– National Interest – As Cold War glaciers melt, Chinese-Korean tensions may grow more pronounced.
Author Archives: Naval Open Source Intelligence (NOSI)
Iran Stages Giant Attack on Mock Aircraft Carrier
– War is Boring – Iran has carried out a massive attack on a mock version of an American Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Tehran wanted everyone to know about it—state TV broadcasted the military exercise live. It’s a revealing look at Iranian naval assault tactics, involving several waves of ships backed by helicopters and shore-launched missiles. The timing isn’t a coincidence. The United States and Iran are deadlocked over a deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
The Navy’s Gigantic Railgun Is Almost Ready For Prime Time
– Foxtrot Alpha – One of the most anticipated weapon systems of the last quarter century looks like it is nearly ready for action.
New Heritage Foundation Study Ranks U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Strength as ‘Marginal’
– USNI News – A newly created “Index of Military Strength” rates the Navy and Marine Corps as “marginal” in being able two fight two major regional conflicts almost simultaneously while having sufficient reserves to carry out other missions.
The Navy Just Sank Its High-Speed Future
– Daily Beast – The ship was supposed to zoom over the ocean top, 50 percent faster than its competitors. Then things changed.
Indian Navy Set to Accelerate Second Indigenous Carrier as U.K. Built Carrier is Set to Decommission Next Year
– USNI News – The Indian Navy is accelerating the design and construction of its second domestic carrier as its oldest carrier leaves service next year.
China conducts JL-2 sub missile test
– Washington Times – China carried out a flight test of its new JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile last month, highlighting Beijing’s nuclear buildup of missile submarines.
Securing Operational Access: Evolving the Air-Sea Battle Concept
– National Interest – Over the last several weeks, there has been a lot of chatter about the supposed death of Air-Sea Battle. Here is an exclusive look—from the Pentagon’s ASB Office itself—at what is actually happening.
Russian Intel Ship Spying on US Missile Submarines
– Washington Free Beacon – A Russian intelligence-gathering ship is again plying the waters off the southern United States in operations aimed at spying on U.S. ballistic missile submarines based in the area.
For Marine who urinated on dead Taliban, a hero’s burial at Arlington
– Washington Post – His three combat tours in Afghanistan had been boiled down to a 38-second video clip, played and replayed on YouTube more than a million times. In it, Rob Richards and three other Marine Corps snipers are seen urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters they had just killed. “Total dismay” were the words then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used to describe the video when it surfaced on the Internet in January 2012. “Utterly deplorable,” agreed then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Richards’s career in the military was finished. More than two years later — long after the rest of the country had moved on to other scandals — Richards, 28, died at home and alone from an accidental painkiller overdose.
What ISIS Really Wants
– The Atlantic – The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.
Frigate About It
– Aviation Week – The die is cast and the U.S. Navy has made its big bet – the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)-Next is going to be an uparmed and uparmored version of the current vessels that the service has redesignated as an FF, or fast frigate.
China’s Aircraft Carriers on the Cheap
– War is Boring – Beijing is constructing islands—with air bases—in the South China Sea.
The U.S. Navy Reserve’s Fighter Jets Are Going Extinct
– War is Boring – And the admirals don’t seem to care…
The New Strategic Realities of U.S. Carrier Operations
– USNI News – Debate is raging over the utility of the aircraft carrier and whether it’s even relevant anymore in the face of China’s new, lethal anti-ship missiles. It’s a debate worth having, but it needs to be rooted in realistic naval principles and war precedents, not politics and hype.
French Carrier Enters Persian Gulf, ISIS Strike Missions Could Start Soon
– USNI News – French nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91) has entered the Persian Gulf and could soon start strike missions against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) fighters.
The Navy’s Hidden Crisis
– Politico – It’s too small—and getting smaller.
Are Submarines About to Become Obsolete?
– National Interest – What would happen if U.S. nuclear attack submarines—some of the most sophisticated and expensive American weapons of war—suddenly became obsolete? Imagine a scenario where these important systems became the hunted instead of the hunter, or just as technologically backward as the massive battleships of years past. Think that sounds completely insane? If advances in big data and new detection methods fuse with the anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) ambitions of nations like China and Russia, naval planners around the world might have to go back to the drawing board.
Silent but Deadly: Korea’s Scary Submarine Arms Race
– National Interest – A number of recent events underscore South Korea’s plans to establish a formidable submarine fleet to counter North Korea and other regional security threats.
The Unraveling
– New Yorker – A look at how and why Libya has descended into chaos after the Arab Spring…and how some are trying to restore order.
C.I.A. Is Said to Have Bought and Destroyed Iraqi Chemical Weapons
– New York Times – The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.
No, the Russian Navy Isn’t Going to Collapse
– War on the Rocks – Is the Russian Navy about to collapse? In a recent article on War is Boring, David Axe made this argument largely based on data from recent articles on the Russian shipbuilding program and the Russian Navy’s priorities. While the information provided is sound, Axe’s overall interpretation is not.
The One Article to Read on Chinese Naval Strategy in 2015
– The Diplomat – A fascinating new paper by two academics asks us to question a fundamental assumption about China’s naval buildup.
China’s Incomplete Military Transformation
– Read the whole report here: Rand – Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
Read reviews of it at Breaking Defense, Free Beacon, Defense News and Bloomberg.
Hornets to deploy with Corps’ Middle East crisis response unit
– Marine Corps Times – The second rotation of the Marines’ crisis response force in the Middle East will include a new squadron of fighter aircraft. Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command is swapping out its AV-8B Harriers for a squadron of F/A-18 Hornets from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 out of Miramar.
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