The Military Importance and Use of Ice Islands During the Cold War

Abstract

The Arctic Ocean, because it is ice-covered, facilitates research difficult to conduct in the open seas. The polar pack and, upon discovery, ice islands offer natural (if problematic) platforms. When first detected, ‘floating islands’ aroused immediate interest by the U.S. Air Force then the U.S. Navy. Large, deep-draft masses, they resist sea ice pressure and breakup; as platforms, ice islands confer long-term occupation. Superpower rivalry propelled Cold War science. The circumpolar North had become a theater of operations, an exposed flank. Field programs multiplied on both sides of the Central Arctic, as did the number of ice-based outposts for research. Air-deployed drifting stations are a Soviet logistic invention; from 1954 to 1991, the USSR sustained a continuous presence on drifting ice islands. As U.S. Air Force concern for the Arctic eased, the under-ice capabilities of nuclear submarines intensified and programs to understand (and exploit) the Polar Basin were developed: oceanography, geophysics, underwater acoustics, sea-ice physics, meteorology, marine biology. The ballistic-missile submarine introduced anti-submarine warfare into Arctic waters, further stimulating research pertaining to the floating ice cover and Arctic Ocean acoustics.

Aviation helped open the Arctic to systematic observation. To date, Russia has deployed five drifting stations onto ice islands, the United States two, and Canada one. These were tiny communities, with deep isolation at close quarters. On sea ice or ice island, the potential for emergency haunted every camp manager. Success depended on the cooperation of researchers with logistics-support staff. In the post-Cold War era there are different challenges in the Arctic: climate change, some now argue, poses a threat to national security.