‍USCGC Healy: “High North” is in play

‍“The Arctic is fast becoming a theater of global competition and militarization.”

‍Bjarni Benediktsson, former PM of Iceland

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‍Arctic Sea Routes

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‍The ice shields of the Arctic region are “softening,” such that it is becoming more hospitable to sea navigation. There are two main routes,

• Northern Sea Route (NSR) along the Russian Arctic coastline 
• Northwest Passage (NWP) through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and along Alaska’s coastline

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‍Northern Sea Route

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‍The Northern Sea Route (NSR) runs along Russia’s northern coast through the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas. It extends about 3,000 miles. The shipping season usually runs from July through October, and sometimes into November. It became operational in 2009 and, since then, has been used multiple times by commercial ships, the most such transits of the two routes available.

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‍High North News has reported,

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‍“The NSR saw 103 transit voyages by 88 unique vessels in 2025, divided almost evenly between 52 eastbound and 51 westbound transits. Some ships completed two separate NSR passages during the season. Total cargo moving through the route reached an estimated 3.2 million tons.

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‍“Tankers remained the dominant cargo category, while bulk carriers grew in 2025, with 23 transits recorded, up from 15 in 2024. Container vessel traffic also posted gains with a record 15 container ship transits.”

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‍The Russians have worked hard and invested boatloads of money to bring the NSR to market. China, France, and Japan have invested as well. Russia and its energy companies are developing major natural gas fields in the Yamal and Gydan Peninsulas and oil fields in the Taymyr Peninsula. 

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‍Russia intends to continue expanding its fossil fuel activities in the High North. It will expand extraction and continue to develop the NSR to distribute the product to markets.

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‍The NSR offers several ports, the principal ones shown on this map: Amderma, Dickson, Dudinka, Khatanga, Tiksi, Pevek, and Mrs Shmidta. Murmansk, on the Kola Peninsula, not shown on the map, is the largest NSR port. These ports mainly serve Russia’s growing hydrocarbon development, linking production to consumers.

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‍The idea is to receive Arctic-qualified ships to pick up these energy products and deliver them to ports in Asia and Europe through the NSR. Furthermore, China seeks to send container ships filled with its products to Europe and the US through the NSR.

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‍In 2024, a container ship traveled from St. Petersburg to Shanghai in less than three weeks, two weeks less time than if it had gone through the Suez Canal. The first eastbound shipment of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) occurred in 2024, with more to come.

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‍Some say the Arctic seabed in this region holds vast reserves of oil, gas, and minerals. The Center for Global Europe has said, 

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‍“The stage is set for geopolitical challenges to emerge in the high north (because of the) new abundance of oil, gas, and rare earth metals and critical raw materials.”

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‍International sanctions against Russia because of its war with Ukraine have caused sanctioned ships to play cat-and-mouse games to obstruct detection and identification. 

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‍As of April 2025, the US has not sent any commercial ships through the NSR.

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‍Northwest Passage

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‍The Northwest Passage (NWP) offers seven main pathway combinations through varied straits and bays in Canada’s Nunavut and Northwest Territories to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Each presents challenges, such as severe ice, complex currents, and limited depth, and each varies in distance and time.  My reading of the maps is that one group of pathways is to the north and another runs through a tangle of islands and straits in the south and then joins the northern routes.

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‍Canada has been aggressive in bolstering its sovereignty claims in the High North. It intends to protect the Inuit and other Aboriginal groups in the region and the environment. 

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‍By my count, Canada has only three ports in the NWP, two of which are deep-water ports. 

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‍The largest is at Churchill, in Manitoba, on the western side of Hudson Bay. It has rail line connections. It is a deep-water Arctic port but is 500-800 miles from NWP shipping pathways depending on what route one takes.

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‍Iqaluit is a small community with a newly activated deep-water port and a runway on southern Baffin Island. It can be accesses from the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland. It does not have a rail line. Milne Inlet is on northern Baffin Island with access from Baffin Bay. It has an ore dock but exists primarily to support the Mary River Iron Mine.

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‍The period from July to November has developed as the season for shipping through the NWP. The Scott Polar Research Institute of the University of Cambridge, England, tracks the transits. There were 274 NWP transits to the west and 191 to the east, 465 in all during 2025. Complete transits were made by 317 different ships, 31 of which were icebreakers.

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‍The NWP has not yet become a significant route for global trade. The Belfer Center for Science and International Trade has said,

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‍“The NWP is often hailed as a potentially valuable shortcut between East Asia and Western Europe … but unreliable conditions, sparse infrastructure, and high risks make its real-world value far less certain.”

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‍Most ships are resupply ships for Canadian mines. The North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN) has suggested that the NSR is much farther along than the NWP as a shipping route. The Arctic Institute has said, 

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‍“Despite the often very enthusiastic voices about the prosperous future of Arctic shipping along the Arctic routes, the Canadian government takes a rather cautious standpoint on the prospect of a thriving shipping route along the Northwest Passage in the near future.”

