 Well, good afternoon and welcome. Naval War College colleagues to this lecture of opportunity about the Coast Guard cutter Healy and Arctic soft security with Captain Michelle. Shell up. My name is for Andrea Cameron for those who don't know me and I'm the director of the climate and human security group at the Naval War College. The group is composed of faculty, staff and students interested in engaging on nontraditional and transnational security threats. If you're interested in joining the group, please email me at Andrea Cameron at usnwc.edu. Now today's lecture of opportunity. We host Captain Michelle shall up commanding officer of the US CGC Healy. We're honored to host her and have her bring this incredible work of the Coast Guard cutter to our audience. For those watching watching this presentation will be recorded, but we will stop recording at the end and open the floor for questions from the audience. Captain shall assume command of the Healy in June 2023 as commanding officer. She is responsible for the overall safety of the ship and crew, as well as successful completion of assigned missions. She is a 2021 graduate of the Naval War College where I had the pleasure of meeting her as student one of my classes. And I've kept in touch with her as she went on to Coast Guard headquarters and now in charge of the ship. Thank you so much for joining today. The floor is yours. Thank you very much and thank you to the climate and human securities group and the Arctic studies group for hosting me today. I'm very excited to be here to talk to you about how Healy contributes to soft security in the Arctic, particularly with our most recent deployment, which just ended after 159 days at sea about three days ago. And if I can ensure everyone in the room is able to hear me. Okay, please. Loud and clear. All right, great. A few imagery pieces. I'll go over those in just a moment, but an overview of some of the things I'll talk about today. The so what of course those of you who attended this lecture know what the so what is, but just an overarching view of that. I'll talk a little bit about Healy in particular and her capabilities. Talk about research support that we've done over the past two years. International engagement that we were able to have this past summer. And then I look forward to your questions at the end. So the pictures that you see before you in the top left corner is Healy coming through a lead in the ice. The top right corner is a picture of the group of not only scientists but crew who pitch in together to help install equipment on the ice flows and the high latitude. The bottom left corner shows a picture of our computer lab on board. Give a little more detail about that in a little bit. And then the picture at the bottom right is the marginal ice zone as of a few weeks ago. So as you can see, winter is quickly setting in and the ice is continuing to cover the Arctic Ocean. Again, this is not unknown to you. I did a similar presentation at Georgetown University last week. So I wanted to give them a little different perspective. This is the perspective I like to look at from the globe centered on the Arctic Ocean. Of course, the eight Arctic States and then the regional coordinating group for the area, the Arctic Council. And we do, of course, our scientific research based on the international agreements in that body. All right. Am I back on? Yes. Great. All right. Thank you. So overview of Arctic nations and then, of course, the Arctic Council, which I'm sure you are very familiar with. If not, there's the website, a lot of really great information Norway chairs the council as of earlier this year. These were just published by the National Ice Center overview that includes the year 2023 ice average. Of course, that's changing because we just have a few more weeks left in 2023, but updated as of a few weeks ago. So over time, you can see that the general trend is on the decrease. That brings, of course, increased interest in the region for not only access to the resources, but also for eco tourism for shipping and many other maritime interest in the region that was previously unaccessible. So why is the Arctic important to national security? Of course, we are an Arctic nation, so we have an Arctic border. So we have an interest in it being a peaceful and stable region. It is known to have a lot of economic value, particularly in the American Arctic and the other nations are conducting research in the region as well so that they can understand what resources are available to them. The middle section there with the Arctic region statistics is from our 2019, the Coast Guard Arctic strategic outlook. And then October of this year, the Coast Guard has released our Arctic strategic outlook implementation plan that gives more detail into our lines of effort that go to support the national security strategy in the Arctic region. Overview of Healy. This is a picture of Healy taken just outside Reykjavik earlier this year. She is the Coast Guard's largest vessel. We are about two feet longer than the national security cutters and in size beam, et cetera, as well. We're 16,000 long tons, so a very heavy ship. Our hull plating is two inches thick, which allows us to break through the ice, particularly with an assistance of an ice knife. We can break four and a half feet plus continuous steaming. We do need to back and ram when it gets more than that but very capable can go 12 and above feet, which in multi year ice can get noisy and challenging but it's one of the favorite parts of being conning officer and ice pilot on the Healy is to go on the very top of the cutter with good view and look for open leads or to look for places where Healy can break through the ice to