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Defending Canadian Arctic Sovereignty

Also several passages and straits in and around Indonesian archipelago:

27fd2220237c72c30094d40a59ae0275.gif


Mark
Ottawa
 
In any event our claim to NW Passage under international law is pretty weak, which is why no gov't has dared take it to international arbitration. See this article by Prof. James Kraska ( https://usnwc.edu/Faculty-and-Departments/Directory/James-Kraska ) at p. 41 PDF:
https://cdainstitute.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/vimy_paper2.pdf

Lots more on Prof. Kraska, quite the biography--note service in USN:
https://cnsl.virginia.edu/james-kraska

Mark
Ottawa
 
Well-informed friend comments: "It will be interesting to see the USA response when the Russians and Chinese start doing FON operations in the Northwest Passage…"

Mark
Ottawa
 
MarkOttawa said:
Also several passages and straits in and around Indonesian archipelago:

27fd2220237c72c30094d40a59ae0275.gif


Mark
Ottawa

Seems a poor example to me. The difference in access and use have to be so many orders of magnitude as to approach a difference in kind. Lots of Indonesians walking across the water over there, is there?
 
suffolkowner said:
Seems a poor example to me. The difference in access and use have to be so many orders of magnitude as to approach a difference in kind. Lots of Indonesians walking across the water over there, is there?

No.  Lots of Chinese building islands out of submerged rocks over there.  Then planting docks and airfields on them.  Then arming them.

sat-fierycross-2015apr18-1050.jpg

islands-1650.jpg

spratlys-zoom-1050.jpg


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-been-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html

And as to Russians and Chinese operating in the Northwest Passage

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chinese-ship-making-first-voyage-through-canadas-northwest-passage/article36142513/
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/chinese-military-expanding-reach-into-arctic-region-pentagon-fears-it-will-deploy-nuclear-armed-submarines


If we don't mow our lawn, someone else will do it for us.  They don't want to be pestered with our dandelions.
 
From a friend very knowledgeable about the US and its gov't:

There has always been a school of thought in Washington that sees Canada as a spoiled pet. In this view, the USA should simply exert its power and demand obedience. What we see with this Administration is the absence of canned Canada-USA Happy Talk.

Endless failure to pay our fair share coming home to roost. Time to spend for "defence against help"? As we once were willing to do. Plus then having the sensible decency to recognize that there were actually existing enemies (now "adversaries") out there and it was Canada's duty as a serious country to, er, do its bit.

No more. Upchuck.

Mark
Ottawa
 
Slight reprieve from USCG:

New U.S. icebreaker will focus on Antarctic, says Coast Guard boss

The Coast Guard expects to launch the first of three new icebreakers in 2024, but don’t expect to see much of it in Alaska. Coast Guard Commandant Karl Schultz said Tuesday the primary duty of the first icebreaker will be in the Antarctic, not the Far North.

“Until that second or third (polar) security cutter, we won’t really have much of a game up there, in terms of presence,” Adm. Schultz told a U.S. House Transportation subcommittee.

The new icebreaker’s essential mission will be to clear a path for supply ships serving the McMurdo Station. It takes more than 100 days to get to Antarctica, which would leave little time for trips to the Arctic. Schultz isn’t taking that lightly. He said physical presence on Arctic waters is vital for national security.

“In the polar regions, presence equals influence,” he said. “And your Coast Guard is the sole surface presence protecting our rights and projecting sovereignty.”

Trump ‘upset’ by price tag

In April, the government awarded a contract for up to three icebreakers to VT Halter Marine, a shipyard in Mississippi, in the southern US. Halter recently released some design details. The 460-foot hull will be able to break ice up to eight feet thick (2.4 meters). It will accommodate 186 people for up to 90 days at a time.

Schultz said the cost is expected to total $1.9 billion for the three ships [emphasis added--the Seaspan Diefenbreaker alone is put C$1.3B., good luck with that and lord knows when it might be delivered https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/mark-collins-seaspan-at-work-rcn-jsss-still-sliding-right-ccg-icebreaker-not-for-now/ )

House Transportation Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore, said that’s a concern for President Trump.

“When I was at the White House a few weeks ago, the president was quite upset at the price tag per ship,” DeFazio said at the hearing.

A White House spokeswoman did not respond to an email asking about the president’s views on the icebreaker contract.

