A member of the ice rescue team maintains look-out as U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy keeps station alongside an ice floe in the Beaufort Sea in August 2023. (U.S. Coast Guard)

The Coast Guard plans to buy 84 new ships and aircraft by 2035 with an injection of $25 billion in supplemental funding approved last week as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act.

Adm. Kevin Lunday, the Coast Guard’s acting commandant, and other service leaders said the infusion of funds was the largest one-time boost that the service has received since it was founded in 1790. The money will allow it to simultaneously address several deficiencies — getting a jump start on building new icebreakers, adding a variety of cutters, buying helicopters and airplanes, plus adding forces to its southern border security missions. The bill would also finance the overhaul of shore facilities and piers.

The 10-year funding package was passed by Congress and signed July 4 by President Donald Trump. The money is separate from the Coast Guard’s proposed $14.5 billion budget for 2026, which still requires congressional approval.

The money is a portion of the $165 billion approved overall for its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Most of the DHS funds will go to the Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies for immigration law enforcement in the United States and infrastructure along the southern border with Mexico.

The 55,000-member Coast Guard now operates 250 cutters, 200 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and 1,600 smaller boats, according to the service.

The congressional legislation signed by Trump shows new spending would buy 17 icebreakers, 21 cutters of various sizes and types, along with 40 MH-60 Jayhawk multi-mission helicopters and six HC-130J Super Hercules long-range aircraft that are used for surveillance, transport, search and rescue, and ice monitoring.

The funds for icebreakers have been a major point of contention in Congress in recent years, with the service able to field just three of the specialized ships.

The Polar Star, the Coast Guard’s only heavy icebreaker, is 49 years old and spends much of the year dedicated to “Operation Deep Freeze,” clearing ice around Antarctica to resupply scientific stations on the continent around the South Pole.

The Coast Guard has two medium icebreakers, the 25-year-old Healy and the Storis, a commercial ship purchased by the Coast Guard last year that was repainted and refitted for homeland security purposes.

In contrast, Russia operates 41 icebreakers, including some large nuclear-powered vessels. But many are smaller ships meant for clearing the country’s many northern harbors. In January 2018, China declared itself a “near Arctic state” and has built three icebreakers.

The recent entry of Norway and Sweden into NATO has increased the number of icebreakers and shipyards capable of constructing the vessels, with the United States, Canada, and Finland committing to sharing designs and shipyards to build 90 new icebreakers by 2030.

However, some in Congress have complained of an “icebreaker gap” as Russia and China increasingly operate, sometimes in tandem, in Arctic waterways that have become more navigable due to climate change, resulting in thinner summer ice.

Russia plans to deploy the Ivan Papanin, a missile-carrying “combat icebreaker” into the Arctic, according to Jane’s Information Service, a more than century-old British military analysis company

The move to arm icebreakers has some United States and allies considering counter moves to the stepped-up militarization of the polar region.

“This move risks raising tensions in the Arctic, a region that’s already becoming more strategically contested as sea ice recedes and maritime activity increases,” Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., said last week in an interview.

Green retired this month from the House after serving as chairman of the maritime security subpanel of the Homeland Security Committee.

The Ivan Papanin is the first icebreaker from any nation with an offensive military profile, according to Jane’s. The Papanin is designed to cut through ice up to 5 inches thick. It’s armed with a 76 mm gun and capable of launching cruise missiles.

The ship is one of two icebreakers that Moscow will put through sea trials before assigning them to the Russian North Fleet.

“With Russia increasingly focused on the Arctic and laying claim to large swathes of it, the Papanin class was designed to enable the Russian navy to project power more widely in the region than would be possible with conventional, non-ice-strengthened warships,” Jane’s reported in April.

The Coast Guard budget would also go to efforts by the service along the southern border of the United States. Special units have operated with Navy destroyers to interdict unauthorized entry into the United States, transnational drug shipments, and illegal fishing.

The Coast Guard reported several flights earlier this year using its fixed-wing aircraft to transfer people detained by immigration agents from San Diego to Texas for possible deportation processing.

Along with increases in ships, aircraft, and crews, the money will pay for upgraded at-sea systems using sensors and uncrewed air and watercraft to improve coastal surveillance of American waters.

Funds will also go to the renovation of existing shore structures and the building of new infrastructure at bases.

The Coast Guard primarily operates as the coastal and internal waterways defense of the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii — an area covering 95,000 miles of shoreline, 25,000 miles of navigable rivers, and 4.5 million square miles of U.S. exclusive economic zone waters. Units and detachments are also deployed in Bahrain, Europe and Asia.