{"id":44695,"date":"2020-12-26T14:54:55","date_gmt":"2020-12-26T14:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/12\/26\/new-in-2021-will-you-be-getting-orders-to-an-arctic-base\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:53:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:53:45","slug":"new-in-2021-will-you-be-getting-orders-to-an-arctic-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2020\/12\/26\/new-in-2021-will-you-be-getting-orders-to-an-arctic-base\/","title":{"rendered":"New in 2021: Will you be getting orders to an Arctic base?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A thawing and increasingly competitive Arctic Ocean has led military leaders in recent years to assess the feasibility of basing troops in the frigid region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early next year, Pentagon officials say, an assessment<\/a> of such bases, referred to as \u201cStrategic Arctic Ports\u201d will be released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study for such basing, tucked into the 2020 defense bill, called for the Pentagon to coordinate with the U.S. Coast Guard and Maritime Administration to find \u201cpotential sites for one or more strategic ports in the Arctic.\u201d Such anchorages would oversee increasingly busy and congested waterways in a region that\u2019s becoming an \u201cemerging strategic choke point of future great power competition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legislation mandated that the northern ports be able to host \u201cat least one of each type of Navy or Coast Guard vessel,\u201d including a guided-missile destroyer and a Legend-class national security cutter, along with a heavy polar ice breaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sites would also have to have the capacity for equipment, fuel storage and defense systems and be linked by roads to airports that can support military aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Pentagon study could come early in 2021, some longtime Arctic hands expressed skepticism about the feasibility of such strategic ports when news of the study broke in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\t