As China and Russia boost their military presence in the resource-rich far north, U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to study potential threats in the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War, a sign of the region's growing strategic importance.
Over the last 14 months, most of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have assigned analysts to work full time on the Arctic. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently convened a "strategy board" to bring the analysts together to share their findings.
In addition to relying on U.S. spy satellites orbiting overhead and Navy sensors deep in the frigid waters, the analysts process raw intelligence from a recently overhauled Canadian listening post near the North Pole and a Norwegian surveillance ship called the Marjata, which is now being upgraded at a U.S. Navy shipyard in southern Virginia.
The administration's growing concern was dramatized Wednesday when the Pentagon confirmed it was tracking five Chinese warships in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, for the first time. Officials said the Chinese ships were steaming in international waters toward the Aleutian Islands but posed no threat.
The growing focus shows how the United States and other polar powers are adjusting as global warming opens new sea lanes and sets off a scramble for largely untapped reserves of oil, natural gas and minerals. The United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway are pursuing jurisdiction over the Arctic seabed.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as the NGA, has spent two years drawing new maps and charts of waterways and territories in the vast region. In a statement, Director Robert Cardillo said his agency intends to "broaden and accelerate" that work, while other agencies help chart the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
"There are a lot of things we can see now that we couldn't see 10 years ago," said a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the new interest in the Arctic.
Some of the transformation is visible on detailed digital maps that the NGA made public last week, while President Obama was on a three-day visit to Alaska and became the first U.S. president to visit a community above the Arctic Circle.
The maps show airstrips, oil drilling areas, ports, maritime boundaries and sea routes. The NGA plans to make public 3D maps of all of Alaska by 2016 and the entire Arctic by 2017 to help track melting sea ice and receding glaciers.
The U.S. intelligence focus is chiefly aimed at Russia's military buildup in the far north under President Vladimir Putin. The country's Northern Fleet is based above the Arctic Circle at Murmansk.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-arctic-spy-20150907-story.html
