Abstract
The Arctic Ocean, because it is ice-covered, facilitates research difficult to conduct in the open seas. The polar pack and, upon discovery, ice islands offer natural (if problematic) platforms. When first detected, ‘floating islands’ aroused immediate interest by the U.S. Air Force then the U.S. Navy. Large, deep-draft masses, they resist sea ice pressure and breakup; as platforms, ice islands confer long-term occupation. Superpower rivalry propelled Cold War science. The circumpolar North had become a theater of operations, an exposed flank. Field programs multiplied on both sides of the Central Arctic, as did the number of ice-based outposts for research. Air-deployed drifting stations are a Soviet logistic invention; from 1954 to 1991, the USSR sustained a continuous presence on drifting ice islands. As U.S. Air Force concern for the Arctic eased, the under-ice capabilities of nuclear submarines intensified and programs to understand (and exploit) the Polar Basin were developed: oceanography, geophysics, underwater acoustics, sea-ice physics, meteorology, marine biology. The ballistic-missile submarine introduced anti-submarine warfare into Arctic waters, further stimulating research pertaining to the floating ice cover and Arctic Ocean acoustics.
Published Version
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