Oblique icebreaker

In this way, a relatively small icebreaker is capable of opening a wide channel in ice for large merchant ships.

The result was an asymmetrical, triangle-shaped vessel with three azimuth thrusters in the "corners" pushing the icebreaker with a 50-degree angle of attack—almost sideways—in ice.

[3] Over the years, the concept was further developed by MARC and its successor, Aker Arctic, together with ABB and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes).

[2][4] However, there have also been doubts about the ability of the relatively small vessel to break a wide channel in ice without the much greater displacement and shaft power of a traditional icebreaker.

The 76 million euro vessel, based on Aker Arctic's Aker ARC 100 oblique icebreaker concept developed for AHS,[6] was designed to be capable of breaking level ice up to 1 metre (3.3 ft) thick both ahead and astern, and generate a 50-metre (55 yd) channel in 0.6-metre (2.0 ft) ice when moving sideways using three Z-drive thrusters with a combined output of 7,500 kW.