Navy report shows polar cap is shrinking fast: Maritime military may soon face challenge of dealing with new ocean

The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report.

Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 -- or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

For the U.S. Navy, this presents an unprecedented challenge: a new ocean.

The nation's maritime military does not yet have the ships, training, technology and logistics in place to patrol or police a wide-open polar sea, according to the final report from a symposium on Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic.