By SUZANNE DOWNING
Jan. 29, 2026 – Alaska could become home to as many as four of the nation’s next-generation Arctic Security Cutters, a major expansion of US Coast Guard assets in the North, following testimony Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries, convened a hearing examining the Coast Guard’s presence in the Arctic, where Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Kevin Lunday confirmed that Alaska is under consideration to receive up to four of the eleven Arctic Security Cutters announced under the US–Finland Icebreaker Agreement and the ICE Pact.
The cutters are part of a massive modernization and expansion of the Coast Guard funded through the Working Families Tax Cuts Act (WFTCA), which passed last year through budget reconciliation and authorized $25 billion—the largest investment in U.S. Coast Guard history.
Funding for at least three Arctic Security Cutters, along with the infrastructure needed to support them, was included in the legislation.
In addition to the icebreakers, Lunday reaffirmed that Alaska is on track to receive a wide range of new Coast Guard assets that have been secured through Sullivan’s work with the service and his congressional colleagues since joining the Senate in 2015.
As chairman of the subcommittee overseeing the Coast Guard, Sullivan played a central role in shaping the funding package, which includes:
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$300 million for shoreside infrastructure to support the homeporting of the USCGC Storis in Juneau
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16 new icebreakers
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22 new cutters
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More than 40 new helicopters
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Six new C-130J aircraft
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$4.379 billion to repair and replace docks, hangars, and shore facilities nationwide
Sullivan said the investment reverses years of decline in the Coast Guard’s Arctic footprint and reflects a long-overdue shift in national priorities.
“It’s time, in my view, for the Coast Guard to do more with more, and that’s what we’re able to do in this budget reconciliation bill,” Sullivan said. “The numbers the Coast Guard needs are historic in that $25 billion: 16 new icebreakers. By the way, we have two, one is broken, and the Russians have 54. It’s time to close that icebreaker gap.”
Sullivan detailed the scope of the investment, which also includes nearly $4.5 billion for aging infrastructure, 22 new cutters, 40 new helicopters and new fixed-wing aircraft.
“This is, as I mentioned, the biggest investment in Coast Guard history,” he said.
He also emphasized the expanding mission load facing the service, from counter-drug operations and maritime law enforcement to Indo-Pacific deployments, search-and-rescue missions, and combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
“Nowhere is the need for this investment clearer and more prominent than in the Arctic,” Sullivan said.
He pointed to the recent commissioning and homeporting of the USCGC Storis in Juneau as a turning point in U.S. Arctic strategy.
“For the first time ever, we commissioned and started to homeport an American icebreaker where the ice is: in Alaska,” Sullivan said. “The Storis, designated to be homeported in Juneau, represents a generational investment in the Coast Guard and our national security. It also marks a long overdue shift in how the United States approaches the Arctic—not as a distant afterthought, but as a core strategic domain.”
During the hearing, Sullivan pressed Admiral Lunday on the Coast Guard’s planning timeline for homeporting the new Arctic Security Cutters and specifically raised the possibility of basing additional vessels in Alaska.
4 thoughts on “Alaska could get four new Arctic security cutters, Coast Guard chief tells Senate”
A worthy investment of taxpayer dollars.
A lot better spending it on at least *trying to prepare Alaska for its next chapter
Than spending that money on keeping a government dependent employed
Whether or not Alaskans are aware of this. But Alaska is on the radar of World leaders. They know how to wield power and they received better education than us to hold their ground among world leaders.
We should at least humble ourselves and re-educate ourselves, our children and yes be less government dependent so we aren’t a yes man around dominating leaders so we are prepared for what comes next.
Something you Alaskan leaders should recognize. Why Ak schools don’t *try mimicking the top private schools that world leaders the powerful and wealthy send their protégés or their children to?
While Alaska students have learning stupid crap, those world leaders children have a classical education because their parents know the education that educated themselves and past leaders now dead worked for them to training their family’s next generation of world leaders. So Alaska Schools should be giving a classical education too to make our children ready to face a world that is watching us and world leaders and families seeking to conquer and claim us.
Our children need to grow up knowing and understanding how world leaders think. So they need to be reading the books their secondary private schools placed in their classical schools education curriculum.
Four ships should be the minimum. Personally, I favor a legislative provision that prohibits stationing vessels in cities that are politically unstable or hostile to the security of the United States, specifically Seattle, Washington.
I also favor naming two of the vessels stationed in Alaska for the late Senator Henry Jackson and the late Senator Warren Magnuson – to remind people of the support that these two statesmen gave to Alaska.