
Speaker 3: Icebreakers is quite finite at the moment, unless we suddenly
Speaker 3: decide to open back up Arctic oil and gas exploration
Speaker 3: in the West, which we've shut down a couple you know,
Speaker 3: for over about a decade now. In the absence of that,
Speaker 3: I don't think there's any increasing demand for ice breakers
Speaker 3: or ice capable vessels beyond replacing those that are already
Speaker 3: in existence that are already planned. As far as reducing
Speaker 3: the costs, I mentioned some of the comparative costs earlier
Speaker 3: building in Europe or building at Finland versus building in
Speaker 3: the United States. Are building in Canada, the costs here
Speaker 3: significantly lower. And right now Helsinki ship Yard, which was
Speaker 3: just purchased by Davy of Canada has an open order book.
Speaker 3: I mean they have no orders right now, so the
Speaker 3: market it doesn't exist for that many ice breakers.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The Swedes and the Fins are are in the process
Speaker 3: of replacing some of their older ships. A couple ships
Speaker 3: in the finish inventory go back to the Nines, so
Speaker 3: they do have to replace some of those vessels. But
Speaker 3: right now Sweden, they have their product is out for
Speaker 3: bid for construction. It was supposed to be too, but
Speaker 3: always decreased to one because of a cost basically available
Speaker 3: revenue from from Sweden to buy a vessel right now,
Speaker 3: and there are some political and sort of legal wrangling
Speaker 3: going on over the finished contracts right now, so those
Speaker 3: are both still open, but they'll be coming up. The
Speaker 3: next two years. Canada's has a national ship building plan.
Speaker 3: They've laid out who's going to build their ships and
Speaker 3: when they're going to be built. If you look at
Speaker 3: the ones and twos of the Arctic research vessels or
Speaker 3: the Antarctic research vessels that will be replaced, the demand
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to be anywhere near ninety. I know, those ships,
Speaker 3: like I'd say about eighty five percent of them, you
Speaker 3: could already tell where they're going to be built just
Speaker 3: based on the client, based on the customer. So the
Speaker 3: ice pack that it stands now, I mean, the Fins
Speaker 3: are excited about it because they think that if the
Speaker 3: US is serious about acquiring icebreakers, eventually they'll come to
Speaker 3: the only solution available, which is to buy an icebreaker
Speaker 3: built in Finland. So even though it's explicitly not part
Speaker 3: of the ice packed, the Fins are quite open about that.
Speaker 3: You can read about it here in the newspapers, and
Speaker 3: if you talk to people at all, they'll tell you directly.
Speaker 3: And that's our goal here. But even if we don't
Speaker 3: get it, if you want the best diesel engines for
Speaker 3: cold weather, if you want the best pod oft propulsion,
Speaker 3: if you want you know, the best components. You're going
Speaker 3: to have to buy them from US anyway. But if
Speaker 3: you really want the ships in the timeline that you
Speaker 3: say you need them, and you really want them, you
Speaker 3: don't have any other alternatives.
Speaker 2: This is it.
Speaker 1: And I also see some few echoes of Again, it
Speaker 1: depends on whether you're talking to a program manager or
Speaker 1: if you talk to somebody who's actually going to have
Speaker 1: to fly a crippled plane east of Taiwan. When you
Speaker 1: look at the Japanese and they're US two seaplane, it
Speaker 1: fills a mission that we presently have gap but we
Speaker 1: can't produce it. Here's like, well, you know, the Japanese
Speaker 1: buy a lot of a US military kit, why don't
Speaker 1: we You know, if you want to want a friend,
Speaker 1: be a friend, won't return the favor, and you know,
Speaker 1: just just buy some US twos from them.
Speaker 2: And the Fins.
Speaker 1: Recently, it's not like they don't buy anything from US.
Speaker 1: They the State Department just approve a sale to Finland
Speaker 1: of over eight hundred million worth of Harpoon anti ship missiles.
Speaker 1: The you've all see Sparrow Mark forty one VLS systems
Speaker 1: and that's eight hundred million dollars that they've bought from
Speaker 1: US for these not heavy ice breakers, but the other
Speaker 1: ice breakers.
Speaker 2: You could buy.
Speaker 1: You could buy something with eight hundred million dollars. Well,
Speaker 1: not just that.
