The Cost of the Coast Guard’s Polar Security Cutter

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security and transferred the Coast Guard from the Department of Transportation to the new department. The law listed 11 specific missions that the service must be prepared to perform.

The Coast Guard’s polar icebreakers support 9 of those 11 missions in the world’s polar regions: marine safety; search and rescue; aids to navigation; fisheries law enforcement; marine environmental protection; ice operations; policing ports and waterways and conducting coastal security; defense readiness; and other law enforcement.