In October 2002, following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, the Unified Command Plan (UCP), that sets out the geographical responsibilities of combatant commanders, was revised with regard to their areas of responsibility. Accompanying these changes was a map, which detailed the geographical boundaries of the US Northern, Pacific, Southern, European and Central Commands. The map indicated that two of these Commands, Southern and European Command stretched as far south as the Antarctic coastline while a third (Pacific) not only did that but also included the entire Antarctic continent. In 2007, a new Africa Command comprising the southern part of European Command, was instituted and this, too, stretched to the Antarctic coastline. This note briefly considers some of the implications that might follow from these changes to the UCP and highlights logistical patterns, search and rescue matters and the question of the demilitarisation of Antarctica.

There is a toast which, in the writer's opinion, ought to be drunk whenever the great deeds of an expedition and its leader are being honoured, and that is “To the Second in Command”. After a few such toasts someone might be moved to write a book on the famous Seconds-in-Command who grace the pages of polar narrative, and an impressive list it is. To mention but a few there are Crozier for Ross in the early part of last century, Sverdrup for Nansen in the latter part, Frank Wild for Shackleton, and the subject of this note, Armitage, for Scott on his Discovery Expedition, 1901–04.

A geodetic survey by shoran trilateration, to approximately second-order accuracy, of the islands of the Canadian Arctic archipelago was completed in 1957. This was the culmination of a programme started in the south-central section of the country in 1949.

Shoran (short-range aid to navigation) was developed during World War II as a navigational aid for precise tactical bombing. It consists of two radar transponders at known points on the ground and another radar unit in an aircraft capable of measuring the time required for radio waves to travel from the aircraft to each ground station and to return. These times are converted to distances by an intricate electro-mechanical system and the distances are shown on counters, reading to 0·001 mile. For the military application the distance between transponders was known and the position of the aircraft could be plotted from the mileage-counter distances; for geodetic application the mileage-counter distances are used to measure the distance between the two transponders.

It has long been supposed that repeated exposure of a man to cold conditions might be expected to produce changes within him which would better enable him to stand up to those cold conditionsto acclimatize to cold. Until recently, however, there has been little and conflicting evidence of the mechanism of such changes. Accounts of the polar explorers of the Scott-Amundsen era reveal that these men were exposed to severe cold stresses, but unfortunately the sophisticated research facilities necessary to measure the various factors involved were not then available. Now that these facilities are available, man conducts his polar activities under far more comfortable conditions, and the degree of cold stress to which he is exposed is probably of a much smaller order. Small wonder, then, that research into the elusive phenomenon of acclimatization to cold has yielded little profit. In fact, the available evidence suggests that the polar traveller may well undergo a marked heat stress as a result of strenuous exercise under conditions in which he is unable to get rid of surplus heat easily. This article looks at the basic physiological problems of heat loss and heat conservation with which the modern polar traveller has to contend, and points out the results of some recent investigations.

There has for long been discussion among Soviet geographers on the definition of various terms in Soviet usage to indicate the northern part of the USSR. Some of these terms—“the Arctic” [Arktika], “the Arctic region” [arkticheskaya oblast'], “the sub-Arctic” [subarktika], “the polar regions” [Zapolyar'ye]—are normally used to denote areas defined according to physical criteria. Such criteria are similar to those usually applied outside the USSR, such as the “10° C. July isotherm”, the “tree line”, or the “limit of continuous permafrost”, and, again as in the non-Soviet world, the terms have no generally accepted precise meaning and must be defined by each user. But in addition to these terms for natural regions, there are certain terms in predominantly economic and administrative usage: “the north” [sever], “the far north” [dal'niy sever], “the extreme north” [krayniy sever], “the northern marches” [severnyye okrainy], and “the Soviet north” [sovetskiy sever]. Some explanation of their current connotations may be helpful to those studying Soviet literature.