CIMSEC – Admiral Caudle’s first message to the fleet outlined three priorities: the Foundry; the Fleet and the way we Fight. These priorities cannot be realized without acknowledging the simple fact that the next war at sea will be decided first in space. Ships and Sailors operating inside lethal weapons engagement zones (WEZs) cannot survive against China’s massed, over-the-horizon precision fires unless the Navy treats space operations and Counter-C5ISRT (C-C5ISRT) as foundational, not auxiliary, to naval warfare.

USNI News – USS Stockdale (DDG-106) is now operating in the Caribbean alongside seven U.S. Navy surface warships as part of the Trump Administration’s homeland security effort.

War on the Rocks – The South China Sea is one of the most contested maritime areas in the world. Smaller countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia face increasing pressure from an assertive and militarily powerful People’s Republic of China due to overlapping sovereignty claims and critical trade routes. Beijing’s maritime power projection threatens regional sovereignty and economic rights under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea through its militarization of artificial islands, aggressive maritime activities, and widespread illegal fishing. To address this imbalance, claimant states should adopt asymmetric strategies that improve maritime domain awareness, defend exclusive economic zones, and impose costs on unlawful actions. One such approach is the development of maritime outposts, inspired by the Philippines’ Fort Drum in Manila Bay.

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CIMSEC – Navy thinkers have already laid the intellectual groundwork for aggressive change. Senior leaders now need to follow through with equally radical actions.

Center for Maritime Strategy – Safety of navigation is not the priority. It’s the minimum. The surface warfare community’s narrow approach to navigation and seamanship training rewards risk-avoidance instead of risk-mitigation and prevents naval officers from mastering the skills needed for their primary duty—waging war at sea.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that all in all, the expansion of USV use is a promising experiment that could ameliorate the US Navy’s force-structure woes—while amplifying US fleets’ combat power in a hurry. 

The War Zone – In 2004, the Navy disposed of the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, but current events have seen it awaken once again.