Defense News – Consider the case of the Trump administration’s ongoing review of U.S. force posture in Europe and whether Washington will maintain a handful of American naval destroyers forward-stationed in Rota, Spain. Stationing destroyers at Rota helps secure vital American interests in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East and allows the ships to spend more time conducting missions than traversing back and forth across the Atlantic.

Center for Maritime Strategy – The Islamic Republic of Iran delivered a wakeup call to the U.S. Navy regarding the service’s ability to clear mines. The still-contested Strait of Hormuz demonstrates that mine clearing under fire is a slow, risky process.The mission served as a litmus test for the Navy’s capabilities. While some systems proved effective, improvement and scaling are still required. The Pentagon needs to identify and implement corrective measures or else it may pay a higher price in a future conflict with China, whose mine stockpile dwarfs Iran’s.

USNI News – It will take a couple years before deployment lengths shift from the extended 10-11 months back to the normal seven, the Navy’s top enlisted sailor said Wednesday.

Defense News – The Arleigh-Burke class destroyer USS Spruance has set a post-World War II record for a U.S. Navy destroyer deployment and is raising questions about the maintenance work that could follow its eventual return.

Navy Lookout – Babcock is preparing to offer its Arrowhead 140 frigate, the design behind the Royal Navy’s Type 31, to the US Navy as Washington looks abroad for a proven escort it can build quickly. Any deal would probably see the majority of ships built in American yards, with the UK supplying design and engineering expertise.

Breaking Defense – South Korean firm HD Hyundai and North American Kiewit Maritime Co. have unveiled plans to launch a new shipyard in the US aiming to build both US Navy auxiliary and commercial vessels.

Defence Blog – USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) entered dry dock at Navantia’s Cadiz shipyard on Oct. 7, the first such docking for a Europe-based U.S. destroyer in the region.

(Thanks to Alain)

Naval News – The U.S. Navy announced plans to contract Lockheed Martin to integrate AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) on the Air Force’s B-52 strategic bomber. This is the latest development from the U.S. military this year to enhance and showcase its aerial maritime strike capabilities. 

CIMSEC – The Navy is taking steps toward a technical revolution in advanced 3D modeling for vessel design and construction and in logistics software integration enabling smarter maintenance planning. But the revolution is missing a critical objective: improve the day-to-day lives of the sailors maintaining these vessels by tackling what takes up too much of their time and incurs them too much unmitigated risk. This can be done by leveraging existing CAD models, user-interfaces, and AI/ML algorithms, to digitize the existing labor intensive and risk-fraught paper tagout process. Tackling the tagout process with smart software can lead to further time saving and risk reducing advancements in maintenance planning in port and better repair triage at sea.

The War Zone – The drone and ship kill marks visualize the role the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group played in the fight with Iran.

The War Zone – X-BAT flight testing is getting closer on the horizon, and an extremely ambitious timeline to reach an operational capability has been revealed.

War on the Rocks – The yards are still 174,000 workers short. Recent wage increases only reached people already in shipyard jobs, not the larger pool who never applied and cannot afford unpaid months of training. What nobody has tried yet is recruiting a cashier at a mall forty miles away with the same money. Reaching that cashier or other would-be shipyard workers will require an intermediary that pays them during the intermediate training period between jobs, and no such broker yet exists. The Navy can close this gap by measuring programs on whether they reach new entrants, redirecting advertising money to pay trainees while they learn, and letting each shipbuilding region name one accountable intermediary to broker that training.

Defence Blog – Raytheon has won a $247.1 million contract to build, upgrade and overhaul Phalanx close-in weapon systems for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army, covering the shipboard gun, its land-based counterpart and the missile-armed SeaRAM.

(Thanks to Alain)

USNI News – Defense technology company Anduril will build a new facility in Maryland focused on submarine component construction for the U.S. Navy’s attack boats.

Defence Blog – The U.S. Navy has awarded British-owned MSI Defence Systems a $197 million contract for 30mm deck gun mounts and the electro-optical sights that aim them, the weapons the service is fitting to its warships to shoot down small drones and fast attack boats.

(Thanks to Alain)

USNI News – Pressure to deliver ships faster pushes U.S. naval yards toward distributed shipbuilding.

USNI News – The Pentagon doubled down on its plans to establish a forward-deployed area denial, anti-access network along the First Island Chain to deter China in the 2026 National Defense Security update.

The War Zone – Strike Fighter Squadron 41’s F/A-18Fs let loose hundreds of air-to-surface and air-to-air weapons during the war with Iran.

CIMSEC – If Korean involvement leaves American yards more productive, the supplier base deeper, workload more predictable, and the Navy more capable of converting requirements into ships, the Korea-U.S. Shipbuilding Partnership Initiative will have mattered. If not, it will have become another sophisticated policy framework that correctly diagnosed the crisis while leaving the institutional pathologies that created it largely untouched.

The Strategist – Bill Sweetman asks why would the Defense Department do this?

The War Zone – The Navy hoped Connecticut would be back by 2025, then this year, and it is now planning for its final retirement with repairs still underway.

USNI News – Boeing will build the Navy’s next-generation fighter after decades of indecision on the future of the carrier air wing.

USNI News – Both U.S. and foreign designs for the next small-surface combatant are under consideration after the cancellation of the Constellation-class guided-missile frigate, the new head of the Navy’s shipbuilding enterprise said this week.