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Consider current level technology - surveillance satellites, patrol boats, coastal guards, both USA and Russian anti submarine jet air planes patrolling skies of Arctic Sea.

I have a big group (~1000) of genetically enhanced people (in my setting they are a vangard part of interplanetary invasion - in vitro born chimeras with ~99% humans DNA and mind copied from alien), they have much more endurance and strength than average people (they can jog 100+ miles (160km+) per day with 250lbs (113 kg) backpack), they can see in dark clearly, and they have perfect sense of direction, so no GPS or compasses required for them, alongside with night vision goggles and flash lights, but they are still flesh and bone - they can freeze to death (after few hours in cold water), they can starve, orcas and white bears consider them delicious, but, on the same time - raw orcas and white bears meat are considered edible by invaders too.

Also my invaders don't have any alien tech with them - because aliens do not want humanity to understand interplanetary invasion is happening.

They want to move secretly from Canada to Russia (and back) using skies, kayaks, dog sleds, snowmobiles, rubber boats, etc and other items, vehicles, gadgets they can get from good general store popular among hikers. Probably, best time for them is during polar night.

My ideas:

1. Using passenger jets and other usual means of transport usable by people is not an option, because none of my invaders have government issued ID (but they have cash and anything they can steal), and all they looks quite suspicious - I mean, you'll find there is something not right with this person even if you have no idea who he/she is. Also hijacking passenger plane is not a good idea - there is a lot of USA/Canadian/Russian jet fighers that can take down any plane in few minutes.




2. They can mimic native people (Inuit or Chukchi people), but its quite big group of invaders, and they don't looks like native people.




3. Big group of invaders can spread to smaller groups, not a problem.




4. Unfortunately, building flying saucer vehicle on closest scrapyard is not possible - they don't have both nano fabricators and element -1 reserves, they had to use techs and resource present.

So question is:

how they can pass through Arctic Sea undetectable by Russia/Canada/USA/Norway and back?

Its ok if the journey took few weeks, but they have to make it undetected.

Its possible they can free ride cargo ship or hijack plane but i want them to exactly traverse Arctic Sea by their own. Without drawing attention.

Its ok, if solution sounds little stupid - like put on white fluffy clothes and move on 4 to mimic white bears - probably, its good tactics to trick air patrol with thermovisors.

Its ok if solution is something out of the box, like making underwater habitats pulled by orcas (but, imho, its very unrealistic).

I am going to claim expertise on this issue for a major reason: I live in the Arctic. I've also participated in search and rescues in the Arctic. The basic answer to this is that small groups of sufficiently-prepared people actively trying to evade detection and if no one is specifically looking for them can do it trivially by any number of means.

It's hard enough to find people close to communities who want to be found.

However, and this is important to note, that if they are seen by anyone, directly or indirectly, they're going to stand out like a sore freaking thumb. Populations up here are small, and people know where other people normally are in a given period of the year. Around my community, for instance, if someone sees tracks in some areas in, say, March, that's going to raise all sorts of red flags because there's no reason for anyone to be in those areas at that time of year, and it will take roughly 90 seconds from the time someone on Facebook mentions it until everyone else in the community knows about the mysterious tracks. Likewise, in most communities in my part of the Canadian Arctic, there's no way to blend in. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else, and someone who showed up in or near town and didn't get off an aircraft (or in summer, a boat) is immediately going to be known about.

There was a case a few years ago where a bunch of Norwegians knew the RCMP and Canada customs wanted to have a chat with some of them regarding their antics in other communities they'd visited, so they stopped outside of town and dropped off the guys in question, planning to pick them up again after the boat docked and the rest of the crew played innocent. It worked for approximately five minutes. We all knew where they were before the boat had managed to get into the bay.

Consider different parts of the globe, in the real world.

• Illegal immigrants are trying to walk across quite inhospitable terrain at the US southern border. Some are caught, many get through.


• Illegal immigrants are trying to cross the Mediterranean on small watercraft. For some, the goal is to be rescued by ships which do not return them to Africa. For others, the goal is to actually get through. Again, some are caught, many get through.


• In a different vein, drug smugglers are using various routes. In some cases, they hide the contraband in vehicles that are insufficiently searched. In some cases, the goal is to keep their boat, semi-submersible, or aircraft undetected. Again, some are caught, many get through.

These examples suggest to me that detection is not much of an issue if nobody is looking out for it. Drones and recon sats produce lots and lots of data, and only a small part is analyzed with the attention that is given to a North Korean missile site or an Iranian naval base. It would take someone with an initial suspicion to look at satellite imagery or recon drone pictures over time to detect the organized group moving.

So the first question is the physical challenge. People walked across parts of the Antarctic. If your aliens are superhuman as you describe them, they can probably do the Arctic trip.

The problem could be random chance and do-gooders. If a single kayak is spotted near the North Pole, and quick googling shows no known record attempt, someone might send the Coast Guard.

Instead of Canada to Norway, consider Alaska to Russia across the Bering Strait and then through Siberia on foot. The total trip is longer, the over-water part is shorter. And hikers or cars are not terribly unusual on either side.

Again random chance could be a problem. Some friendly hunter comes across a camp of the aliens and wants to chat a bit before he looks for another moose. Some pipeline workers see hikers and shout hello. You could introduce a couple of close calls in your story, but none which causes an alert.

