In the last few days, the United States Coast Guard has commissioned two new vessels that will play a key role in maintaining and expanding America's presence in the Arctic, which is going to be a major strategic area of the world in the coming decades. Those two new vessels are the polar icebreaker Storis and a new cutter, the USCGC Earl Cunningham.
The Storis was commissioned on Sunday.
The U.S. Coast Guard commissioned its first additional polar icebreaker in 25 years in Juneau on Sunday, marking what officials called a new era in Arctic activity for the United States.
The newly rechristened Storis, formerly the oilfield supply ship Aiviq, is the first in a series of icebreakers expected to join the Coast Guard in coming years. The Storis and subsequent ships, officials said, are critical for the United States to maintain its sovereignty and control of its borders in and near the Arctic Ocean.
“What we’re doing here today is we’re really just preparing to build our Arctic fighting force,” said Troy Edgar, deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of the Coast Guard.
Then, on Monday, the USCGC Earl Cunningham was commissioned in Kodiak, Alaska.
Just one day after the ceremonial commissioning of the icebreaker Storis in Juneau, the US Coast Guard welcomed another vessel into its Alaska fleet, officially commissioning the Coast Guard Cutter Earl Cunningham during a ceremony Monday at Coast Guard Base Kodiak.
Acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday presided over the ceremony, which was attended by members of the Cunningham family, including the ship’s sponsor, Penney Helmer, granddaughter of the cutter’s namesake.
The Storis, in particular, is a welcome addition. The U.S. Navy lacks icebreaking capacity, leaving this function to the Coast Guard, which currently operates only one heavy icebreaker, the Polar Star, homeported in Seattle but regularly engaged in icebreaking operations in the Antarctic. Prior to the commissioning of the Storis, the Coast Guard had only one medium icebreaker, the Healy, available for Arctic operations.
The Coast Guard, in a 2023 report, estimated it needs eight or nine polar icebreakers to carry out its role in the Arctic, including four or five heavy and an equal number of medium icebreakers. With China and Russia both becoming increasingly active in the Arctic - and with Russia in particular holding half of the Arctic Ocean coastline - the Coast Guard's role in the north will only become more critical.
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At the commissioning of the Solis, Alaska's Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said:
“I think Singapore has more icebreaking capacity than we do,” Sullivan said. “That has left us far behind our adversaries. Russia has more than 50 operational icebreakers, many nuclear-powered, many weaponized. China, which has no Arctic territory, is building a polar fleet and is spending a lot of time off our shores, including this summer.”
The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law by President Trump this summer, includes around $9 billion in funding for new icebreaking ships. President Trump has indicated a desire to add 40 polar icebreakers to the Coast Guard's fleet.
The Arctic is a region that will only grow in strategic importance. China, a nation with no Arctic holdings, has been ever more active in that area. Russia, of course, has a long, long history of Arctic operations, and a quick look at a map of the Arctic Ocean reveals how much of the coast of that key body of water is Russian territory. In the upcoming years, the Arctic and Alaska will be more strategically vital than ever, and the United States had better be prepared for that.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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