get to the areas where we need to conduct our operations. We are able to carry helicopters. We have helicopter bays. We don't normally deploy with helicopters, but we do exercises with US and partner nation helicopters. I have a picture of that later in the presentation. We have seven cranes that were able to lift myriad pieces of equipment to support science or logistics as needed. And then we have a multi beam sonar for those who have operated in the Arctic on the surface. You know that a lot of the soundings are sparse and very old. While we cannot contribute directly to charting in the Arctic, what we are able to do is provide that information to NOAA Office of Coast Survey so that they see an area that has a large anomaly in it. They can focus on that area or provide awareness to other mariners who may operate there to understand that there may be something that's not otherwise charted. So Healy was commissioned in 2000 and has done, for the most part, annual trips to the Arctic in support of research. I'd like to just cover the past two years of note and happy to do the best I can answering other questions as they come up. In 2022, the Healy made her fourth trip to the North Pole. The first time was in 2000 with the German research vessel Polar Stern again a few years later with the Swedish icebreaker Odin. Since then Healy's made two unaccompanied trips to the North Pole one in 2015 and one in October of 2022. During this research, she gathered information on physical oceanography, atmospheric drivers, marine life and various data collections. So in that picture you can see some of the cranes that we use to to collect data. We also have on the right hand side is what we call as a conductivity temperature and depth or CTD rosette. That piece of equipment can go 4000 meters down and collect information in the water column which is extremely valuable to the scientists to understand everything from how the density of the water changes to the temperature of the water in the water column. So that is pretty much the bread and butter of most research vessels. Those that are ice capable or not but Healy spent a lot of time on the North Pole mission conducting research generally unavailable to most of the research vessels. And then the center picture is just what I just a beautiful picture of kind of some of the rewards that you get for operating in such a region. That's a sunrise sunset pretty much in the same hour during during science. 2023 we just as I mentioned just return from that mission I took command about three weeks before we deployed. It was just a fantastic journey we had two particular science missions. The first one is Amos or the Arctic mobile observing system and that on our funded Office of Naval Research Naval Research funded research looks at increasing the capability of collecting data over time and really some harsh conditions. The unmanned vessel you see to your left is is deployed and will spend about a year underneath the ice just going up and down in the water column gathering data. It will come to the surface transmit its information and then return to work. It's pretty amazing. I've worked. This is my second tour on Healy. So I've worked with the gliders quite a few times and it is just an impressive technology that they have so in that first mission we deployed and recovered several of those. Another bit of the science that we did on that first mission was to go on to ice flows and we put equipment onto the ice flows that would then spend the rest of that life of the ice flow collecting everything from weather data to understanding the water column beneath it. So the picture in the center was a visiting scientist that we had joined us at about two o'clock in the morning one day. He kind of checked out a lot of our science equipment. Unfortunately he did break a little piece of that one but we were able to return and quickly repair it. So I was standing next to the lead scientist on that particular endeavor and for him it was a it was a little hard to watch his science equipment be torn apart by the polar bear. But on the other side it was really neat to be able to see the animals that we're working so hard to understand their changing climate. And then he could also see how the polar bear interacted with his equipment so that when he went back out on the ice the next morning he was able to repair it in a way that made it a little bit more resilient to the polar bear. The second science mission is depicted on the right of your screen and that's really what made this journey this year a little bit different with Healy. The second mission was led by the Coast Guards Research and Development Center which did science of opportunity on our transit. But the leg that took us on that route was the Nansen and a Mudson basin observational system or Nabos. In 2021 the science equipment, I'll talk about that in a moment, the science equipment was deployed to collect data in the East Siberian and Laptev seas and they were deployed by a Russian research vessel. And given geopolitics that wasn't possible to reuse that vessel this year. So he was chosen to take this very important mission. The equipment that's deployed has about a two year life cycle. So if it's not recovered and serviced and returned, they lose that data for the two years and all the equipment that's associated with it. So for the international science community, it was very important that Healy go and service those nine moorings in the region. Talking about Arctic security and one of the key components to civility is predictability. Healy was very transparent about the track line that we were going to be taking. We were at times about four nautical miles outside the Russian EEZ. Our track line