The shipbuilder says it will deliver the third icebreaker by 2027 [emphasis added].
http://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2019/05/22/icebreaker-usa-coast-guard-antarctic-arctic/

Mark
Ottawa
 
I was at a LNG Trade show yesterday, NWT government was there touting the Tuk to Aisa route, also showing off it`s northern infrastructure, again Ontario fails in comparison. 
 
Colin P said:
I was at a LNG Trade show yesterday, NWT government was there touting the Tuk to Aisa route, also showing off it`s northern infrastructure, again Ontario fails in comparison.

...as opposed to the ‘Moose Factory to Asia’ route? ???
 
Chief Engineer said:
It could, in fact a circumnavigation through the NW passage is expected by the Harry DeWolf class at some point I would imagine.

I'm prepared to lead an expedition to right the wrongs inflicted upon Canadian sovereignty by this example of brazen, Dutch border bouncing :)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/dutch-kayaker-reaches-paulatuk-on-journey-through-northwest-passage-1.3195643
 
USN more concerned about Northern Sea Route than NorthwestPassage--excerpts, note CCG commandant:

How geopolitics make the U.S. Navy’s plans for major Arctic operations so complicated
The U.S. Navy will conduct some kind of Arctic operations this summer — but it hasn't said exactly what. Every option comes with potential issues.

In response to new Russian rules on the Northern Sea Route, the U.S. Navy plans to undertake significant operations in the Arctic this summer, perhaps even a freedom of navigation, or FONOPS, exercise — though the exact nature of those operations remains unclear.

But whatever form those operations take, they will be constrained by a complicated — and sometimes contradictory — set of geopolitical factors at work in the Arctic.

The Navy “has already talked about doing freedom of navigation operations or innocent passage, depending on what they’re going to call it, up through the Arctic this summer,” said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, in remarks last week at a symposium on the Arctic in Washington. Sullivan added that the exercise would likely involve “a couple of destroyers.” (Disclosure: The writer moderated a separate event at this symposium.)

[US Navy plans to send surface vessels through the Arctic]

Speaking later that afternoon, Rear Adm. Thomas Marotta, the reserve assistant deputy chief of naval operations, plans and strategy, confirmed Sullivan’s remarks and earlier reports.

“Senator Sullivan told you this morning exactly what the Navy’s going to be doing in the Arctic,” Marotta said, joking that his job at the conference had been done for him.

In response to an ArcticToday inquiry to the Navy about plans to conduct FONOPS in the Arctic, a spokesperson sent a copy of its latest Arctic strategy as its only response.

Marotta also confirmed the impetus for such an exercise: the news, in March, that Russia would be restricting traffic on the Northern Sea Route — with requirements to notify them 45 days in advance, detail the characteristics of the ship or ships, and bring Russian pilots aboard foreign ships. In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Russian requirements on the Northern Sea Route were illegal — and also labeled parallel Canadian claims to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage as “illegitimate. [emphasis added]”..

Marotta also made clear in his remarks that the Navy’s dispute is with Russia, not Canada — despite a decades-long disagreement over the Northwest Passage, which Canada claims as internal waters and the U.S. sees as an international seaway.

“But there’s never been a requirement or a threat from the Canadian government to arrest your captain or sink your ship,” Marotta said. “So that’s why the conflict is in the Arctic.”

The secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, first commented in December that the U.S. Navy should be conducting freedom of navigation operations in the Arctic.

“We need to be doing FONOPS in the northwest — in the northern passage,” Spencer said at an event with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. It was unclear from that speech whether Spencer was referring to the Northwest Passage or the Northern Sea Route.

[The US Navy’s revived 2nd Fleet, with a focus on the North Atlantic and nearby Arctic, is now operational]

At an April hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Sen. Sullivan asked Sec. Spencer about freedom of navigation operations in the Arctic.

“The Arctic is a focus of ours, and we’ve never taken our eyes off of it,” Spencer replied. He said that he and Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, had discussed “the possibility of bringing some ships up, maybe up to Valdez,” in the summer. In that hearing, Spencer emphasized the importance of cold-weather training and preparedness — in part to prepare for freedom of navigation and other “diligent maneuvers” in the circumpolar north...

Another option could be a joint exercise with Canada.

“That would be far less controversial,” Pincus said.

