Frozen Assets: The Newest Front in Global Espianage Is One of The Least Habitable Locales On Earth —Thre Arctic
Like Kristoffersen and Tholfsen, the Orenburg was there to drill into undersea ranges in order to collect geological samples from the Lomonosov Ridge, a little-known underwater mountain chain that rises about 12,000 feet above the seabed and stretches for more than 1,000 miles. Under and around this formation lies nearly a quarter of the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel resources.
.. Worth an estimated $17.2 trillion, an amount roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. economy, these resources have been trapped for eons under a dome of ice and snow. But now, with the Arctic warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, that dome is getting smaller and smaller. According to scientists at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center, about 65 percent of the ice layer above the Lomonosov Ridge melted between 1975 and 2012.
.. The response? Three months later, in November, a Russian government spokesman announced that Moscow will build a drone base slightly south of the Arctic Circle and just 420 miles away from mainland Alaska.
.. With 72 subs, the United States has an advantage in numbers over Russia, which has about 60. But Russia is debuting a new generation of vessels that are far quieter and much more difficult for U.S. defense systems to detect.