War Zone – The U.S. Navy’s F-35C stealth fighters, one of which has recently grabbed unwanted attention after a landing mishap aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson sent it into the sea, are also showing some fairly significant wear and tear on their debut operational cruise. Radar-absorbent skins are historically made of materials that are notoriously sensitive to environmental conditions. While it is known that significant leaps in the maintainability of radar-absorbent materials (RAM) were integrated into the F-35 design, recent images from the F-35C’s inaugural cruise raise potential questions about the ease of maintaining the jet’s coatings in the demanding maritime environment.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is unlikely to pursue a formal program for unmanned surface vessels in the next five years, instead focusing on the enabling technologies first, several leaders said this month.

War on the Rocks – It’s time for an intervention. For the last decade, the Pentagon has been promising a more distributed and resilient posture in the Indo-Pacific, but it has not kept that promise. Highly concentrated with few active or passive defenses, American forces — and lives — remain dangerously vulnerable to attack. As Chinese military capability and capacity continue to grow, the failure to address this vulnerability is one major reason America has failed to reverse the erosion of the conventional military balance in the Indo-Pacific and restore the credibility of American deterrence.

CNN – The United States Navy is trying to retrieve its most advanced fighter jet from the depths of the South China Sea, an extremely complex operation that analysts say will be closely monitored by Beijing.

Breaking Defense – Analysts say straying too far from a parent design can cause problems, but so can being too faithful to it. 

War Zone – NATO and Russian warships mass in the Mediterranean as signs grow that the Kremlin is about to launch an invasion of Ukraine.

USNI News – Two U.S carriers and two amphibious ships, along with their escorts and 26 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters drilled with a Japanese large deck warship last week in the Philippine Sea.

CIMSEC – It is high time that we remove the term “non-traditional security” from our consideration of maritime affairs, and either abandon it outright or confine it to the debates of sea-blind international relations pundits. A phrase that crept into the strategic lexicon in the long, calm lee of the last Cold War, “non-traditional security” is little more than a dismissive hand-wave relegating human-centric security issues to a nebulous category with no real meaning. As a term, non-traditional security at best adds no value in either the operational realm or in the analytic sphere. At worst, particularly in the maritime domain, it skews thinking and undermines a balanced approach to dealing with the challenges we face.

Defense News – Steps by Lockheed Martin to virtualize its Aegis Combat System are helping underpin the U.S. Navy’s vision for its future integrated combat system as well as the Pentagon’s vision for joint all-domain operations.