Kenneth R. Rosen

He shows me how they use satellite imagery to navigate the ice cracks and how they try to make it more easy on the crew and the ship than saying just barreling through the ice.

And he gets to news items and pictures of the new leader class Russian icebreakers, which are these massive

massive icebreakers, something like 80 times the power of the icebreaker that we were on.

Just beasts, just, you know, four inches, six inches of ice, like it's nothing at 10 knots, 20 knots, making a highway more or less than the ice.

And he's just, he's marveling at them.

And he's saying, wow, I mean, wow, I wish we had that on ours and talking about how neat their ships are and the capabilities and

And his ship was cool.

His ship had these propellers that, when turned in reverse, could shave and shred the ice.

So, I mean, he had pretty cool equipment, too.

But he was fawning over this Russian equipment.

And that's when he said to me, you know, Putin is...

the reigning power in the Arctic, in part because of their equipment, but also because they've spent the last 10, 15 years opening up or reopening Cold War air bases and staffing them.

I mean, historically, the Arctic was a place for the Soviet Union to test its nuclear arsenal.

And now we're seeing them test their hypersonic missiles there again.

So there is this push by Russia to get back there.

And the rest of us are just sort of like, oh, that's been interesting.

Maybe we should take notice.

And meanwhile, they're far ahead.

Well, I think that makes two of us, first and foremost.

I don't think he has a valid argument because of the 1951 accord that we have with the Kingdom of Denmark that states the US could do whatever it wishes as far as expansion or basing military assets and units there.