However, the United States’ only medium icebreaker, the USCGC Healy, is booked through the summer, so it’s unlikely that it could escort Navy vessels through ice-infested waters. The transit would have to take place in clear waters, or it would have to be with an ally like Canada.

Jeff Hutchinson, commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard, told ArcticToday in May that he wasn’t aware of any joint operations planned. “But that doesn’t mean we might not plan one in the future,” he said. He pointed to a recent precedent, the 2017 exercise where a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker assisted the USCGC Maple through the Northwest Passage.

Hutchinson also mentioned the possibility of an exercise with Denmark, the United States and Canada
[emphasis added].

“The Danes are really interested in strengthening the North American relationship — of course, Greenland is geographically part of North America,” he said. “So, I could see that in the not-too-distant future.”

However, he cautioned against associating exercises such as these with official freedom of navigation operations.

Responding to Sec. Spencer’s comments, Hutchinson said, “Somebody should remind the secretary that the Canadians know better than anybody: When people go through there, it’s almost always with our help.”

The majority of ships that go through the Northwest Passage rely directly on Canadian Coast Guard vessels to get them through, he added...

3679711.jpg

The crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Maple follows the crew of Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker Terry Fox through the icy waters of Franklin Strait, in Nunavut Canada, August 11, 2017. The Canadian Coast Guard assisted Maple’s crew by breaking and helping navigate through ice during several days of Maple’s 2017 Northwest Passage transit. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Nate Littlejohn / U.S. Coast Guard)

Mark
Ottawa

 
3 new heavy ice breakers are to be built.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/06/18/coast-guard-picks-homeport-for-new-icebreaker-fleet/
 
Earlier on planned new USCG icebreakers (rebadged as "Polar Security Cutters" to sound defence-oriented in order to make it easier to get money from Congress)--note major role for US breakers has been in the Antarctic, not the Arctic:

Coast Guard Hopes to Have 3 Polar Security Cutters Fielded by 2028 [one hopes CCG will have its one planned new polar icebreaker by then, presumably built by Davie now that that ship has been taken from Seaspan https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/icebreaker-vancouver-seaspan-national-shipbuilding-strategy-1.5173027 ]

The Coast Guard hopes to have its first three heavy icebreakers fielded by 2027 or 2028 to replace the one icebreaker that is increasingly struggling to make it to Antarctica and back each year and to increase U.S. presence in the high latitudes, the commandant said today.

U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz said this morning that the icebreaker program – a planned three heavy icebreakers dubbed the Polar Security Cutter and three medium icebreakers – was more capital-intensive than most Coast Guard acquisition efforts, but “right now my sense is we enjoy support from the administration, we enjoy bipartisan, bicameral support” in Congress, he said while speaking on a service chiefs panel at the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space conference.

After awarding a $745 million contract to VT Halter on April 23, “we’re off to the races” on buying the first ship. This first ship is supposed to deliver to the Coast Guard in 2023. Still, Schultz noted, the Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal only contains $35 million for the program as a bridge, to keep the acquisition office and construction yard humming until “a big tranche of money” is ideally awarded in FY 2021 to buy the second ship of the class.

“You’ll see larger asks here to get after the second and the third polar security cutter. Ideally projected into our capital investment plan or CIP you’ll see between now and 2028 the [funds] to deliver on those first three polar security cutters,” Schultz said.

Schultz did not elaborate on specifically when he hoped each ship would be put on contract, but maintaining and every-other-year acquisition profile – buying the second and third ships in FY 2021 and 2023, respectively – would allow for all three to be in the fleet by 2027 or 2028.

The first cutter, he said, would replace the 43-year-old USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10), which has experienced more and more severe engineering casualties in recent years when it makes its annual voyage to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

“It’s the second and third subsequent hulls that gives us increased presence at the high latitude region,” Schultz added.

Schultz said repeatedly that “presence equals influence up there” and that the Coast Guard needed to remain involved in any commercial or military activity taking place in the Arctic as waterways open up
[emphasis added]...
https://news.usni.org/2019/05/06/coast-guard-hopes-to-have-3-polar-security-cutters-fielded-by-2028

And this from July 9:

Report to Congress on Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter
...
HPIBsingle_ship-002.jpg

https://news.usni.org/2019/07/09/report-to-congress-on-coast-guard-polar-security-cutter-2

Mark
Ottawa

 
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