– Wired – The Navy talks about its drone helicopter the way Apple geeks gushed over the first-generation iPhone in 2007. The MQ-8 Fire Scout does it all, from hunting for drugs at sea to spotting insurgents over the battlefields of Afghanistan. But like that early iPhone, the Fire Scout is seriously buggy — so much so that the Defense Department has conceded it will be forced to seriously delay buying all the robocopters it wants.

– AOL Defense – While the Air Force and the Marines stake their future on a great leap forward to the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Navy is taking what one officer called “baby steps” into the future: a careful, incremental upgrade of electronic warfare systems to jam enemy radar instead of just hiding from it.

– Time – Chuck Spinney on the future of the US Navy.

– Time – Winslow Wheeler on the future of the US Navy – Part 3.

– BBC – The US is moving navy ships into position to track a North Korean rocket due to launch later this month.

– Time – Winslow Wheeler on the future of the US Navy – Part 2.

– Time – Winslow Wheeler looks at the future of the US Navy – Part 1.

– Virginian Pilot – The mammoth ship that projected American power during the tensest moment of the Cold War, and decades later launched some of the first air attacks in the war on terror, no longer is in service. But its remarkable legacy – and its iconic name – will live on.

– Aviation Week – In the same week, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B combat aircraft system demonstrator has arrived on the aircraft carrier deck — by crane — and made its first catapult launch — on land

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The new Gerald R. Ford -class aircraft carriers may have a hefty pricetag, but many believe the cost is worth it and that the ships will prove to be even more iconic than their predecessors.

– Air Force – Electronic attack, the Air Force’s orphan mission, is regaining prominence.

– Daily Telegraph – When the aircraft carrier USS John C Stennis returns to the placid blue waters of the Gulf with her strike force of 70 jets in the next few days, she will be ready for action off the coast of Iran.

– Armed Forces Journal – The goal of Air Sea Battle is to ensure all forces can get to the fight.

– San Diego Union Tribune – The USS Curts’ final deployment is turning out to be an historic one for the San Diego-based frigate, with its crew having made about $25 million in drug busts during operations in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

– Aviation Week – Gulf of Mexico residents see all types of ships and barges go by Mississippi’s Little Biloxi River Bridge. The region, after all, is a womb for warships and a transit artery for maritime goods of all types. But recently one barge slipped past the bridge crowned by a cargo never witnessed in these parts, or any other in the world: a specially constructed composites deckhouse that made the vessel look more like a massive prop for the next “Star Trek” movie than anything on the seas. Weighing 900 tons and measuring longer than 50 yd., the deckhouse is the top half of the U.S. Navy’s newest and most modern warship, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer.

– Flight International – The second day of our Boeing media trip to the Pacific Northwest found our motley band of defense reporters at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, near Oak Harbor, Washington.