was published well in advance. Senior leaders discussed the tracks that we were going to take and and we had transmitting on our automatic identification system or AIS for the entirety of that mission. So what that particular research focused on was how the Atlantic water flow that comes into the Arctic region affects the ice coverage. And so the scientists, this was the first time they had been able to recover this data that collected over a two year panel and very exciting. All of the equipment we recovered had full sets of data. So it was a very successful mission from the scientists perspective. The research and development center that I mentioned earlier worked on, as I said, some research of opportunity. This included ice observer tools and how AI can help contribute to that 3D printing in an at sea environment. So understanding how the movement of the ship might affect how emergency parts or tools are made at sea and how to counteract that as well as high latitude communications and global distress equipment at the high latitudes as well. So it was a very successful mission. I talked a little bit about the science equipment that we worked. The scientists use underwater mooring arrays to collect the data over a two year time span. They do this using pieces of equipment that are held vertically by buoyancy. You can see the buoys there in the center and left picture that keep them upright in the water column. And so when Healy or other science vessels arrive on scene, they send a code down the code releases it from the mooring. And if we are lucky and have done our physics calculations correctly, the buoy floats up in an open area of the ice. We hook into it and then begin what can be a very long recovery time. Sometimes these moorings are 40 meters, about 135 feet. Sometimes they can be 2000 meters, which is well over a mile. So it's a very long and delicate process, but really the information that's gathered makes it very valuable. So you can see in the far right hand column there, that is the actual piece of equipment that was used to collect the data over that time span. Healy is a floating laboratory. So all three of these pictures are scientists from various universities actually conducting the research on the water or some of the equipment that we're using underway. So it's really neat to go in these different missions and each one of them has it set up in a different way and to see what they're all involved in. The crew, we are active duty Coast Guard, so we're not scientists. We are there to support the scientists. When the scientists come on board, there's all these different bits of research going on. So once a week, we also do our lectures of opportunity on board and invite the scientists to share with us a little bit about what work they're doing. So that way the crew gets a good sense of kind of the bigger picture of what they are, what they're contributing to. Once the science was complete, we were able to do a lot of international engagements. So this gave us opportunity to meet with like-minded nations doing personality changes, live exercises, etc. So the first one that we were able to meet at sea was the Sir Wilford Laurier. It was off of Point Barrow relatively early in our deployment. We hosted on board the assistant commissioner for the Arctic region, as well as the Coast Guard's district commander for Alaska. So it was a great opportunity to have conversations. The crews, we sent 10 to Sir Wilford Laurier, 10 came over to Healy. So it provided opportunity at the very tactical level for us to see the capabilities of the other ships. So if there were a situation, we would at least have a basic understanding of how to work together. So it's a very good way to start our international engagements. For the second mission, we had two Norwegian Coast Guard officers on board. One is, one had previously been on Svalbard. One is currently on Svalbard, and that is the Svalbard in the picture there. We rendezvoused in the high latitudes and ice covered waters and steamed in formation for a few days once we got over to the European side of the Arctic. So a great opportunity to work with Svalbard with their crew on board for five weeks. They shared with us their ice navigation tools, operations on board, and it was a good interaction with them as well. Once we got in ice free waters, we did a crew exchange similar to what we did with the Sir Wilford Laurier. Again, an opportunity to go over, meet with their crew, understand how their ship works and some of their, their capabilities as well. Just of note, we talk about international cooperation in scientific research. In 2020, Healy suffered a main motor fire, which rendered her inability to or unable to go do the work that she was supposed to go do that summer, which involved recovering those underwater mooring arrays that expire basically after two years. Svalbard was then tasked by Norway to go over and recover those moorings in some very challenging ice covered conditions. I had the opportunity to meet with the commanding officer of Svalbard from that time period and just an impressive feat. It's always challenging to work in the high latitudes late in the season. And that Svalbard was able to successfully recover those moorings just is shows their, their ability to operate in that type of environment and their dedication as well to the scientific international community. As we got closer to Trump said we did an international search and rescue exercise with various Norwegian partners. The picture on the right hand side is our landing signals officer. Signaling in rescue helicopter we did an exercise where we simulated a person in the water and Healy small boat went recover the person in the water we bought