– USNI News – A Spanish frigate will deploy with USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and attached to its carrier strike group on a deployment from Naval Station Norfolk, Va. later this year.
Marines, Navy Wrestle With How To Upgun Amphibs
– Breaking Defense – The Marines want Vertical Launch System missile tubes on their new amphibious ships — but the Navy isn’t planning to leave room for them.
Hit the Slides! The Latest from the Surface Navy
– Defense News – An update on where some of the most important surface Navy programs stand heading into 2019.
After years fighting terrorism, the SEALs turn their eyes toward fighting big wars
– Defense News – After spending the better part of the past two decades supporting small wars in the desert, the Navy is starting to bring the SEALs back into the fold as it faces threats from major powers such as China and Russia.
USS America Will Head to Japan to Serve as Next Forward-Deployed Amphibious Flagship
– USNI News – The Navy’s newest amphibious assault ship will replace the service’s oldest as the forward-deployed big deck in the Pacific.
Marines Want Missiles To Sink Ships From Shores, And They Want Them Fast
– Breaking Defense – The Army is looking at this too but probably on a different timeline — the Marine Corps wants to get after this pretty quickly.
Sealift is America’s Achilles Heel in the Age of Great Power Competition
– War on the Rocks – It is important to delve into the problems facing America’s maritime power projection — specifically the diminishing capacity of the U.S. merchant marine today and its impact upon future naval operations in an era of great power competition.
The Real Problem with China’s Fishermen
– National Interest – Chinese trawlers are not the pointy tip of “Chinese maritime expansion,” but do present a genuine environmental challenge to the global community.
Then What? Wargaming the Interface Between Strategy and Operations Part 3
– CIMSEC – To understand the prospects for incorporating the interface of levels, we must examine how something, whether a phenomenon, factor, issue, etc., can be addressed in a game. There are three ways: simulation, representation, and discussion.
Facing a sealift capacity collapse, the Navy seeks strategy for new auxiliary ships
– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is moving toward settling on an approach for recapitalizing the nation’s aged sealift fleet, moving away from a single common hull for five missions.
China Military Power 2019
– DIA – The latest volume in the DIA’s Military Power series, a product that examines the core capabilities of China’s military.
As Navy Moves Beyond Relearning the Basics to Focusing on Lethality, So Too Do Navy Trainers
– USNI News – In 2018, the Navy stressed the basics of training, crew qualifications and readiness following two fatal ship collisions the year before. 2019 will be all about moving beyond the fundamentals and focusing on lethality.
US Navy moves toward unleashing killer robot ships on the world’s oceans
– Defense News – The Navy plans to spend this year taking the first few steps into a markedly different future, which, if it comes to pass, will upend how the fleet has fought since the Cold War. And it all starts with something that might seem counterintuitive: It’s looking to get smaller.
‘Be Ready To Fight Now’: Top Admiral On Russia & China
– Breaking Defense – The Navy’s top surface warfare officer called for his crews to rapidly develop “a sense of urgency” about the Russian and Chinese navies.
Oh me! What will become of Flight III DDG?
– Defense News – Bryan Clark, the retired submariner and brilliant naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has been saying for months now that there was a shift happening in the surface force toward more passive sensors, and that the DDG Flight III may not be best suited for that new model.
4,500 Marines, F-35 Squadron on Standby in Middle East as U.S. Mulls Syria Exit
– USNI News – Two Navy amphibious ready groups and about 4,500 shipboard Marines are on standby in the Middle East to support an American exit from Syria if needed.
The future of the US surface fleet: One combat system to rule them all
– Defense News – What the surface fleet wants is a single combat system that runs on every ship, and runs everything on the ship, and that doesn’t mind what hardware you are running so long as you have the computing power for it.
Chinese Shipbuilding and Seapower: Full Steam Ahead, Destination Uncharted
– CIMSEC – In recent years, China has been building ships rapidly across the waterfront. Chinese sources liken this to “dumping dumplings into soup broth.” Now, Beijing is really getting its ships together in both quantity and quality. The world’s largest commercial shipbuilder, it also constructs increasingly sophisticated models of all types of naval ships and weapons systems. What made this possible, and what does it mean?
Navy Kicks Off New LCS Deployments; Training Questions Remain
– Breaking Defense – After years of delays, budget fights, and searing debates over the role that the ship will play, three Littoral Combat Ships will head out on their first deployments this year.
US Navy’s 6th Fleet boss describes her front-row seat to the great power competition
– Defense News – The commander of the Naples, Italy-based U.S. 6th Fleet, Vice Adm. Lisa Franchetti, has a front-row seat for the renewed great power competition.
Invisible nuclear-armed submarines, or transparent oceans? Are ballistic missile submarines still the best deterrent for the United States?
– Bulletin of Atomic Scientists – Owen Cote writes that the question of whether submarines are getting harder to hide depends very much on whose submarines you’re talking about, who’s hunting them, and where. To some degree, undersea geography is destiny, when it comes to hiding and finding nuclear submarines.
A New Cold War Has Begun
– Foreign Policy – Robert D. Kaplan argues that the United States and China will be locked in a contest for decades. But Washington can win if it stays more patient than Beijing.
Angles and Dangles: Arihant and the Dilemma of India’s Undersea Nuclear Weapons
– War on the Rocks – After INS Arihant, India’s first ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), finished its maiden deterrent patrol in November 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphatically declared India’s nuclear triad complete. Arihant’s operationalization has catapulted India into a select group of states with an underwater nuclear launch capability. It has also raised alarm over the safety and security of India’s nuclear arsenal because a sea-based deterrent may entail a ready-to-use arsenal and less restrictive command and control procedures, increasing probability of their accidental use. For Pakistan, India’s nuclear force modernization endangers the balance of strategic forces in the region and could intensify the nuclear arms race on the subcontinent.
This Is The Only Photo Of A U.S. Navy Supercarrier Being Sunk
– War Zone – The haunting image depicts a scene that hopefully won’t ever be repeated during an operational deployment.
Yes, China Could Sink a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier. But Don’t Bet On It.
– National Interest – Could China sink a couple of U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and stun the United States into abandoning the Western Pacific?
