– CIMSEC – While the Iranian Armed Forces have greatly improved in recent decades and can be a serious threat to commercial and military assets transiting the Strait of Hormuz, there are many ways to counter these forces and maintain freedom of navigation. Since Iran has developed many asymmetric tactics to counter the U.S. and its allies, the best way to respond is to develop opposing asymmetric tactics and unconventional means, both military and political, to throw Iran off balance.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy and the world it operates in are a far cry from what they were four years ago.

– National Interest – And China, Russia or Iran won’t like it one bit.

– CIMSEC – In the wake of growing tensions with Iran in the Gulf and around the Strait of Hormuz, the United States announced a push for an international coalition that would monitor activity in the area and guard against maritime security breaches. The coalition would be known as “Sentinel.” Although it is unclear as of yet which countries will make up this alliance, over 20 states are in consideration.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is short hundreds of millions of dollars for ship depot maintenance this year and is already looking at just shy of $1 billion in unfunded maintenance in 2020, shortfalls that threaten to upend progress toward improved readiness and clearing its maintenance backlog.

– CIMSEC – Current incidents in the Arabian Sea should be seized as an opportunity to advance naval conceptual thinking about unmanned maritime systems in gray zone operations.

– USNI News – The US Navy has put a call out to industry to send in ideas for its planned fleet of corvette-sized unmanned surface vehicles.

– USNI News – The Navy is striving to field “revolutionary combat capability” in new ships and through mid-life modernizations, but it can do so while keeping risk low by focusing on new weapons and systems rather than radical new hull designs.

– USNI News – The Navy is looking at “something beyond even a Flight III” combat capability for its new-build destroyers, as its plans for transitioning from building the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to the future Large Surface Combatant continue to evolve and the LSC procurement date continues to slide.

– USNI News – Almost two years after the collision between a U.S. destroyer and a merchant ship off Singapore, the first in-depth independent investigation has determined the most probable cause for the incident that killed 10 sailors was lack of adequate Navy oversight and training.

– Defense News – The new chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, was confirmed quickly by the Senate last week, but lawmakers made clear that the cost and growing vulnerability of aircraft carriers to ever-faster and evasive missiles will be among the issues he’s expected to tackle when he officially takes the reins.

– Breaking Defense – It’s “not clear” the Navy’s sealift fleet would be able to quickly move US forces overseas in a crisis, according to a new study commissioned by the Navy. The concerns raised in the report reflect issues brought up recently in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill over the health and readiness of the aging 61-ship Merchant Marine fleet, a strategic asset critical in moving troops and heavy equipment across the globe.

– CIMSEC – The recent attacks on merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf, Straits of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman by forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has conjured up images from the Tanker War of the 1980s.

– Defense News – You have to be “where it matters, when it matters.”

– Defense News – Well looks like we are going to need to do some heavy lifting here at The Drift in terms of educating our landlubber overlords on things maritime…

– War Zone – Helicopters would rapidly ferry the messages between ships in a reboot of a communications method that dates back to World War II.

– USNI Proceedings – Conventional hypersonic weapons need precision to match their speed.

– Naval War College Review – The current environment is not the first time the United States has faced a destabilizing challenge in the western Pacific. In 1937, Japanese forces in China undertook a campaign to expel U.S., British, and other Western interests from that country as part of imperial Japan’s effort to dominate East Asia. The gray-zone tactics used during the Japanese campaign of 1937–40, and the deterrence actions of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, can help shed light on the situation in the China Sea today.