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‍One shortfall in the NWP is a lack of ports. There are communities and landing sites, but no traditional ports to handle heavy shipping.

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‍I’ll underscore that nearly all of the NWP lies within Canada’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). I should also mention that most ships transiting the NWP rely on Canadian Coast Guard vessels to help them through.

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‍Undersea infrastructure

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‍Shipping is not the only activity in the Arctic. As technologies develop, undersea infrastructures have grown in importance. Undersea communications infrastructure stands out.

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‍Plans are well underway to connect the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia using undersea cables through the Arctic. One objective is to avoid going through the Red Sea chokepoint. At present, over 90 percent of all Europe-Asia traffic runs through the Red Sea corridor. Some 99 percent of international communications are carried over fiber optic cables, most of which are undersea.

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‍Byron Clatterbuck, CEO of the telecommunications firm Seacom, has said they like to lay the cables deep in the relatively flat seabed. They want to avoid volcanic areas and abrupt changes in elevation. The cables must be armored. Most problems occur when the cable starts heading to the shallow shore, where it can encounter rocks and other obstructions. Sometimes concrete trenches have to be built.

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‍Far North Digital (US), its affiliate True North Global Networks (CDN), and Cinia (FN) are preparing the first long-haul submarine fiber route through the NWP connecting Asia (J) to Europe (N, FIN, IRL). The project is called Far North Fiber Express. The distance is over 10,000 miles. The goal is to be operational by the end of 2026.

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‍The Russian Ministry of Transport, the Federal Agency for Maritime and River Transport (Rosmorrechflot), and the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (FSUE) Rosmorport have undertaken a similar project through the NSR known as Polar Express. Its goal is to connect Russian Arctic port towns to the internet, extending about 8,000 miles. It is currently impeded by international sanctions resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian War. Rostelecom is exploring building a terrestrial route that might overtake Polar Express.

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‍China’s entry is the Arctic Silk Road or Polar Silk Road (PSR), part of its broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure investment along a constellation of economic corridors, including the NSR. At this writing, the PSR has more to do with ship traffic through the NSR than subsea cable communications.

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‍Finland’s Arctic Connect was yet another project that would establish a submarine communication cable along the NSR. It was halted in 2021. One of its partners in the project, Cinia, is participating in the Far North project in the NWP instead.

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‍These ventures all want to link Europe and Asia; I call them mega-projects. There are smaller regional projects connecting Alaskan Arctic towns, linking Canada to Greenland, and Norway to its northern islands.

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‍Polar Connect involves the five Nordic countries and is exploring optimal route options for undersea cables to connect Europe, Asia, and the US.

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‍Arctic Fibre, now Quintillion, is a three-phase submarine cable project planned to connect Asia, Canada, and Europe through the Arctic Ocean. The plan is to first connect Nome to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a 1,200-mile submarine cable project. Then the objectives are to extend the subsea system to Asia and then eastward through the lower NWP to Canada and the UK.

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‍There have been several instances where ships have intentionally dragged their anchors to sever communications cables and energy pipelines. This is a troublesome development.

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‍Underwater sensors

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‍You may have heard of the US Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), which was a submarine detection system based on passive sonar arrays under the Atlantic Ocean. The objective was to obtain situational awareness. Similar needs are envisioned for the Arctic to detect underwater vehicles, manned and unmanned.

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‍Underwater surveillance technologies are being developed to detect and locate crewed and uncrewed undersea vehicles. Quantum sensors can provide rapid and precise situational awareness below the sea. Their goal is to provide advanced early detection and enhanced situational awareness.

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‍Uncrewed Undersea Vehicles already exist to carry sensors to conduct reconnaissance below the Arctic ice. The US, Russia, China, and South Korea are all developing this capability. As an aside, I should mention that South Korea is actively studying using the NSR to ship its goods.

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‍The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has a program called the Arctic Mobile Observing System (AMOS) that intends to place mobile sensor systems that drift with the sea ice or operate autonomously and collect environmental data. The program also envisions two-way Arctic communications, vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-node, and node-to-shore.

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‍There are also a multitude of scientific underwater and surface sensor systems to collect research data on the Arctic environment.  

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‍Brief Summary

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‍That’s a brief introduction to the Arctic. I expect increased Chinese access, naval and coast guard and shipping activity, and increased scientific research and mineral-oil exploration. You can also expect increased deep-seabed minerals mining to extract resources in the Arctic, though this is in its nascent stage of development, with many unknowns.

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‍Let’s now switch our focus to the USCGC Healy. Watching her teaches a lot about the Arctic region.

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‍Meet USCGC Healy

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