Fake Fox Newsdo not fact check there guests, they just had a republican maga politician on the jessie watters show, he was trying to explain why they need greenland he says they got to protect the arctic from russia and china as the ice disappears in the north west passage. he says russia has the most ice breakers (true) and then china (wrong) is next and building them like crazy and then he poops all over canada saying they do not have much of anything and are 2nd to last of the nato countries. well after doing some research it turns out canada has the 2nd largest ice breaker fleet in the world. these maga people like to dump all over canada.
The US Coast Guard maintains a database of the world’s icebreakers and provided Breaking Defense with a report dated to 2020 outlining those ships. Breaking Defense used that report, supplemented by expert analysis and publicly available documents from the respective governments, to reach the ship counts included in this story.
When it comes to ICE Pact, there are five key countries to consider: The three members of the new trilateral agreement (Finland, Canada and the US) as well as Russia and China, two governments that are antagonistic towards the Western nations, both of which have shown significant interest in Arctic governance and emerging sea routes.
A glimpse of icebreaker fleets the world over. (Original image by Getty, graphic by Breaking Defense)
Of those five, Russia is easily in the lead for sheer volume, stating in February that it possessed 41 icebreakers across varying categories. ICE Pact members Canada and Finland operate 20 and 11 icebreakers, respectively. The United States, at 12 — nine of which remain strictly in the Great Lakes region — and China, believed to have at least five, own relatively fewer polar icebreakers given their much bigger navies, but both countries are planning to build new vessels moving forward.
All of which is to say, there is no American supremacy when it comes to this niche sector of shipbuilding, and the United States may have the most to gain in the new pact due to the age and size of its current fleet.