– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy’s 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers have been its biggest and most heavily-armed surface combatant warships since the mid-1980s. For years, the sailing branch tried and failed to design an even more powerful ship to replace the Ticos, but the high cost proved prohibitive. Now the Navy has finally identified its next cruisers. They’re the same cruisers as today, upgraded for a quarter-billion dollars apiece as part of a complicated plan that sees the last Tico finally leaving the fleet in 2045—at which point the vessel will have been in commission for a staggering 51 years.

– USNI News – The Navy is eyeing expanding its fleet of electronic attack aircraft to better fit into the service’s next generation plan for fighting a high end air war.

– Breaking Defense – Quantity has a quality all its own. The Navy announced this afternoon that it has changed the arcane rules by which it counts ships, adding 10 coastal patrol craft, two hospital ships, and a high-speed transport to what it calls the “battle force.” The new rules would also keep 11 cruisers the Navy plans to not-quite-mothball on the rolls.

– DefenseTech – A Navy destroyer recently test-fired a Block IV Tomahawk missile that quickly received updated target information in-flight, changed course rapidly and destroyed a moving target, Raytheon officials said. While the net-enabled Tomahawk Block IV missiles already have an ability to be re-targeted in flight, this Feb. 19 missile test aboard the USS Sterett demonstrated that the weapon can perform this function much faster, more frequently and with greater radio throughput, Raytheon officials explained.

– Aviation Week – The real and long-lasting effects of the recent Defense Department directive to cut the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fleet are just starting to sink in.

– Defense News – Hardly anything is clear in Washington about what’s happening with the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. Details are embryonic, discussions are just beginning, the whys and wherefores still unclear, memos and specific directions yet to be issued, and sensitivities still raw.

– Virginian Pilot – As the military shrinks after a decade of war and faces mandatory cutbacks under sequestration, the budget proposal signals which ships the Pentagon considers most vital. Here’s a guide to some of the basic takeaways.

– San Diego Union Tribune – The Navy is launching a San Diego-based “Top Gun” school for young ship officers, modeling it on the aviator version that Hollywood made famous. The point is to create a generation of Navy “ship drivers” who are experts at tactics the United States hasn’t used in pitched battle since World War II — the guns, missiles, torpedoes and aircraft intended to defend their ship and fight others.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy’s newest and most powerful aircraft carrier has docked in Antalya, Turkey—meaning she is within striking distance of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. And it appears Russia is deploying anti-ship missiles in response.

– War is Boring – One day after the Pentagon announced it was sending an extra six F-15C fighters to help defend the Baltic against Russian warplanes, the U.S. Navy said its destroyer USS Truxtun was headed into the Black Sea for long-planned exercises with the Romanians and Bulgarians.

– San Diego Union Tribune – Navy helicopter pilots take part in historic shift from stick and rudder to joystick.