They need to talk the Ruskies into borrowing one of their nuke powered ice breakers for this.
It won’t matter, if you don’t have the weight to break through, you’re done.
The Russian nuclear powered icebreakers require cold water to cool their reactors. They cannot be used in the Antarctic because to get there they would have to transit tropical (warm) oceans.
Just happened to be delivering provisions to the McMurdo neighborhood with 75,000 H.P. under the hood and rated for 6 meter ice.
http://www.uscgnews.com/go/doc/4007/1994906/