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Folks,

I have nothing but the highest admiration and respect for the men and women of the USCG.

It just seemed a little odd that they would travel to Antarctica...I don’t think they could get much further away from home than that. I always assumed, from their name, that they were more or less bound domestically.

They have pretty good visibility up here in Maine, rescuing fishing vessels or the crew, breaking up ice jams on our rivers in the spring etc.

Do they normally just use their icebreakers for opening up US ports and larger waterways, or do they frequently get deployed to foreign waters to deal with ice issues?

Short story is we have had Antarctica scientific research bases since I was little and this US ice breaker Polar Star was headed there anyway. So not much of a diversion to help out other nations ships that got stuck in ice helping out the warmists out for a fun New Years Eve party in the Antartcatic

(these idiots should be billed for their rescue)

Do they normally just use their icebreakers for opening up US ports and larger waterways, or do they frequently get deployed to foreign waters to deal with ice issues?

The US has been sending USCG icebreakers to both Antarctica and the Arctic for decades now. Sometimes to support US research operations (like keeping the shipping channels open to the scientific mission at McMurdo), sometimes to actually conduct them (the Polar Star, her sister the Polar Sea and the newer Healy all have extra space and facilities for taking a couple/few dozen scientists/researchers along with them).

And, actually, the USCG pretty much spans the globe. They used to occasionally deploy the Hamilton-class high-endurance cutters with USN carrier groups, and have had a major presence in the Persian Gulf since at least the first Gulf War ...

USCG Polar class breakers have been servicing ice-bound ports in Antarctica for decades. I was stationed on the Polar Sea back in the mid-80s. Those ships have some amazing capabilities. The article is a little conservative.

Yes, they can easily steam continuously through ice that’s six feet thick. But by backing and ramming they can break ice far thicker. 20 feet for sure... But in ice breaking a lot depends on the age of the ice. Ice gets harder the older it is. Some of that ice has been frozen since the Romans were in Britain. That stuff is harder than concrete. Stuff that’s freshly frozen will break easier.

The Polar Sea got stuck at one point on an ice ridge that was 70ft thick. Ice ridges happen were two massive sheets come together. Like tectonic plates they mash into one another, or subduct, or whatever... And create massively thick ridges that go both up and down... Seriously not something you want to ram into. But it happens. We had to go out on the ice and bury ice anchors behind the ship and winch ourselves back off it. :-)

The Polar class are seriously powerful breakers. Normally they run on a diesel-electric combo... But when serious power is needed they’ve got three gas turbines that direct-drive the three shafts through a mind-numbing reduction gear. The props are sixteen feet in diameter, stainless steel, variable pitch. The shafts keep turning at a constant RPM, and forward-reverse and speed is handled with pitch on the props. The brute force possible with just a slight pitch is something to behold.