“President Obama is expected to propose Tuesday the expansion of the U.S. Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet, including the acceleration of construction on one ship already in the works and new planning for others in the future. It’s an ambitious effort with a major financial commitment, considering each ship in the highly specialized fleet has a price tag of about $1 billion.
The plan was disclosed in a fact sheet released by the White House to outline a series of new investments and security measures the United States has planned in the Arctic region. Climate change, the White House said, has changed the game in the polar region, opening up more waterways as arctic sea ice melts. So have increasingly frosty foreign relations with Russia: The United States currently has two working icebreakers, while Moscow has 40 with 11 more planned, the White House noted.”
Source: Obama wants more polar icebreakers. The Coast Guard has been asking for years. – The Washington Post