I agree with other answers that going by land through Alaska and Siberia and crossing the Bearing Strait at a relatively narrow point might be much better for your invaders than crossing hundreds or thousand of kilometers or miles of the Arctic Ocean.

Crossing the Arctic Ocean can be quite dangerous.

If they cross in groups using dogsleds they will have to carry food and other provisions for themselves and their dogs. Considering the distances involved, they should have to establish several supply depots and make several expeditions to stock the supply depots before before there are enough supplies accumulated in the depots for the group to be able to cross the entire distance.

As I remember, using pre stocked supply depots was necessary for the expeditions to the North Pole and the South Pole, and those expeditions had far fewer members than the total 1,000 of your invaders if they all go on one trip. And a route from Canada to Russia over the ice might be much longer than a trip to the North Pole and back.

With their greater than human endurance your invaders might not need dogsleds and might be able to carry all needed supplies in their backpacks. But you should calculate how much food they would need during the time necessary to cross the Arctic Ocean and whether they can carry that much weight.

Crossing the Arctic Ocean ice on foot is often very difficult because the ice is very rough in some places and there are open patches of water in other places.

The Arctic ice melts and covers a smaller area in the summer and reforms to cover a larger area in the winter. And with global warming the Arctic ice gets smaller every year. Thus the prospect of sailing cargo ships across the Arctic gets closer every year.

So possibly your invaders could paddle kayaks across open water between the northern shores of North America, Europe, and Asia and the southern edge of the ice sheet. I imagine that there are many icebergs and ice floes floating around in those waters.

And possibly people might get suspicious of many kayaks traveling in unusual directions. It's not like there are actually unknown and undiscovered tribes of Eskimos without Russian, American, Canadian, or Danish contacts and citizenship lurking behind every cape and island in the Arctic. All Eskimo groups are pretty well known and some members of them might have satellite phones capable of reporting strange people in kayaks to the authorities for all that I know.

You might not know any Eskimos personally, or the locations of specific Eskimo communities and hunting grounds, but many outside people who travel in the Arctic will know where Eskimos are usually found and might often have contacts with Eskimos, and might notice strange kayaks making strange voyages.

Or your invaders might want to use larger boats or ships. Possibly they could buy an icebreaker and start a passenger service from Canada or Alaska to Siberia & back. And possibly their voyages could sometimes carry invaders hibernating or something in the cargo hold to be woken and secretly released near the coast of the destination.

Or maybe your invaders might use submarines to travel under the Arctic Ocean, just as drug smugglers have been known to use privately made submarines to carry drugs. An atomic submarine could travel all the way under the Arctic without ever having to come to the surface.

Acquiring or building a conventional diesel electric powered submarine or submarines would be many, many times easier and less conspicuous for your invaders. But submarine batteries can store only a limited amount of electricity and power the sub for a limited distance before they run out of power. Then the sub will have to surface and run the diesel engines using outside air (instead of the limited air on the sub) to recharge the batteries until they are fully charged and the sub can submerge again.

Thus the sub will have to travel mostly though ice free waters, since the only ice covered waters it will be able to travel under will be patches short enough for it to make the trip on one battery charge, or else where they will be certain they can surface and break through the ice, and I don't know if they will be able to predict ice thickness that well.

And if the sub travels under ice free water, it will have to worry about running into the sea floor, or ramming into an island, or hitting a submerged part of an iceberg, or being accidentally run over by a ship, etc., so they will have to navigate carefully.

And the sub will have to scan the surrounding carefully to make certain nobody is around to see before coming up to run the diesel engines and recharge the batteries.

Depending on how many trips your invaders make and how many people make each trip, they might try several different travel methods and different routes to travel between Canada and Russia.

About:

they can starve, orcas and white bears consider them delicious, but, on the same time - raw orcas and white bears meat are considered edible by invaders too.

Polar bears on the hunt will attack humans, but humans are apparently too strange and exotic for most wild orcas to hunt, as the very few recorded possible attacks show:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale_attack1

As for eating orcas and white bears, Arctic orcas and white bears would usually be found only where seals would be found, and hunting seals would be a lot less dangerous for your invaders.

Orcas, like other cetaceans, are extremely intelligent. It is quite possible that the intelligence range of orcas and many other cetaceans overlaps considerably with the intelligence range of humans, and that an objective outside observer might consider orcas and other cetaceans to be intelligent beings and people, or as much so as the observer considers humans to be.

Even though it would not fit the definition of cannibalism exactly, eating human beings should seem almost as disgusting to the invaders as eating members of their own species. And eating orcas should seem almost as disgusting to the invaders as eating humans. If your invaders would kill orcas to eat they are very evil and unscrupulous persons without strong ethical codes.

As the previous answer mention it, it will be easier by Bering Straights.

I don't think they can go "undetected" but group from 4 to 5 may go unnoticed (they will be seen, but it will not be seen as a unsual thing). Here you can go by remote terrestrial areas where it may be easier to hide in case of a recon flight, than on the ice sheep. But if there are not researched, the only problematic part may be the border and landing in Russia.

This is mostly unpopulated area, so they will be not much questions asked.