General: US Needs More Military Power at the South Pole

Space Force was only the beginning. In the race for the Pentagon to spend oodles of money preparing to fight wars in places where virtually no one is and which are fairly inconsequential, Gen. Charles Q. Brown is now angling for more military capabilities at the South Pole.

Gen. Brown noted that the US military doesn’t have a huge number of icebreakers, and with Earth having two poles and all has to split the ones they do have between the Arctic and Antarctic.

US officials have made plays recently for more Arctic gear to fight with Russia and China over resources in the far north. There is no sign that resources would even be a thing in Antarctica, which is land and not ocean, and where no one seems to be looking to stake claims.

But Brown believes the South Pole “is just a number of years away” from being a focus point in US-Russia competition, though he didn’t even attempt to ballpark how many years that would actually be.

But whether it’s a thing 10 years from now or 1,000 years from now, the US only had 10 planes with skis for landing gear, and they could definitely spend a lot more on skis going forward.