An Icebreaker comes back from the Dead–ARA Almirante Irízar

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MarineLink is reporting Argentina has recently completed repairs on their only icebreaker, ARA Almirante Irizar.

There are some remarkable parallels between USCGC Polar Sea and Argentina’s Icebreaker, ARA Almirante Irizar. They are essentially the same size (length and beam within a foot and the same draft) and the same age (both commissioned in the late ’70s). The Polar class ships have much greater horsepower with their gas-turbine engines, but their diesel horsepower is very similar. Both have been out of service for years. The Polar Sea since 2010 after failure of five of her six diesel engines. The Almirante Irizar since 2007 after a serious fire.

Sounds like the required repairs were quite extensive. Not surprisingly it cost more that initially expected and repairs included enhancements rather than just a restoration of the previous configuration.

As the Coast Guard looks at the Polar Sea, we will also likely want to incorporate some changes.

Changing EEZs

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PacificEEZ

Pacific Exclusive Economic Zones. David Butler/Globe staff, click on the chart to enlarge

An interesting discussion in the Boston Globe about how to deal with potential changes in the world’s Exclusive Economic Zones as rising sea levels change the shape of land areas, perhaps resulting in the complete disappearance of some sovereign nations.

One of the possibilities is that the EEZs may be frozen in their current configuration and become an asset of the population, even after the land becomes uninhabitable or disappears completely, and that this asset may be sold, traded, or leased away. We know territorial sovereignty can be sold, after all, the US benefited from the Louisiana Purchase and Seward’s Folly (Alaska).

A Chinese Corporation has been attempting to build a new port complex on “reclaimed” land in Sri Lanka. “Located next to the Colombo Port, the US$1.4 billion project will add about 233 hectares of reclaimed land to the capital and house luxury office buildings, apartment blocks, a golf course, a water sport area, medical facilities, education institutions, hotels, a theme park and marinas.” The project is on hold right now, but if it goes forward, the Chinese firm would be granted  20 hectares (49.4 acres) on an outright basis and 88 hectares (244.6 acres) on a 99-year lease.

This is not a transfer of sovereignty, and  Sri Lanka is not in any danger of disappearing, but it does indicate the scope of China’s interest in the area and, located right off the Southern tip of India,  it is sure to feed into India’s fears of being surrounded by a Chinese “string of pearls.”

Potentially more serious is the decision of the government of the Maldives, “The law passed by the Parliament will now allow absolute foreign ownership of land in Maldives if the investment is above USD 1 billion. The caveat to the law is that 70% of the land has to be reclaimed from the sea.”

The Maldives, with an average elevation of 1.6 meters,  is one of those island nations that are in danger of being adversely effected by rising see levels. If anyone takes the Maldives up on their offer, it will probably be the Chinese, who have already shown a lot of interest in the Indian Ocean island nation. Again this is not a transfer of sovereignty, but it may be a harbinger of things to come

(Beside it really wanted everyone to see the chart of Pacific EEZs. A lot of that is US EEZ.)

Time for User Pays?

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A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew hoists 18 crewmen from Shell’s drilling rig Kulluk 80 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska, Dec. 29, 2012. U.S. Coast Guard Photo

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew hoists 18 crewmen from Shell’s drilling rig Kulluk 80 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska, Dec. 29, 2012. U.S. Coast Guard Photo

gCaptain reports that Shell Oil’s attempts to drill in the Arctic are adversely effecting its operations elsewhere. The articles goes on to discuss the Coast Guard’s efforts in support of the operation.

“That for me is the opportunity cost,” Admiral Paul Zukunft, commandant of the Coast Guard, told Reuters in his office at the agency’s Washington, D.C. headquarters late last week. “It means you do less somewhere else in order to supplement activity in the Arctic.”

Perhaps this is a place where we should be applying “User Pays.”

Unmanned Search and Rescue?

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Looks like sooner or later we are going to see unmanned surface vessels transiting the oceans. Both MarineLog and MarineLink report on a Chinese Study. The odd thing about these reports is that apparently, among other things, they were applying this technology to SAR. This from MarineLog:

The Unmanned Multifunctional Maritime Ships Research and Development Project, says MSA, realizes all-day networked sea supervision, intelligent search and rescue, motorized multipoint coverage by shore-vessel based detection and control platform managing unmanned search and rescue vessels on a low-cost basis, which effectively improved the ability and efficiency in maritime search and rescue.

(MarineLink apparently working from the same press release consistently substitutes the phrase “maritime cruise and rescue.”)

Frankly I have a hard time visualizing what unmanned surface vessels could do for search and rescue.

Electronic Monitoring of the Tuna Fleet

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Bairdmaritime reports,

“NOAA Fisheries has completed the first fleet-wide implementation of electronic monitoring in the United States.

“As of June, electronic monitoring is required on all vessels fishing with pelagic longline gear in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Electronic monitoring is intended to provide an effective and efficient way to monitor and verify Atlantic bluefin tuna catches in the pelagic longline fishery.”

Electronic monitoring replaces on board observers.

A couple of things come to mind.

  • Would be great if all F/V were monitored electronically so that we would not have to go looking for them. Air Searches would them be primarily to determine if there are F/Vs out there that are not tagged electronically.
  • We still need to check them underway to make sure they are not exceeding limits by offloading catch before returning to port.
  • What about the Pacific where there is a very valuable tuna fishery that is seldom sees a cutter?

USNI USCG Issue

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The U. S. Naval Institute has published their annual “Coast Guard Issue.” It has some thoughts worth taking a look at, and there are cogent comments attached to at least one of the on-line articles.

If you are not a member, you probably should be, but if you don’t have access to the print version, a lot of the material is available on-line. As usual, some on-line articles are “open content” that can be viewed by anyone, while some are “members only.”

The Coast Guard specific “open content” articles include:

“The Demise of the Cutterman,” a feature length article that has attracted a lot of comment.

“Nobody ask me but…The U.S. Coast Guard Must Retain Its Most Talented Officers,” a short piece on assignment and promotion policies.

The Coast Guard specific members only articles are:

“Bring on the Workhorses” about the need to replace the WMECs with Offshore Patrol Cutters.

“The ’85 Percent Solution’,” which advocates for ice strengthened National Security Cutters.

“U.S. Coast Guard Resources,” which is actually in two parts.
—“References” a pdf which identifies all CG flag officers and five most senior enlisted with job titles and photos, and
—“Organizational & Information Services,” a pdf that includes an organizational wiring diagram and some informational phone numbers.

Helo vs Drone

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WarIsBoring reports on an exercise that included the shoot down of two small drone targets. Both are recorded in the video above. The first shoot-down is done using a door mounted 7.62mm machinegun like those used in Coast Guard airborne use of force equipped helicopters. The second used a fixed forward firing 20mm gatling gun on an MH-60S (correction applied to the original here).

It seems likely that well financed criminal organizations will soon be using drones to scout ahead of their drug running vessels (if they are not doing it already).

Can we shoot them down?

I wonder if the downwash from the helo might be enough?