USNI News – The Navy is temporarily moving two MQ-4C unmanned aircraft from Guam to a base in Japan.
Greece Overhauling Military With New Helicopters and Frigates, Updating U.S. Defense Pact
USNI News – Despite its struggling economy and escalating tensions with neighboring Turkey, Greece is pushing ahead on overhauling its military, according to its defense minister.
Chinese Nationalism and the “Gray Zone”: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Maritime Policy
China Maritime Studies Institute – This volume examines the role of popular nationalism in China’s maritime conduct.
Can The U.S. Navy Fix Its Shipyard Problem?
1945 – James Holmes writes that in a sense, our navy is suffering from a case of historical role reversal. It is playing the part of the Imperial Japanese Navy while China’s People’s Liberation Army plays the part of the U.S. Navy.
Improve NATO’s Black Sea Maritime Posture Through Operation Sea Guardian
CIMSEC – NATO must find a solution to address the current limitations of its Black Sea maritime posture, in particular the Montreux Convention, but also the low capacity of Black Sea NATO navies and the lack of sufficient NATO maritime command and control in the region.
Raw Numbers Or ‘Capability’: What Should The U.S. Navy Focus On?
1945 – James Holmes writes that Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed is not wrong when he urges fellow lawmakers and the U.S. Navy to concentrate their fleet-design efforts on fielding the right “capabilities” to win in combat rather than obsess over “arbitrary” numbers of ships, warplanes, or armaments.
PN prefers US Cyclone patrol boats over Hamilton-class cutter
Philippine News Agency – The Philippine Navy (PN) would rather acquire the newly-decommissioned Cyclone-class patrol vessels than obtain another Hamilton-class cutter from the United States, its chief said Monday.
China’s Ballistic Missile Industry
China Aerospace Studies Institute – This report is the next in the series of studies by the China Aerospace Studies Institute that seeks to lay the foundation for better understanding the Aerospace Sector of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This report describes China’s ballistic missile capabilities and development. It reviews the history of the PRC’s research and development of ballistic missiles and traces the institutions that are key to these systems. It details the components and systems that are integral to these weapons and describes the companies, research academies, and production facilities, that form the core of the industry in the PRC.
A Tale of Two Seas: The Caribbean and South China Sea in Great Power Perspective
CIMSEC – The parallels between Soviet-U.S. relations vis-à-vis the Caribbean and China-U.S. relations vis-à-vis the South China Sea are as striking as they are instructive. The Red Navy’s mistakes in its transatlantic ventures serve as salutary course corrections for the U.S. Navy’s transpacific undertakings today.
Training Phase Of ARC21 Combined Amphibious Exercise Begins In Japan
Naval News – ARC21 combined amphibious exercise will gather units from Japan, USA, France and Australia in waters around Kyushu.
Interview With French Asia Pacific Commander Rear Adm. Jean-Mathieu Rey
USNI News – Far from France, Rear Adm. Jean-Mathieu Rey, Joint Commander French Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific (ALPACI), is responsible for French security interests in the Indo-Pacific – an area of the world that’s growing in complexity as tensions between the U.S. and China continue to build.
Image May Reveal A New Type Of Submarine For The Chinese Navy
Naval News – China has a massive submarine building program. Yet new classes of submarine may only be revealed after they have been built. Right now Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) may give us our first glimpse of a completely new type.
Turkey Releases New Image Showing LHD Anadolu Carrying Drone
Naval News – After Turkey was removed from the F-35 project by the U.S. because of Turkey’s S-400 air defence system purchase from Russia, the Turkish Defence Industries Presidency announced that they have been working on deploying “TB-3 Bayraktar” Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) on Turkey’s future Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) Anadolu instead of F-35B aircraft which has vertical take-off and landing capability.
Envisioning a Dystopian Future in the South China Sea
CIMSEC – It is clear that the status quo or retrenchment will have negative consequences for the United States, the region, and the world. It is equally clear that Washington must act now to turn the tides in the SCS and avert a dystopian future when Beijing exerts administrative control and jurisdictional authority of the strategic waterway.
The U.S. Navy in the Indian Ocean: India’s ‘Goldilocks’ Dilemma
War on the Rocks – India’s strategic community was in a frenzy last month after USS John Paul Jones carried out a freedom of navigation exercise near India’s Lakshadweep Islands. Indian observers were mystified by the timing of maneuver, coming as it did at a moment when U.S.-Indian relations are on a high. The disquiet in New Delhi was compounded by a U.S. 7th Fleet press release that said the operation was carried out in India’s exclusive economic zone “without requesting India’s prior consent” to assert “navigational rights and freedoms”—language that many Indian observers saw as needlessly provocative.
Cannibalized parts, systems that sailors can’t fix: LCS maintenance woes could get worse, watchdog warns
Navy Times – Small crew size has led the Littoral Combat Ships to encounter maintenance challenges not seen elsewhere in the fleet, issues that could imperil the ability of such ships to get out of maintenance on time and therefore lessen the number of ships available for operations, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
Warning Shots Fired After Iranian Vessels Swarm American Missile Submarine In Strait Of Hormuz
War Zone – Iranian boats have now harassed American warships in and around the Persian Gulf on three separate occasions in just over a month.
Suspected Chinese state hackers target Russian submarine designer
BleepingComputer – Hackers suspected to work for the Chinese government have used a new malware called PortDoor to infiltrate the systems of an engineering company that designs submarines for the Russian Navy.
Sea Transportation: South China Sea Scheduled Service
StrategyPage – The hardest working ships in the South China Sea are two Chinese two replenishment (“sustainment”) ships designed expressly tp support Chinese islands created or occupied in the South China Sea.
US Navy seizes weapons in Arabian Sea likely bound for Yemen
Associated Press – The U.S. Navy announced Sunday it seized an arms shipment of thousands of assault weapons, machines guns and sniper rifles hidden aboard a ship in the Arabian Sea, apparently bound for Yemen to support the country’s Houthi rebels.
Sun Tzu Versus AI: Why Artificial Intelligence Can Fail in Great Power Conflict
USNI Proceedings – The United States must invest more time, greater research, and more financial resources to overcome data deceptions and adapt AI to military applications.
Time For Cognitive Warfare Against China?
1945 – James Holmes writes “Cognitive warfare”? Yes, please—and more of it!
China Wants To Revive A Strategically Located Airfield Deep In The Pacific: Report
War Zone – The Chinese government reportedly has plans to refurbish and expand an airstrip on the island of Kanton, also spelled Canton, part of the archipelago nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. If true, this could give Beijing an airbase in an incredibly strategical location, between North America and New Zealand, potentially giving China’s military much greater reach throughout a critical and increasingly tense region.
Strategic Predictability: Landpower in the Indo-Pacific
War on the Rocks – When people look at maps of the Indo-Pacific region, often they see a lot of blue and very little green. They see the massive Pacific Ocean with tiny islands speckled throughout. Closer to the Asian continent, they see archipelagos and island chains with large seas and bays with strategic straits cutting throughout. When national security professionals view the region in this way, they tend to discount landpower in favor of air and sea. While those domains are central to Indo-Pacific security, we see the region through a different lens.
All of One Company: The Need to Forge a Stronger Bond Between Navies and Commercial Shipping
CIMSEC – As the world’s navies dramatically shrink relative to the ever growing fleets of commercial shipping cousins, they should take time to understand their fellow maritime stakeholders and make themselves “all of one company.” Major powers are never going to be able to significantly alter the ratio of warships to commercial vessels, so they must seriously revisit the strategy for how the protection of trade is conducted in peace and in conflict.
