In a first hesitant step towards reinvigorating the U.S. government’s maritime presence off Alaska, the U.S. Coast Guard, in mid-August, quietly announced that the Alaskan port of Juneau will be upgraded to serve as an icebreaker homeport.
Given that this was America’s first announcement of a new “icebreaker homeport” in more than thirty years, the Coast Guard’s modest, five-paragraph news release was decidedly low-key. Coming just days after Russia announced that their second Project 235500 combat icebreaker, the Nikolay Zubov, will be launched by the end of the year, news that the U.S. Coast Guard was set to install a new, military-ready facility in Alaska merited a far bigger public roll-out.
