– BBC – American Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has said the US will send two ballistic missile defence destroyers to Japan.

– War is Boring – Army aviators in Kuwait spent much of 2013 training for an unusual mission—flying from Navy ships. This new mission is a major shift for the ground combat branch in the Middle East … and elsewhere.

– Stars and Stripes – The Navy has published a thorough breakdown of what it needs for future surface operations in the Arctic, from new doctrine to platform assessments and an updated cold-weather handbook for sailors. The next step? Getting buy-in from the rest of the fleet.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Unmanned systems may be the magic bullet the U.S. Navy is looking for, but here are a few points to ponder to keep it from making some costly mistakes.

– Aviation Week – Despite a squeeze on investment accounts, the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget strategy prioritizes funding for the stealthy F-35—but at what cost, some in industry ask.

– Aviation Week – In the coming decade, enemy forces that focus on aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships of a carrier strike group and ignore the little Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will do so at their own peril.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The Navy’s preoccupation with anti-access/area denial is a throwback to ‘counting battleships’ as a measure of naval capability. It’s time to shift focus to the Navy’s overwhelming dominance of its adversaries.

– USNI News – A team of U.S. Navy SEALs took control of a commercial oil tanker that was seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans.

– Stars and Stripes – Navy officials are sending a black box locator to the search area near Australia in support of the efforts to find the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that went missing more than two weeks ago.

– US Naval War College Review – An investigation of concepts for defeating wide-area oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance-strike networks.