Welcome to the War on the Rocks podcast covering strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name is Nicholas Danforth, editor and host of today's show.

This morning, we're delighted to be sitting down with the comment on of the Coast Guard

Admiral Linda Fagan.

Thank you for coming on the War on the Rocks podcast.

Thank you.

Thanks for allowing me to tell a little bit of the Coast Guard story.

In the state of the Coast Guard, which you just gave recently, you mentioned that your top

acquisition priority was the Polar Security Cutter.

I saw in your bio that you previously served on an icebreaker. You just got back from a trip to Scandinavia.

So let's start in the Arctic.

I always like to start with the fact that we are an Arctic nation. So this isn't us declaring ourselves as a near

Arctic nation as China did a few years ago. We and our national security are

are commingled with with our Arctic interest. So I was on an icebreaker as a young

ensign many years ago and the Polar Star at that point was one of two heavy icebreakers that the nation was operating.

Polar Star is currently our only heavy icebreaker in operation.

And each year she actually sails south to Antarctica and we have national security

interest at the South Pole as well but she breaks the ice channel to allow resupply in.

In the Arctic, Healy, which is a medium icebreaker, has each summer, goes up there,

does science operations, ice-breaking, and it's an international mission that they do. They most recently

circumnavigated through the Northwest Passage. They were operating above

65 degrees off of Russia consistent with international law and international

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