CNN – The crew members of a North Korean freighter regained control of their ship from pirates who hijacked the vessel off Somalia, but not without a deadly fight.
BBC – Pirates ‘overpowered’ off Somalia.
Virginian Pilot – Norfolk-based ships respond to pirate attacks on vessels.
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CNN – A U.S. destroyer has entered Somali territorial waters in pursuit of a Japanese-owned ship loaded with benzene that was hijacked by pirates over the weekend, military officials said Monday.
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Economist – Irregular warfare may keep Western armies busy for decades. They will have to adapt if they are to overcome the odds that history suggests they are up against.
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Economist – Western armies are good at destroying things. Can they be made better at building them?
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MercoPress – Battling her way through 800 miles of ferocious seas between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, the Royal Navy Atlantic South patrol and an auxiliary vessel carried out this month a disaster relief exercise based around a typical South Atlantic cruise vessel visiting South Georgia and which supposedly had ran aground in deteriorating weather.
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Air Force – The Navy plans to build many more flattops, and they wonít be “Gary Hart carriers.”
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Charlie Rose – An hour interview with Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen.
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Associated Press – Cmdr. Michael B. Portland of the submarine USS Hampton was relieved of duty after a U.S. Navy investigation found the ship failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission.
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Defense and the National Interest – William Lind analyses the Marines’ proposal to focus their operations in Afghanistan.
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Associated Press – The Navyís mainstay Arleigh Burke destroyers are subject to structural damage under higher-than-anticipated loads in rough seas, necessitating nearly $60 million in upgrades for the entire class of ships.
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Mother Jones – Colonel H.R. McMaster on the current state of affairs in Iraq.
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Mother Jones – An interview with Lt. Col. John Nagl on Iraq.
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New York Times – For most of human history, the Arctic Ocean has been an ice-locked frontier. But now, in one of the most concrete signs of the effect of a warming climate on government operations, the U.S. Coast Guard is planning its first operating base there as a way of dealing with the cruise ships and the tankers that are already beginning to ply Arctic waters.
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Mother Jones – An interview with General Zinni on the current state of affairs in Iraq.
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Esquire – Thomas P.M. Barnett asks: In the lives of men and nations, either you are growing or you’re dying. In our time, the Soviet Union imploded, China is adding back lost colonies, and Europe is now the European Union. So why did the United States stop growing? And what will our next five states be?
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Defense Technology International – Another look at life aboard Tonnerre, France’s new b‚timents de protection et de commandement.
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Defense Technology International – NATO’s Noble Midas major naval exercise in the Adriatic sea ended on 16th October and, according to Commodore Alain Hinden of the French navy who commanded the 9,400 people and 50 ships (of which just one, the submarine USS Annapolis, was from the US Navy) which took part, it all ìwent remarkably well,î and was proof that a large naval HQ can function from aboard a ship.
The exercise was commanded from aboard the French Navy’s Tonnerre landing helicopter dock — the new-born sister ship of the Mistral having been delivered to the navy on 1st August ñ the first time such a large HQ (240 computer terminals) has been assembled aboard a ship.
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Aviation Week – Top leaders of Britain’s Royal Navy are “tearing their hair out” in frustration that they can’t “get the message across” that the maritime service is playing a crucial role in ongoing, seemingly land-locked operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Washington Post – The U.S. military unveiled a new maritime strategy today — its first created jointly by the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — shifting from a narrow focus on sea combat toward one that also emphasizes the use of “soft power” to counter terrorism and deliver humanitarian assistance.
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Aviation Week – The Polish navy is decommissioning its two Russian-built Tarantul-class fast attack craft in 2008, the commander of the service’s fast patrol boat squadron has told an international naval conference.
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Aviation Week – The U.S. Navy is looking at an upgrade program for its eight Cyclone-class 350-ton coastal patrol craft, focusing on command & control as well as habitability issues.
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Washington Post – In response to angry protests, as well as some pressure from Congress and the marine mammal scientific community, the Navy has now funded an ambitious, $6 million project to learn more about beaked whales and their response to sonar and other loud ocean noises.
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Army Times – Sean Naylor writes that Generals in the Army and on the Joint Staff reacted with surprise at a Marine Corps move to assume the Armyís combat role in Afghanistan and expressed doubt that the Corps could handle the mission without substantial support from the larger ground service.
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New Scientist – A futuristic scheme to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it to Earth has gained a large supporter in the US military. A report released yesterday by the National Security Space Office recommends that the US government sponsor projects to demonstrate solar-power-generating satellites and provide financial incentives for further private development of the technology.
National Security Space Office – Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security
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Virginian Pilot – America’s high-tech, smart-bombing Navy could be seeing its future in a pair of hulking former oil tankers and their patchwork crews of civilian and military mariners and medical specialists.
Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy’s chief of naval operations, on Friday told the crew of the hospital ship Comfort that its four-month cruise points the way toward other medical missions aimed at adding combat prevention to the Navy’s warfare portfolio.
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