Iceberg Reconnaissance and Oceanographic Operations 



Iceberg Reconnaissance 



The Ice Reconnaissance Detachment 

 (IRD) is a sub-unit under Commander, 

 International Ice Patrol (IIP) partnered with 

 Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, which 

 provided the aircraft platform for 

 reconnaissance in 2006. IRDs deployed to 

 observe and report sea-ice, icebergs, and 

 oceanographic conditions on the Grand Banks 

 of Newfoundland. Oceanographic observations 

 were used for operational support and research 

 purposes. 



Ice Patrol's preseason IRD departed on 

 24 January 2006 to determine the early-season 

 iceberg distribution. The iceberg distribution 

 noted during the preseason and subsequent 

 IRDs never warranted normal (once every two 

 weeks) deployments to Newfoundland. Though 

 IIP did not issue daily ice-limit products in 

 2006, IRDs deployed periodically between 

 January and August to monitor iceberg 

 conditions on the Grand Banks. Iceberg 

 reconnaissance operations officially concluded 

 on 24 August 2006 with the return of the 

 postseason IRD. 



Ice Reconnaissance Detachments were 

 deployed to HP's base of operations in St. 

 John's, Newfoundland for 54 days during 2006 

 (Table 2). Ice Patrol flew 33 sorties, 16 of 

 which were transit flights to and from St. 

 John's. The 17 remaining sorties were iceberg- 

 reconnaissance patrols to determine the extent 

 of iceberg danger. In addition to the 33 sorties, 

 four roundtrip logistics flights were conducted 

 from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City to 

 maintain and repair IRD aircraft. Figure 7 

 shows HP's flight hours for 2006. 



In 2006, Ice Patrol also continued 

 support of GMES, successfully completing one 

 ground-truth validation flight in conjunction 

 with scheduled reconnaissance. GMES/ 

 PolarView is a project that coordinates the 

 users and providers of satellite-gathered 



Table 2. 2006 IRD summary (Flight hours include 

 patrol, logistics, and transit hours.) 



environmental and security information. For a 

 fifth year. Ice Patrol participated as an end user 

 of satellite reconnaissance through the GMES 

 project's Polar View element, led by C-CORE, 

 a global engineering firm specializing in 

 remote sensing and geotechnical engineering. 



Ice Patrol used 212.8 flight hours in 

 2006, a 7% increase from 2005 (Figure 8). 

 Figure 9 compares flight hours with the 

 number of icebergs south of 48°N since 1997. 

 Iceberg population affects flight hours, but 

 Figure 9 demonstrates that IIP expends a fairly 

 consistent number of flight hours independent 

 of the highly variable number of icebergs from 

 year to year. Ice Patrol maintains this 

 consistency because even light years require 



Figure 7. 2006 flight hours 



