Thank you Ridge Wallet for sponsoring today’s video. Check out ridge.com/taskandpurpose for up to 40% off through June 15th. The Arctic region is quietly becoming the location of intense new competition between the great powers of US, China and Russia that could lead to direct conflict. This is because declining sea ice each year is opening up two new shorter shipping routes and revealing trillions of dollars worth of resources from oil to rare earth metals necessary for high tech weapon production. These new maritime trade routes will cut roughly 9,000 kilometers off a one-way trip between Europe and Asia instead of having to go through the Suez Canal. That’s 40% shorter. “Are we there yet?” “Yes Xi Jingping we already got there yesterday” On Top of that, According to a U.S Geological Survey, there are 90 billion barrels of untapped oil and 44 billion barrels of liquid natural gas in the Arctic. That accounts for 22% a fourth of the total undiscovered fossil fuel resources in the entire world. Looks like the arctic region is begging for a little freedom. Now here’s the situation. Every single major military is competing for this big fat juicy opportunity wanting to just sink their teeth into the far north like some kinda ravenous polar bear. The US Department of Defense has been accused of sleeping on this issue and been slow to react since they haven’t invested in arctic warfare capabilities since the Soviet Union dissolved and they thought that was at least one thing they didn’t have to worry about anymore. Now NATO is now in a position where they are playing catch up against Russia and China in the arctic. The First move the DoD made to remedy this was to establish the Arctic Strategy and Global Resilience Office in 2022 to command this new initiative. Then they based the US Air Force’s most advanced aircraft wings in Alaska which increased forces at Air Force Base by 50%. This means there are now two full squadrons of 54 F-35s and 48 F-22′s, making Alaska the only place in the world now with over 100 fifth-generation aircraft on location making Santa Claus look like he’s flying slow. Task & Purpose is a military news and culture oriented channel. We want to foster discussion about the defense industry.