War Zone – The U.S. Navy recently conducted successful flight tests of a UAV carrying an aerial laser system designed to map the ocean floor in shallow water areas. While details are scarce, we know that the tests used a Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR, system aboard a small unmanned helicopter. While such a system could be an important tool for making detailed topographic maps of waterways and littoral areas, there could be other potential applications of well beyond general cartographic ones.

Navy Times – Though U.S. defense leaders talk about the idea of great power competition, they often do so in the future tense — and often about a conflict that would start in the South China Sea. But the U.S. Navy’s regional leaders say great power competition is already taking place in Europe and there’s a race underway to assemble a strong enough coalition of allies and partners to keep day-to-day tensions with Russia at a simmer, instead of boiling over into an all-out conflict. Perhaps nowhere is that clearer than the Black Sea.

Breaking Defense – Shipbuilding executives say they can take the strain of maintenance for a fleet of unmanned vessels, but industry and the Navy have historically struggled with the warships they are currently managing. 

CIMSEC – Navy doctrine on planning for maritime security operations is inadequate.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy completed its three-part explosive shock trials on aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford on Aug. 8, with no major casualties on the first-in-class ship and less damage to repair during an upcoming maintenance availability than expected.

USNI Proceedings – Designing and fielding information systems capable of preventing compromise and weapon systems that cannot be hacked is a readiness imperative.

War Zone – An intriguing upgrade has been installed on the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Abraham Lincoln that points to new defensive capabilities.

Wired – The latest weapons in the global information war are fake vessels behaving badly.

CIMSEC – Fleet Problem IX—an exercise conducted almost a century ago—is still instructive for naval strategists, tacticians, and planners today. While it is remembered, and rightly so, for demonstrating the offensive potential of the aircraft carrier, it also demonstrated their vulnerability, particularly when the adversary presents an opposing carrier fleet with a multi-layered A2/AD system consisting of complementary capabilities. 

National Interest – James Holmes writes that a divest-to-invest strategy might yield a fleet equal to the challenges America will confront decades from now. But divestment might leave too little combat power in the fleet to, say, repel a Chinese assault on Taiwan in the next few years.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy has been experimenting with a variety of drone delivery concepts in recent years in order to ease its logistical burden.

War Zone – SEWIP Block III is much more than just a naval electronic warfare system. Northrop Grumman’s Mike Meaney breaks down its real potential for us. 

BBC – A 20-year-old US Navy sailor has been identified as the prime suspect charged with starting a fire that destroyed the USS Bonhomme Richard warship in 2020.

USNI News – The Navy is putting Littoral Combat Ship Minneapolis-Saint Paul (LCS-21) back together after completing a repair to beef up the complicated gearing mechanism that links the ship’s gas turbines to its diesel engines…but how the rest of the fleet of Freedoms will be repaired and who will pay for it is still an open question. The complexity of the repair, as currently devised, will take years to trickle into ships already in the fleet…