The Coast Guard’s medium icebreaker Healy on July 22 departed its homeport in Seattle for a months-long Arctic mission that will include a number of research and test evaluations of communications capabilities in the remote ocean.
Communications, and in particular the need to close communications gaps, are key talking points in the Coast Guard’s new Arctic strategy, which was released in April (Defense Daily, April 22).
“In order to operate effectively, maintain MDA, and share information across the maritime community, the Coast Guard must overcome critical communications gaps in the Arctic,” the service says in its Arctic Strategic Outlook. “The high latitudes suffer from poor propagation of radio signals, geomagnetic interference, scant landside infrastructure, and limited satellite coverage and bandwidth.” MDA stands for maritime domain awareness.
The strategy highlights that closing communications gaps in the Arctic is a “whole-of-government challenge” and requires partnerships throughout government and with Alaska and its communities, industry, and international partners.
The Arctic Technology Evaluation 2019 that the 420-foot Healy will accommodate will be carried out by researchers from various government agencies and industry.
A Coast Guard spokeswoman outlined five communications tests and experiments that will be performed by researchers aboard the Healy. The service’s Research and Development Center and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate plan to activate test coded 406 MHz emergency position indicator radiobeacons “to assess the capability of commercial small satellite operators to detect and geolocate these signals at high latitudes,” she said.
The Coast Guard’s Capabilities directorate will be conducting throughput testing of the Iridium Certus Network, which supports data and communications through mobile satellite communications for aviation, land and maritime applications.
Another experiment will be done by MITRE Corp. in support of both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command to follow-up on “promising” work done in 2017 on communications with the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System satellite communications system and a high-frequency beyond line of sight system.
The Air Force Institute of Technology plans to map the ionosphere using the cellular phone Global Navigation Satellite System and the Navy Information Warfare Center Pacific will be supporting the Naval Research Laboratory and the Coast Guard with Arctic high frequency skywave experiments.
“The research our partners are conducting is of definitive interest to the Coast Guard and we will certainly benefit from helping to advance testing and knowledge,” the spokeswoman said. “The importance of collaborating to further research of national importance cannot be overstated.”
In addition to the communications research, several other science missions will be carried out during the Healy’s deployment. These include a mission led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to record biological, chemical and oceanographic changes along Alaska’s continental shelf.
Sensors installed on deepwater subsurface moorings, on-ice instruments, and autonomous sea gliders that were deployed last year have been recording data to help researchers better understand “how surface mixing was affected by the change in sea ice coverage throughout the year,” a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s Pacific Area Command told Defense Daily. The Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and led by the Univ. of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab. The Healy will retrieve the sensors during its current mission.
ONR is also sponsoring an experiment using moorings in certain locations and moorings deployed by the Norwegian icebreaker Svalbard to test trans-Arctic acoustic propagation with a low frequency source.
The Healy is scheduled to return to Seattle in early November.
In addition to the technology evaluation, the icebreaker will support Arctic Shield, the service’s annual operation to conduct various missions to include maritime domain awareness, strengthen partnerships, and build preparedness and response capabilities in the region.
The Coast Guard also operates a heavy icebreaker, the Polar Star, which helps resupply the U.S. science station in Antarctica every year. The service plans to replace the aging Polar Star in the next five to six years with the first of at least three new heavy Polar Security Cutters (PSCs).
Eventually, the Coast Guard wants acquire six PSCs, but hasn’t determined whether any of these ships will include medium variants.
VT Halter Marine is under contract for up to three PSCs, with the first to be delivered in late 2023 or early 2024.