Speaker 3: If you go back a couple of years, the fins
Speaker 3: pended deal. I think they signed it two years ago
Speaker 3: to buy sixty four f fives at a cost of
Speaker 3: twelve billion dollars. So the money's flowing from Finland. They're
Speaker 3: buying lots of US kit. It's not just the fighters
Speaker 3: but the weapons that go with them. And you look
Speaker 3: into some of the army ammunition. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: foreign military sales coming here to fill in. It's not
Speaker 3: as if there's a large trade imbalance on defense between
Speaker 3: between Filling and the US. So throwing a billion dollars
Speaker 3: this way to not throwing, but building. You can even
Speaker 3: build a heavy ice breaker here. I mean, you can
Speaker 3: build one that does what we want the polar security
Speaker 3: to cutter to do. You can build one of those
Speaker 3: vessels here in a much shorter period of time. It's
Speaker 3: just the fact that it is. I like to compare.
Speaker 3: I've mentioned this cruise ship several times because it started
Speaker 3: about the same time. I mean, they started in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen with the planning, looking at all the ice conditions
Speaker 3: they want to take the ship into. They went into
Speaker 3: concept design, detailed design, and by you know, I think
Speaker 3: it was the middle of twenty twenty one, the thing
Speaker 3: was at the North Pole, and this past summer it
Speaker 3: went to something called the North Pole of Inaccessibility, which
Speaker 3: is the farthest point from land in the Arctic Ocean,
Speaker 3: and there's nothing up there. It's the only ship that's
Speaker 3: gone there by itself, I think, besides the Russian iceed,
Speaker 3: the Russian nuclear ice breaker fifty years of victory, may
Speaker 3: have gone up that way doing arrest you a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago. But ships usually go in tandem because
Speaker 3: if you break down up there, I mean, you're screwed
Speaker 3: here a long way from help. So that I think
Speaker 3: goes into the confidence and the reliable and the redundancy
Speaker 3: built into a modern commercial spec icebreaker that costs quarter
Speaker 3: of what we intend to spend to build a vessel
Speaker 3: that might not even be as capable. So I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot of good that can come. And like
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, in the last go round in the
Speaker 3: Trump administration, there was a lot of we gathered a
Speaker 3: lot of good information in fact, the reason I started
Speaker 3: by substack was because a lot of the information I
Speaker 3: gathered and reported in channels I don't think made it anywhere,
Speaker 3: and I thought that should this come back around, I'd
Speaker 3: like to hang a lot of this information, this publicly
Speaker 3: available information, in a single location, so that people who
Speaker 3: may have questions and want to find an answer can
Speaker 3: do so quite easily. So I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of possibility for good. It's going to take some political
Speaker 3: capital to do it, and if we can get this right,
Speaker 3: realize that shipbuilding and strategy is not a US alone piece.
Speaker 4: That the US.
Speaker 3: We have things we do that no one else does,
Speaker 3: like build nuclear submarines that we need to do more
Speaker 3: of right now. So why should we spend what little
Speaker 3: capital we have, Why should we spend our resources trying
Speaker 3: to build for you know, a niche type of vessel
Speaker 3: like an icebreaker that one of our new allies, who
Speaker 3: already spends a lot of money on defense, spends it
Speaker 3: in the United States, can do better for us. And
Speaker 3: I'm hopeful that we'll see that return in the second
Speaker 3: Trump administration, but we'll see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let me throw one more before I let you go.
Speaker 5: I want to throw one more thing under. Doctor Elizabeth
Speaker 5: Buchanan from Australia has been really writing a lot about
Speaker 5: what China's doing down in Antarctica, which I don't think
Speaker 5: we pay enough attention to, but it does justify spending
Speaker 5: more money on and getting more icebreaks, because the Chinese
Speaker 5: are really active down there and it's to the point
Speaker 5: of being pretty disturbing.
Speaker 3: They are, and that's actually the justification for building their
Speaker 3: polar research vessels is to support there are now three
Speaker 3: science stations in Antarctica, and the way the Antarctic Treaty
Speaker 3: system works, the more sort of scientific research you do
Speaker 3: in the larger presence you have, the more sway you
Speaker 3: have when it comes to negotiate these sorts of things.
