Defense News – The initial response to the July 2020 fire that destroyed the multibillion-dollar amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard was uncoordinated and hampered by confusion as to which admiral should cobble together Navy and civilian firefighters, according to new information from the then-head of Naval Surface Forces.

USNI Proceedings – Countering China’s gray-zone tactics starts with a simple but challenging premise: the U.S. Sea Services have to be there.

USNI Proceedings – Leading strategists examine China’s insurgency in the South China Sea and offer ways for the United States and its allies and partners to push back.

Defense News – The Navy will order fewer F-35C jets in fiscal year 2023 than manufacturer Lockheed Martin could produce under a pandemic catch-up plan, with officials hoping to use the lull to spend money on other priorities.

USNI News – The Biden administration plans to station two more forward-deployed Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in Rota, Spain

CIMSEC – In the Indo-Pacific and beyond, almost every speech, strategy document, and think tank report mentions “allies and partners” as a critical element of American national security. The military’s culture is organized around warfighting, a concept that may not immediately bring the criticality of allies and partners to mind. When officers in the sea services sit down to discuss big strategic issues, conversations more often center on the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries, while any assessments of our allies come as an afterthought.

War on the Rocks – As the U.S. Navy pivots to autonomous technologies for its future hybrid fleet of crewed and uncrewed ships, defense professionals and military officers (inspired in no small part by the novels Ghost Fleet and 2034) are keenly aware that every automated system is at risk of intrusion. The focus on cyber attacks, however, obscures a more fundamental cyber reliability problem. When computers replace people in the role of monitoring engineering systems, identifying equipment failures becomes more difficult. Leaving those problems unfixed makes vessels fail earlier, and fixing them puts ships and people at risk. In short, automated systems can introduce system-wide vulnerability even if nobody hacks them.

War on the Rocks – Most of us have no idea where we will be in 2050. But the U.S. Navy should — the ships that it is procuring now will most likely still be in service then.

War Zone – The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Demonstrator went from experiment to workhorse and undoubtedly cemented its place in U.S. Navy history.

War on the Rocks – U.S. Navy carrier air wings are not effectively managing their time, and this could cost America dearly given the centrality of the carrier to U.S. naval operations. There is a yawning gap between the desires of commanders and actual capabilities.