USNI News –  The reluctance across the Navy to be self-critical and a tendency to hide mistakes and minimize flaws have resulted in systemic problems in the service and stalled efforts to improve, Chief of Naval Operations Adm Mike Gilday said on Tuesday.

Navy Times – The Navy should be piqued more easily by the things it’s not doing well, according to the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

USNI News – The Navy wants its next warship to fire hypersonic missiles and lasers that would be ten times more powerful than the service’s existing laser weapons, according to the most detailed outlook to date of the DDG(X) next generation warship issued by the service.

CIMSEC – The core issues with the current LUSV concept arise from one fundamental problem. It’s trying to perform two separate roles – a small surface combatant and an adjunct missile magazine – which have sharply conflicting requirements and require radically different hulls. 

Defense News – Surface navy leaders are turning to fleet commanders for ideas about how they want to use littoral combat ships, as the U.S. Navy tries to refine its operational concepts for these ships.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC had the opportunity to discuss the evolution of the Surface Navy’s tactical development with Rear Admiral Christopher Alexander, commander of Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC). In this discussion, RDML Alexander covers new initiatives on measuring tactical experience, the increasing demand for Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT) exercises, and how SMWDC is transforming to accelerate tactical skill across the surface fleet.

Defense News – The head of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet has laid out a plan to prepare his force to deter or defeat a top-notch adversary, calling for specific steps to improve ship maintenance, successfully and rapidly field new weapons, develop high-end tactics, and ensure sailors and officers have high-quality training and mentoring.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has made noticeable improvements in its ability to maintain surface ships — but hasn’t eliminated the repair period overruns as the chief of naval operations wanted.

Defense News – This year, the troubled Freedom-variant littoral combat ship will look to catch up with its Independence-class counterparts, which were fielded faster and expanded their operations more broadly in the last several years.

CIMSEC – In Part 1, we summarized the principles and functions underpinning the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s (NDS) Global Operating Model (GOM). We outlined the factors that motivated GOM development, and showed how the GOM’s historical lineage informs its contemporary utility. In today’s second and final installment in this series, we will outline the strategic importance of forward “competition operations” to deterrence. We will then identify the necessary attributes for naval forces operating in the Contact and Blunt layers, as well as factors that strategists should consider when thinking about such operations. We will conclude with some thoughts regarding the GOM’s overarching implications for future naval strategy and force employment.

War on the Rocks – Today, leaders in naval aviation are impeding the rapid adoption of reconnaissance and strike-capable aircraft carrier drones through deliberate incrementalism, purposefully constraining autonomous platform capabilities and delaying deployment with cautious and lengthy feasibility studies — all while adversaries accept greater risks to rapidly field imposing capabilities.