Speaker 3: So they are really pushing for more in Antarctica and
Speaker 3: right now, I mean fifty percent of our icebreaker fleet,
Speaker 3: which is the Polar Star, that exists right now solely
Speaker 3: to ensure that our Antarctic research stations get resupplied every
Speaker 3: year as part of Operation Deep Freeze. There's a period
Speaker 3: where both the Polar Star and its sister shifted the
Speaker 3: Polar Sea, which has been broken since twenty ten, and
Speaker 3: it's just a spare parts bin that's slowly emptying for
Speaker 3: the Polar Star, where we didn't have any ships and
Speaker 3: we had to lease or basically charter a vessel, So
Speaker 3: we chartered the Odin from Sweden for a bit, but
Speaker 3: that was the same winter that was really tough up
Speaker 3: here and a lot of goods got trapped in the ice.
Speaker 3: So now Odin is no longer allowed to leave Swedish
Speaker 3: territorial waters or Swedish waters during the northern hemisphere of winter,
Speaker 3: so she's out. And the other vessel we charted it
Speaker 3: was a Russian ice breaker which is now scrapped. So
Speaker 3: there are no other options for us to get our gear,
Speaker 3: mainly our fuel down to mcfernis station, from there to
Speaker 3: the North Pole Station, then right now the Polar Star.
Speaker 3: Although I sometimes showed that we should invite the French
Speaker 3: cruise Shift to make a port of Colin McMurdo, you know,
Speaker 3: once a year, and I could handle that for us
Speaker 3: without having to send one of our fifty percent of
Speaker 3: our operative icebreaking fleet down that way. But yes, Antarctica
Speaker 3: is important, and yeah, presence there would be a good thing,
Speaker 3: and there are a couple of icebreakers up here we
Speaker 3: wish can do that you can get a new build
Speaker 3: icebreaker that can do that in a couple of years,
Speaker 3: because that is probably the hardest mission that the US
Speaker 3: Coast Guard icebreakers have to do.
Speaker 1: Right now, Well, Pete, it's been a great hour, and
Speaker 1: obviously if people wanted to follow what you're working on,
Speaker 1: we'll add a link to your substack there on the
Speaker 1: show page. Where else can people keep an eye on
Speaker 1: what you're working for and working on? And do you
Speaker 1: have anything that you're working on right now that people
Speaker 1: should keep an eye on in the new year.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Substack is where I publish everything the degrees North dot
Speaker 3: substack dot com. Everything I write comes out there right now,
Speaker 3: and that's my main venue. I do share posts from
Speaker 3: there onto other social media channels, but everything goes there first.
Speaker 3: Right now, I'm just working on a couple of pieces
Speaker 3: about what the Chinese icebreaker feet actually looks like and
Speaker 3: finish you the ice packed. I was hoping to write
Speaker 3: more once the actual memorandum of understanding was made public,
Speaker 3: but that has been made public yet, and I'll be
Speaker 3: continuing to follow the Poor Security cutter program closely. We're
Speaker 3: supposed to know the updated cost and timeline by the
Speaker 3: end of this year. I'm guessing that will be leaked
Speaker 3: on New Year's Eve, perhaps if it even happens.
Speaker 4: But if you want.
Speaker 3: To keep track of all this icebreaker stuff in one place,
Speaker 3: my subsacks a place to do it, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: The chance to come on board and talk about icebreckers
Speaker 3: with you, Sally.
Speaker 1: Mark, Well, it's been great, Thanks Pete, and thank you
Speaker 1: everybody for join us for another edition of mid Rats.
Speaker 1: This will be the last mid Rats of calendar year
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Pete, So you closed the book on twenty twenty four or.
Speaker 1: Four, We'll be back on the fifth of January four
Speaker 1: our fifteenth anniversary show with one of one of our
Speaker 1: one of our founding entities, Claude bear Abay, and we
Speaker 1: will cover the entire storefront there.
Speaker 2: So hey, hope everybody has.
Speaker 1: A great Christmas, a superb New Year, and a great
Speaker 1: Navy Day.
Speaker 3: Cheers, Merry Christmas all, Thanks, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 6: Moll to need rep War Paddy Mike Madoney wants to
Speaker 6: marry me and leave a friend of be Codily for
Speaker 6: you being to blame for the lol me s flding.
Speaker 7: The It's a long way, it's a long way. It's
Speaker 7: a long way to Dipperary, to the Green.
Speaker 6: And gorb think on fair Well List not well, it's
Speaker 6: a long long way to Dippera.
Speaker 7: But my life, my lad