The ice in the Arctic is melting and opening new navigation routes, with Russia responding with a fleet of 44 icebreakers and China developing its own fleet although they are nowhere near polar regions. The United States had just one operational polar-class icebreaker. The 42-year old Polar Star was assigned permanently to Antarctic waters. "We have to get in the game," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in Seattle on Thursday. "We are an Arctic nation without Arctic resources," added Murkowski who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
