– War is Boring – Hopefully the first big wave won’t sink it.

– Breaking Defense – Just when the Navy’s surface fleet had started pulling itself out of a 10-year, $2 billion hole, budget dysfunction may kick it right back in.

– CNN – Late on Friday, a defense official said the United States had added a Navy destroyer to the eastern Mediterranean fleet. The USS Ramage arrived to replace the USS Mahan, but the Mahan is going to stay around a bit longer, so temporarily there will be four. The USS Gravelly and USS Barry remain. These ships are all equipped with the Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, a long-range subsonic cruise missile used to attack land targets.

– War is Boring – Mothballed X-47Bs to resume testing for two more years.

– Aviation Week – Is mine warfare like ballistic missile defense? You betcha! And harder, too, the U.S. Navy brass says, because you have to do countermine operations in a more challenging undersea environment.

– Defense News – Unmanned systems are commonplace in the world of aviation. But it wasn’t long ago that they were more of an oddity for world militaries. That changed when technological developments finally let systems operate for long stretches of time, giving operators a near-permanent eye in the sky. Once that barrier was breached, UAVs could be used for all kinds of applications. Is a similar breakthrough coming for unmanned systems that operate underwater? Boeing believes so — and that it will happen within the next two years.

– Breaking Defense – The US Navy has decided to scrap the fire-ravaged USS Miami, whose repair bill from arson had soared to $700 million from $450 million. It’s the first time the Navy has written off a damaged sub since the USS Bonefish burned in 1988, and it brings the attack submarine force down to 54 subs. The most cost-effective way for the country to make up for the loss of the nuclear-powered Miami is to keep the rest of the fleet well-maintained and to keep buying two new Virginia-class submarines each year, the Navy’s director of Undersea Warfare said.

– The Diplomat – A look at the concept of Offshore Control by T.X. Hammes. Operationally, Offshore Control uses current forces and restricted ways to cripple China’s maritime trade and thus its economy. It establishes a set of concentric rings that denies China the use of the sea inside the first island chain, defends the sea and air space of the first island chain, and dominates the air and maritime space outside the first island chain. To reduce the possibility of nuclear escalation and make war termination easier, no operations will penetrate Chinese airspace.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Vice Admiral McCoy has spent five years as Commander of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) working to correct a problem that seldom makes headlines. While reports on new ship construction dominate the trade press, much less attention is paid to maintaining the ships already in the Fleet. McCoy spent his career as an engineer focused on the exacting maintenance of submarines and aircraft careers. While at NAVSEA, McCoy focused his attention to bring the same rigor to the surface fleet.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Autonomous attack systems may be heralding the twilight of the aircraft-carrier era, but the venerable platform will remain important by returning to its pre–World War II operational roots.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – We can have 350 ships, 50 amphibs, 25 percent more overseas presence, 20 percent more wartime capacity, and use 10 percent fewer people, all with no new money.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The Navy’s submarine chief lays out the four coordinated ‘Ps’ that form the collective plan to maintain the nation’s strong toehold in the undersea domain.