BREAKING: New Arctic Strategy Calls For Updated Cold-Weather Tech

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The Pentagon’s new Arctic strategy released July 22 calls for the services to field robust sensors, communications links and unmanned systems that can function in the region’s harsh environments.

“Climate change and shifts in the geostrategic environment drive the need for a new strategic approach to the Arctic region,” the “2024 Arctic Strategy” stated.

The new strategic environment includes increased cooperation between rivals China and Russia, as well as Nordic countries Sweden and Finland recently joining the NATO alliance. Meanwhile, “climate change is fundamentally altering the Arctic, and with it geopolitics and U.S. defense missions,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said during a press briefing July 22.

The Arctic may experience its first practically ice-free summer by 2030, the strategy said. The loss of sea ice will increase the viability of Arctic maritime transit routes and access to undersea resources, it added.

“Reduction in sea ice due to climate change means chokepoints, such as the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and the Barents Sea north of Norway, are becoming more navigable and more economically and militarily significant,” it said.

Hicks said: “Climate change and the resulting shifts in the operating environment require us to rethink how we best protect our warfighters and prevent conflict,” and that “this transformation affects how we support our allies and partners, and it impacts our ability to deter and, if needed, defeat our adversaries.”

While not bordering the Arctic, China has been more assertive in proclaiming the region a “global commons,” the strategy said. It has three icebreakers. Meanwhile, the United States only has two.

China has conducted 13 Arctic research expeditions and tested unmanned underwater vehicles and polar-capable fixed-wing aircraft, among other activities, the strategy said.

Iris Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, said while China is operating in the Arctic “under the guise of scientific research … much of that research is going towards military use.”

“We see them operating more regularly in the last several years from a military perspective — even just a couple of weeks ago, there were several Chinese warships off of the coast of Alaska,” Ferguson said. “We've seen them operating closely with the Russians on occasion with combined exercises off the coast of Alaska.

“We're keeping a watchful eye” on how China is developing its “capacity for operating in the region,” she continued “As we say in the department, they are our long-term pacing challenge, and I think that that includes in the Arctic.”

Meanwhile, Russia seeks to carry out lower-level destabilizing activities in the Arctic against the United States and its allies, “including through Global Positioning System jamming and military flights that are conducted in an unprofessional manner,” the strategy said.

“While significant areas of disagreement between the PRC and Russia remain, their growing alignment in the region is of concern, and DoD continues to monitor this cooperation,” the strategy said.

The strategy calls for integrated deterrence and monitoring to mitigate the perceived threats.

The department and the services should invest in sensors, intelligence and information-sharing capabilities while boosting their presence in the region by training both independently and alongside allies and partners to demonstrate interoperability, it said.

As for new technologies, the Defense Department needs to pursue early warning capabilities; discrimination sensors; tracking sensors; command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; improved understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum; and sensing and forecasting capabilities, it said.

“We must improve our domain awareness and enhance our ability to detect and respond … to threats to the homeland,” Ferguson said. “We want to make sure that we have the right sensing architecture and the right communications architecture for command and control.”

The department must also deepen its “understanding of how climate change is altering the Arctic environment through improved weather forecasting and sea ice prediction to ensure our troops and our platforms are capable of operating in conditions they may encounter,” she added.

As for space, the Pentagon wants more options for new space-based missile warning and observational systems with greater polar coverage. It also needs better satellite communication links and to make sure it has the appropriate number of downlink terminals to move large amounts of data above 65 degrees north, it stated.

“Military services and [combatant commands] responsible for the monitor-and-respond mission should review their relevant Arctic capabilities and requirements to determine if they can achieve their missions,” it said.

The United States will work with Canada to enhance long-range persistent aerospace and maritime surveillance capabilities, and the Defense Department will assess options for improving ground-based sensors to complement and enhance existing NORAD capabilities, it said.

The United States, Canada and Finland recently announced the “ICE Pact” to collaborate on the development of new icebreakers, which Ferguson said is “the kind of cooperation that we should be leaning into more.”

“We really need to be leaning into our allies and partners effectively,” she said. “They have high levels of proficiency and high levels of capability as Arctic nations, and we can only do better by collectively working with one another.”

The United States should also maintain investments in manned and unmanned aerial systems that may further enhance Arctic air and maritime domain intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and conduct analysis of requirements for future unmanned platforms that can operate in the Arctic, the strategy said.

Unmanned systems would ensure human operators are not put at risk in the harsh environment of the Arctic, “but at the same time … you have to ensure that even those uncrewed systems are survivable long enough at least to endure, or are so inexpensive that their attritable nature is still worth it for the mission you're putting them on,” Hicks said.

As for individual equipment, “the Joint Force should be able to conduct mission-essential tasks at extremely cold temperatures routinely reaching -50 degrees Fahrenheit or below,” the strategy said.

In some cases, equipment, including weapon systems, can be outfitted to meet Arctic specifications, and in other cases, specialized equipment is needed, it said.

Ferguson said there’s been “a bit of a greater awakening” in the Defense Department recently to the importance of investing in Arctic capabilities, “not only about our needs for homeland defense because the technology that has changed so much from our adversaries and our need to modernize … but also that we can't just show up to operate there.

“We've got to exercise there with proficiency. We've got to make sure that we are working with our partners and actually exercising with one another so that we survive when we are there,” she said. “So, I think the evolution that you've seen is not just in [the] semantics of a strategy, where we've gone from acknowledging the problem to” articulating it in more depth “to now we’re, I think, getting into the nitty gritty of how do you implement a strategy” for the Arctic.

 

Topics: Defense Department