him on board with simulated injuries. We brought Svalbard's medical officer and other personnel on board to simulate a joint response to that and then eventually medivac the Oscar via the search and rescue helicopter so a great opportunity to work within our regions. Following our trip to Norway we went to Denmark and had opportunity to host the US ambassador to Denmark on board as well as many of his staff so that they could see Healy. This was Healy's first time in Denmark so it was very exciting for our visit there. The bottom left hand corner it's for those of you who may be familiar it's actually Charleston and not Copenhagen Denmark, we signed a joint letter of intent with the joint Arctic command or jaco from Denmark. Unfortunately the way schedules work out with senior leaders that just we weren't able to do it in Copenhagen, but we were in Charleston for a scheduled port call not long after so we were able to host jaco and the deputy Atlantic area commander Admiral more on board for the signing of that letter of intent so very exciting again showing the cooperation of the Coast Guard in the region. And our final stop was in Reykjavik Iceland, the picture on the left is the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel for as you can see pretty similar in size to the Healy. Again, we were able to do passenger exchanges and have opportunity for some really great photo opportunities as well. And on the right hand side is the Icelandic Coast Guard operations officer for all of the Coast Guard as well as the captain and first officer on the floor, who gave us a tour and just an incredibly capable ship and it was really interesting to get on board and to see to see its maneuverability and then to host them on board at sea as well to share with them the capabilities of Healy as well. While I was in or while we were in Iceland, excuse me, the Arctic Circle Assembly just happened to be going on at the same time and I was provided an opportunity to sit on a panel on North American Arctic Security implementation so much like this discussion. I was able to talk about how Healy operationalized a lot of not only Coast Guard policy documents but the broader United States and regional ideals of cooperation in the Arctic region. And this is a fun picture. This was the Healy Wardroom from our second mission as you can see pretty diverse group there. And then on the right hand side is listed. All who came along on the deployment with us, the Army, Navy Air Force and Space Force were all part of the research and development teams. So scientific research from that aspect as well but Healy supports not only the international science community but the interagency science as well. So it was a great opportunity in the Wardroom. We had a lot of really good discussions and learned a lot about each other's organizations. And that concludes my overview of Healy's operations in the Arctic. So Healy continues to be a capable surface platform for contributing to Arctic Security regional science and regional scientific cooperation or as is referred to in the Newport Manual for Arctic Security Science Diplomacy. So as a Coast Guard vessel, Healy remains ready to support search and rescue, marine environmental response, communications and logistics as we work together with our partner nations to be ready to respond to emergencies in the region as interest in human activity increases. And then for some bonus pictures because you can't have enough polar bear pictures I don't think. To polar bear that we saw top right corner, the polar bear on the right is actually walking over brash or broken ice just very impressive animals. Some great ice imagery on the left side the bottom left is an Arctic fox who was hundreds of miles from the nearest land. And then the bottom right hand picture is the crew and science team photo from from the last little bit of our deployment. So with that I look forward very much to taking your questions. Thank you again for having me here today. Thank you, Captain Charlotte. I'd like to ask you two questions before we finish the recorded portion. First, I want to just give you the opportunity to say if there was one key takeaway about what these students could could learn from Arctic soft security what would that be the key takeaway is that it is very remote. It takes Healy about two and a half weeks to get to the Arctic from Seattle. So if there is a search and rescue response that's needed or marine environmental response that's needed. There will be logistical challenges to getting resources there and as leaders in policy or in other parts of our organization just to be preparing for what that might look like in advance. I'd also like to ask since you are alumni of the Naval War College and we have some students here in the room. What was your greatest experience or takeaway or thing you learned while you were here that you've used since you left. What I got more out of than I thought I would expect to get at the Naval War College you understand you have the the the academics piece of it but even though as you mentioned earlier I attended in a zoom environment. Just learning about not only how the other services approach of national security, but how other nations to that was really impressive to I had several classes with foreign students and that was impressive to hear their perspective so I think just hearing different different approaches to the same issues was was my my favorite experience at the Naval War College. Excellent. Well on behalf of the Naval War College thank you for coming back, and we really appreciate your time here. So, once again captain shell shell up thank you, and we're going to conclude the recorded portion of this lecture of opportunity.