Great news! Congress has restored $675 million in funding for new Coast Guard icebreakers that Homeland Security had diverted last year to build a border wall with Mexico. The funding is not coming a moment too soon. The US has only one operational heavy icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star, which is over 40 years old and has persistent maintenance issues. (We recently posted about the heroic efforts of the officers and crew in keeping the USCG Polar Star in service.) 

The Coast Guard will receive $655 million to begin building an icebreaker to replace the Polar Star and $20 million more to begin buying materials for a second such vessel.

“With the support of the administration and Congress, we plan to build a new fleet of six polar icebreakers — at least three of which must be heavy icebreakers – and we need the first new Polar Security Cutter immediately to meet America’s needs in the Arctic,” the Coast Guard said in a statement to USNI News.

To achieve this goal, the act states, the Coast Guard should award a contract for the first new icebreaker no later than 2019, deliver the first vessel no later than 2023 and start construction on the second through sixth new ships at a rate of one vessel per year in 2022 through 2026.

Last year, the GOP-controlled House diverted $750 million earmarked for icebreakers toward building a border wall. The legislation that restored part of the funding was part of a bipartisan effort to avoid another shutdown and fund the government through September.

The new funding will help build up a capability that enables the U.S. to maintain “defense readiness, support the enforcement of treaties and other laws needed to safeguard both industry and the environment, and protect U.S. sovereign interests in the High North,” said Rep. Peter DeFasio, D-Ore., chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.