News Stories  Melt Menace   In the past, the remote gray waters
of the Alaskan Arctic saw little more than the occasional cargo
barge and Eskimo whaling boat, but that's changed: There are now
so many ships in the area that the Coast Guard can't keep track
of them. They have no idea what these vessels are carrying or
who is on them.  On a single day in August, 95 ships were
detected between Prudhoe Bay and Wainwright off America's least
defended coastline. The possibility that drug dealers, arms
merchants and terrorists could begin to explore transport routes
near America's largest oil fields has prompted the U.S. military
to begin planning for a much larger military presence in the
Arctic in the future than we have right now.  Does the Navy have
the ability to go up and operate a number of ships, a number of
aircraft, for a sustained period of time in this environment,
where it's cold, it's got bad weather, it's got a lot of ice,
and it's really far away from everything that supports you? In
the October 19th