The ten most significant naval news stories/ trends / themes this year included:

• The Ukrainian Navy’s closing of the Black Sea to the Russian Navy. What lessons can other navies learn from Ukraine’s anti-access area denial strategy?

• The Houthi’s closing of the Red Sea (with help from their sponsor Iran) to merchant shipping. What lessons will other insurgencies learn from this anti-access area denial strategy?

• The US Navy’s alarming ammunition expenditure while conducting successful anti-ballistic missile and cruise missile target practice against the Houthis in the Red Sea. Will the US Navy be able to use this experience to convince the US Congress to increase its surface to air missile procurement in order to have a more than adequate missile magazine depth in case of war with China?

• The increasing emphasis Western navies are placing on countering sea bed warfare against all the critical national infrastructure that exists under the sea. When will naval budgets meet naval aspirations for this new arena of warfare?

• The transformation of the Baltic Sea into a NATO sea, with Finland joining NATO this year and hopefully Sweden joining NATO next year. What will Russia do in response?

• The awakening of Japan and the Philippines to the Chinese threat, as evidenced by their increase in defense procurement. How will they spend their funds in order to best deter China?

• Taiwan’s beginning to adapt a porcupine strategy for its defense against a Chinese invasion. Will Taiwan be able to keep buying these low-cost, unglamorous, but effective weapons in ever-increasing numbers going forward, or will they again revert to buying high-cost, glamorous and ineffective weapons?

• The European Union’s growing realization that it has a role to play in the Indo-Pacific theater, evidenced by increasing European naval deployments to that region, such as seen with France’s Charles De Gaulle strike group deployment this year. How can Europe get maximum use out of its constrained naval resources?

• The US Navy’s interesting experiments with TF-59 in the Persian Gulf, its experimental unmanned surface vessel squadron. When will the US Navy have learned enough from experiments to start building medium and large unmanned surface vessels for use by the fleet?

• The difficulties that Western navies (Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Navy, Royal New Zealand Navy, US Navy, US Coast Guard, US Maritime Administration) are experiencing in recruitment and retention. If these countries were to expand their fleets, how would they man them?

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