Drift station

A drift station is a term used to describe a temporary or semi-permanent facility built on an ice floe. During the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States maintained a number of stations in the Arctic Ocean for research and espionage, the latter of which were often little more than quickly constructed shacks. Extracting personnel from these stations proved difficult and in the case of the United States, employed early versions of the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system.

See also

• Ice rafting, the transport of various material by ice
• Soviet and Russian manned drifting ice stations