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Russia’s nuclear-powered icebreakers are a game-changer

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Mainly because the US has not bothered to modernize its heavy icebreakers.

The one it has now begun building are over budget and behind schedule, mainly because the same committee that took the original F-35 from a bomber to a jack of all trades, has designed these new breakers which are barely heavy duty, conventionally powered, with a hull that is designed for transit between the Arctic and the Antarctic - a big trade off from their primary mission: breaking ice. Still worse, the design is supposed to incorporate some form of defense, but no decision has been made on what that should be.

In short, the Russians have control of the Arctic because the US has ceded it by default.