– The Hill – Great Britain is returning to seaways “east of Suez,” decades after freeing its colonies and withdrawing, more or less, to the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. A warship from Britain’s Royal Navy demonstrated on behalf of nautical freedom in the South China Sea last September, drawing a stern rebuke from China. This month the frigate HMS Argyll joined the destroyer USS McCampbell for six days’ worth of exercises in the South China Sea.

– Navy Times – U.S. and British navy ships conducted joint maneuvers in the South China this month in what they called a sign of their shared emphasis on regional peace and stability.

– BBC – A Royal Navy warship which has been sent to Ukraine will send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the UK’s defence secretary says.

– Sky News – Sources tell Sky News that senior RAF officers are pushing for a version of a supersonic warplane that can only fly from land.

– Defense News – Britain is beefing up its commitment to defense of the Arctic and the High North regions.

– Breaking Defense – For the first time, a Royal Navy pilot has taken off and landed an F-35B on a British aircraft carrier, eight years after the UK retired its last generation of aircraft carriers.

– Guardian – China Daily decries ‘reckless actions’ after HMS Albion sails close to disputed Parcel islands.

– Guardian – International court to hear testimony from 22 countries over Indian Ocean archipelago.

– BBC – A century ago the UK started work on the world’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier. Soon the first jets will fly off the massive deck of her latest successor – the giant HMS Queen Elizabeth. Along with her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, they’re the largest warships ever to be built for the Royal Navy.

– Defense News – Britain’s Ministry of Defence is restarting its contest to build five general purpose frigates for the Royal Navy after it terminated the original competition due to insufficient interest from industry.

– CIMSEC – A conversation with Dr. Eric Grove on the UK’s maritime strategy, the evolution of its national security strategy in the post-9/11 era, and force structure debates in the current era.

– USNI News – The U.K.’s new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers should be able to conduct warfighting missions without support from allied forces, an influential parliamentary committee insisted last week. The regeneration of fading anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities, the retention of amphibious shipping and the acquisition of a surface ship-launched land attack missile must also be top priorities for a cash-strapped Royal Navy, according to the House of Commons’ Defence Committee (HCDC).

– Daily Mail – The British Royal Navy’s six Type 45 £1 billion destroyers barely ever leave their docks.

– Daily Telegraph – The UK is to send a frigate to be “an enduring presence” in the Gulf, in the most serious naval deployment to the region in more than 40 years, the Defence Secretary has announced in a show of support for Nato. A Royal Navy Type-23 Frigate will be based from the UK’s new £40 million National Support Facility at Mina Salman in Bahrain.

– USNI News – Earlier this month, Britain’s national security adviser declared that the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers would be unlikely to ever deploy on high-end combat missions without support from friendly forces.

– Reuters – A British warship “changed its deployment” and arrived in Japan on Wednesday to join efforts to police U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

– Army Times – An industry team led by BAE Systems has secured a £160 million (U.S. $224 million) deal with the British Ministry of Defence to help fix long-running propulsion problems that have blighted the reliability of the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyer fleet.

– Defense News – Britain’s Royal Navy is to equip it’s new Type 26 frigate fleet with Lockheed Martin’s Mk 41 Vertical Launching System for missiles.

– Daily Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence has sold the Royal Navy flagship, HMS Ocean, to Brazil for around £84m, in a bid to plug a major funding black hole in its accounts.

– Plymouth Herald – Under-threat amphibious warship HMS Albion is to head up an international task group that will play a crucial role in defending allies in the Mediterranean.

– War on the Rocks – The United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons are currently funded out of the overstretched defense budget even though, especially in the post-Cold War era, they are more a political asset than a military one. So why are genuine military assets like regiments, ships, and aircraft being sacrificed in its name?

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Analysis of the Falklands Campaign was a substantial section of the Joint Professional Military Education Phase I curriculum of the 1990s. It was even part of the Phase II course of instruction a decade later. Rather than the resounding and brilliant British victory portrayed in the limited 1982 news cycle, decades of independent analysis after the campaign have shown that the British forces were unprepared for the full range of Argentine military responses.

– BBC – A British frigate shadowed a Russian warship through the North Sea near UK waters on Christmas Day.

– The War Zone – The Ministry of Defense seems to have skimped on the carriers’ ability to fend off anti-ship cruise missile barrages.

– War Zone -These already worrying developments reflect poor readiness overall and other larger issues within both of these NATO navies.