Author Archives: Naval Open Source Intelligence (NOSI)

South Korean Navy – Clues suggest North Korean sub behind warship attack

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Associated Press – Clues suggest North Korean sub behind warship attack

Experts say North Korea’s submarine fleet is technologically backward, prone to sinking or running aground and all but useless outside its own coastal waters. And yet many are asking: Could it have been responsible for the explosion that sank a South Korean warship in March? And if so, how could a sub have slipped through the defenses of South Korea, which, with significant American backing, maintains a fleet far more sophisticated than its northern neighbor’s?

US Navy – How the United States Lost the Naval War of 2015

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Orbis – How the United States Lost the Naval War
of 2015

Years of strategic missteps in oceans policy, naval strategy and a force structure in decline set the stage for U.S. defeat at sea in 2015. After decades of double-digit budget increases, the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) was operating some of the most impressive systems in the world, including a medium-range ballistic missile that could hit a moving aircraft carrier and a super-quiet diesel electric submarine that was stealthier than U.S. nuclear submarines. Coupling this new asymmetric naval force to visionary maritime strategy and oceans policy, China ensured that all elements of national power promoted its goal of dominating the East China Sea. The United States, in contrast, had a declining naval force structured around 10 aircraft carriers spread thinly throughout the globe. With a maritime strategy focused on lower order partnerships,and a national oceans policy that devalued strategic interests in freedom of navigation, the stage was set for defeat at sea. This article recounts how China destroyed the USS George Washington in the East China Sea in 2015. The political fallout from the disaster ended 75 years of U.S. dominance in the Pacific Ocean and cemented China’s position as the Asian hegemon.

Thanks to Cris for the link!

US Navy – Gates Says Navy Needs to Ask Itself Hard Questions

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Defense Technology International – Gates Says Navy Needs to Ask Itself Hard Questions

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a roomful of Navy officers and Naval industry types choke on their lunch yesterday afternoon at the Air Sea Space convention when he flat out told them that the Navy budget is going to remain flat in the near-term, and that the service has to ask itself “whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers.”

Afghanistan – Toggling Between Fighting and Outreach in Afghanistan

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New York Times – Toggling Between Fighting and Outreach in Afghanistan

CJ Chivers writes that however the Afghan war is faring over all, across the wide and varied expanse of Afghanistan, with all of its political and cultural complexity, one thing is abundantly clear: toggling between fighting and outreach can create head-spinning scenes. Some of these scenes underline the difficulties inherent in a counterinsurgency doctrine that mixes lopsided violence with attempts to make nice. But they also simultaneously demonstrate that the efforts to follow the doctrine far from Kabul, out on remote ground, have become a central part of how the war is waged, even as the merits of the doctrine are quietly debated.

Royal Navy – Serpent's Tale

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Defense Technology International – Serpent’s Tale

“The Type 45 with its Principal Anti-Air Missile System, Sea Viper, and the Samson Radar is arguably the most effective anti-air warfare platform in the world,” proclaims the British government in a recent response to the Defense Committee. Unfortunately, of course, at the moment the argument is hypothetical, since the ship’s main armament has yet to function fully correctly.