Transporting personnel and materiel onshore is one of the most daunting missions military planners can face. Add ice, mud, and extreme temperature swings that are hallmarks of the Arctic, and you can begin to understand the challenges being tackled by a team of U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) researchers who form the Integrated Support for Operations in Polar Seas (ISOPS) program.
Earlier this month ISOPS team members – comprised of interdisciplinary personnel from ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory – conducted fieldwork in Utqiagvik, Alaska, aimed at accelerating development of environmental support tools for Logistics-Over-The-Shore (LOTS) operations across Arctic coastal boundaries.
LOTS are broadly defined as the movement of personnel, equipment and materiel over the shoreline interface. While the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II is a particularly famous example of a LOTS operation, not all LOTS operations occur under contested conditions. Many occur in support of humanitarian missions or in rear areas. In these cases, the environment, rather than the enemy, may be the primary challenge.
ISOPS’ main objective is to mitigate that challenge by developing tools that provide the warfighter with accurate, up-to-date information about the Arctic operating environment, such as wave and landing site conditions, sea ice motion and shoreline position.
“Think Google Maps for LOTS operations that updates rapidly for conditions that change like ice breaking and drift,” said Dr. Chris Polashenski, an ERDC-CRREL research geophysicist and ISOPS’ principal investigator.
While LOTS operations are challenging in any conditions, Polashenski says those presented by the Arctic provide particularly difficult obstacles to overcome.
“Primary landing constraints in temperate latitudes are waves, water depth and beach slope,” he said. “In the Arctic, you can add pack ice and landfast ice conditions, permafrost thaw state, snow depth, wave-ice interactions, ship spray icing and shoreline ice berm formation, at least. There are a lot more ways for something to go wrong.”
According to Polashenski, currently available military planning and forecast tools only include a very crude forecast system for the Arctic sea ice. The system broadly says that snow and ice will form in the winter, and melt in the summer, but not much more.
“A similar forecast for Washington, D.C., would state that there is a risk of snow in February and not in July,” said Polashenski. “While useful, it really doesn’t provide all the information the military needs to plan a tactical operation.”
Continuing the analogy, Polashenski surmised that pilots of jets operating out of Dulles need to know if the snow will restrict visibility or impact the runway surface today, at a specific time, not broadly that snow occurs in February.
“We are working to create this level of detail for ice, wave and coastline condition forecasts,” he said.
Arctic fieldwork: Opportunities and challenges
While in Utqiagvik, ERDC-CRREL Research Physical Scientist Tricia Nelsen was part of a team that flew a fixed-wing drone over 33 square kilometers of variable sea ice terrain, capturing the diversity of navigation across ice. While the aerial data will be crucial to developing a high-resolution terrain map that informs route selection, Nelsen said the experience was also a good demonstration of the realities of travel in the Arctic.
“The most valuable information we collected aside from the drone imagery was getting to experience what navigating the ice can be like,” said Nelsen. “It ranges from a total joy ride, to sweating buckets chopping ice into gravel-sized pieces and pulling your snow machine out of snow holes. I’ve been staring at satellite imagery of sea ice for the past nine months, and though you can make reasonable assumptions about what is easiest to navigate, I was not expecting the level of effort that is required to navigate some of the terrain.”
Nelsen wasn’t the only researcher who found the Arctic conditions challenging.
ERDC-CRREL Research Geophysicist Taylor Sullivan used his time in Alaska to study near shore permafrost, specifically how waves interact with bluff faces to cause coastal erosion, thaw slump and calving. He also marveled at the extra effort the Arctic requires to operate in.
“To put it lightly, field work at 71 degrees north in April is a colossal challenge,” said Sullivan. “Logistics notwithstanding, ambient temperatures below -20 degrees Fahrenheit with wind gusts in excess of 30 miles per hour make simple tasks like connecting a cable or tightening a bolt a momentous effort.”
But despite long days and rugged conditions, it was well worth it in the end, said Crystal Painter, an ERDC-CRREL research physical scientist who is studying how much sea ice grounding onto the shore impacts sandbar profiles in non-ice covered areas.
“It has been amazing to share this experience with such a diverse group of scientists and learn more about their projects and how all of our work intersects,” said Painter. “I think the team has benefitted from and enjoyed thinking about each other’s work. This project has provided an incredible opportunity to increase cross-lab collaboration and interdisciplinary research.”