How many icebreakers does china have

While Russia has at least 40 icebreakers in its fleet, China and the United States have two icebreakers apiece. However, using relative icebreaker fleet sizes as a key metric for the state of strategic competition in the Arctic is flawed.

While they are an important platform, icebreakers do little to create or address the most commonly identified defense challenges in the region.

Instead, analysts should focus on the nature of the military risks in the Arctic, the role of allies and partners, and economic interests in a broader geopolitical context rather than comparing specific capabilities. Doing so is important to avoid mischaracterizing the scope of the danger or emphasizing the wrong types of solutions. If relative icebreaker counts are the right way to measure competition in the Arctic, then the United States is in trouble.

Russia possesses more than 40 icebreakers and plans to build more, with a goal of 13 heavy-duty icebreakers in operation by China recently acquired its second, and first domestically built, icebreaker and has aspirations for a nuclear-powered variant. By contrast, the United States has one aged heavy icebreaker and one medium version in operation. Unlike past fears that the United States was on the wrong side of a bomber gap, missile gap , or the dreaded mine-shaft gap , an icebreaker gap does indeed exist.

Yet placing the icebreaker discussion alongside threats from Russia and China makes an implicit or explicit connection between icebreakers and U. Thankfully for Washington, the consequences of this icebreaker gap for U.

First, many of the specific military challenges that China or Russia might pose in the Arctic are independent of icebreakers and best dealt with in other ways. These include denying the United States access to the region, missile strikes against the homeland, the ability to move forces from the homeland, and demonstrating U.

It is not clear how Russia or China would leverage icebreakers to exclude the United States from the region, or how the United States would utilize icebreakers to overcome such attempts. Take the concern of Russia denying access along the Northern Sea Route setting aside the limited trans-Arctic shipping to date and modest future projections. The Russian ability to do this stems primarily from their growing missile, air, and surveillance capabilities deployed within their own territory.

Icebreakers would play a marginal role in countering other military challenges to the United States emerging from the region. Nuclear weapons remain a perennial problem, but their strategic value is little affected by the relative number of icebreakers. As Austin Long and Brendan Green show , during the Cold War the United States relied on a combination of sensors, information processing, submarines, and other anti-submarine warfare assets to track Soviet nuclear-powered submarines armed with ballistic missiles SSBNs.

To be sure, technology has not stood still. If anything, diminishing sea ice might undermine the ability of SSBNs to remain hidden.

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Photo: Atle Staalesen. China's new icebreaker completes first Arctic expedition. A major number of sediment samples have been collected from the Arctic seabed in the course of the maiden voyage of the Xue Long 2. Atle Staalesen. September 29,