USNI News – USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) departed Split, Croatia, following a five-day port visit, the Navy announced Thursday. It is unclear where the aircraft carrier is headed. Ford has been out for 282 days and is set to have a record-breaking deployment.

CIMSEC – The Navy needs hedge strategies that keep the force relevant in high‑end conflict without breaking the bank in peacetime—ways to augment the general purpose force and cover the most dangerous scenarios, which specifically includes a potential war with China. Layered non-kinetic defenses—employed as a combined system—offer one such hedge. For surface forces, the Navy should update the PCMS program with a new tile‑and‑paint system and pair it with radar reflectors that distort imaging seekers. For air forces, it should field decoys and radar reflectors, as seen in Ukraine, to cast doubt on the precise location of U.S. air assets. Finally, the Navy and joint force should combine small, mobile jammers and dazzlers to saturate adversary ISR and degrade battle damage assessment, preserving operational surprise.

Breaking Defense – Adm. Daryl Caudle’s Fighting Instructions aims to guide the Navy’s future, but it does not make the tradeoffs or force-design decisions a true strategy requires.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy spent at least six months resurrecting a high-energy laser weapon that previously graced the bow of a warship for a new military exercise last year, the service recently revealed.

USNI News – The sun peeked over the horizon tinting the haze gray hull of carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) orange while sailors on Pier 14 busied themselves preparing for the carrier to shove off across the Atlantic.

CIMESC – America’s strategic map must change. The two-ocean Navy of the past secured victory in World War II and sustained deterrence preventing great power conflict throughout the Cold War. With the inability to field high-end, multipurpose warships globally, we need a four-ocean Navy that recognizes the Atlantic, Arctic, Indian, and Pacific as distinct theaters with unique requirements. This is a call for clarity: matching missions to oceans and tailoring warships with crews to oceans.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy faces a period in which its missile-firing capacity is declining as strategic threats are rising. Distributing long-range fires across existing additional classes of ships with the help of containerized launchers offers a solution to fill the VLS gap, provide reload flexibility, and expand the number of shooters at sea. While some vessels might not possess the same organic communications, radars, and command and control capabilities as destroyers and cruisers, Navy efforts to improve the fleet’s connectivity and battle network could eventually mean these missiles can be used with the help of other ships in the theater. In distributing lethality this way, the Navy could dig itself out of its VLS hole faster, and achieve the virtues of mass without the vulnerabilities of concentration.

CIMSEC – Archers need arrows. If Congress and the U.S. Navy do not act now to ensure submarines stay armed and ready for battle, munitions problems will only worsen – leaving the force, the fleet, and country more vulnerable.

War on the Rocks – The sinking of the IRIS Dena was a stark reminder that naval warfare follows its own logic. Engagements can occur far from home waters, unfold with little warning, and carry consequences well beyond the immediate tactical exchange. In this case, a single submarine strike intersected with global trade flows, alliance dynamics, contested information environments, and the legal realities of conflict at sea.

USNI News – The Navy cancelled the Modular Attack Surface Craft program launched last year and is creating a new acquisition strategy for unmanned vessels, a service official told reporters Thursday.

CIMSEC – This article proposes the creation of sea-going factories and power plant ships to obtain decisive strategic advantages. Advantages range from shortened supply lines to specialized and customized resupply of both land and sea forces. The consideration of factory ships should not be framed as specialized vessels versus generalized ones. Factory ships should be viewed foremost as factories that happen to float and move like ships, and not primarily as ships.

Though such vessels will need to be specifically designed one day, the present threat represented by the PRC can be addressed by refitting unwanted, but functional, vessels into sea-going factory ships. This article strongly urges a study to be performed to decide the feasibility of the pure concept and its rapid implementation through retrofitting existing vessels.

CIMSEC – A future war in the Western Pacific will not be decided by which side fields the most exquisite platforms on the opening day of combat, but by which side can afford to keep firing on day one hundred. The U.S. is currently organized around a force-and-munitions paradigm that assumes short, decisive campaigns that do not exist in reality. Against a peer with a large, industrialized economy and an asymmetric approach designed to circumvent U.S. short-range precision strike, the result is likely paralysis if not outright defeat.

CIMSEC – A stronger homegrown U.S. shipbuilding and maritime industry remains essential. But domestic revitalization and allied integration are not alternatives; they are mutually reinforcing. A revitalized U.S. industrial base working closely with selected, capable, and willing maritime allies is indispensable to a strategy of deterrence along the First Island Chain. Understood in this light, allied shipbuilding is not optional. It is imperative.

Defense News – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday called NATO allies “cowards” for their unwillingness to help secure maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, which he said would be a “simple military maneuver” with little risk. Analysts studying military matters and geopolitics disagree.

USNI News – Ford, the flagship of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, is in port for maintenance and repairs following a March 12 fire in the aft laundry room.

The War Zone – Joseph Votel offers insights on securing Iran’s uranium, seizing Kharg Island, dwindling stocks of missile interceptors, and how long Epic Fury will last.

The Guardian – Both weapons, fired after Starmer authorised US to carry out further attacks from British bases, failed to hit Chagos Island target.

The War Zone – Retired Army General Joseph Votel offers unique insights into what it will take to wrestle the Strait of Hormuz from Iran’s clutches.

The War Zone – One carrier was already tired before it had a fire, another saw its service life extended for the second time, while the delivery of a third is delayed.

The War Zone – The E-2D is America’s most capable platform for spotting drones and other low-flying Iranian threats that are wreaking havoc on Gulf Arab States.

Defence Blog – The U.S. Navy plans to increase production of the Hammerhead anti-submarine mine system through a contract modification with General Dynamics Mission Systems. The Hammerhead system is designed to detect, classify, and engage submarines and could be deployed by unmanned underwater vehicles to counter increasingly capable Russian and Chinese submarine fleets.

(Thanks to Alain)

The War Zone – A Pentagon report says the new pods are still having significant teething issues even though they are being used in active conflicts.

Defense News – The U.S. military possesses several capabilities that it could wield to combat naval mine warfare in the Strait of Hormuz.

The War Zone – Two of the three Littoral Combat Ships that had taken over the minesweeping role in the Middle East have just appeared in Malaysia.

War on the Rocks – Churchill once demanded, “Take this pudding away — it has no theme!” U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle’s new Fighting Instructions presents a similar sort of dish.