Breaking Defense – “The interesting part of this is it’s not just a kind of fleeting presidential idea, but this is, in fact, something that does kind of resonate with what the Navy’s finding it probably needs to do with the fleet through its own work,” one analyst said.

The War Zone – Two days after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to the Caribbean, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has not moved significantly from a position just west of Morocco in North Africa, the Navy confirmed to us Thursday. The flattop and elements of its strike group were ordered by President Donald Trump to join the ongoing enhanced counter-narcotics mission in the region, but it is unclear if plans have changed.

Breaking Defense – In this op-ed, Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem lay out three areas where action is needed to avoid a logistical catastrophe in deterring China.

The War Zone – Even as the U.S. continues to build up forces in the Caribbean ostensibly for an enhanced counternarcotics operation that could include inland strikes, there are reported plans underway for attacks on cartels inside Mexico.

Defense News – President Donald Trump’s decision to shift the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier to South America in his campaign against drug cartels is pulling the ship out of the Mediterranean Sea at a time when a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been threatened by new strikes in Gaza.

Breaking Defense – Future operations in the Indo-Pacific will require persistent activity inside the enemy’s reach, according to a top naval commander.

USNI News – The U.S., under the direction of President Donald Trump, conducted three strikes on Monday against alleged drug trafficking vessels, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced via social media site X. The three strikes hit four vessels in the Eastern Pacific, Hegseth said in his Tuesday post. It is the first time that U.S. has hit multiple vessels during one operation.

Defense One – Trump’s first shipbuilding deal must not derail America’s bipartisan strategy to revive the foundations of its seapower.

The War Zone – The electromagnetic catapults and weapons elevators for Ford class carriers have historically been a headache, but changing now would create immense challenges.

Defense News – The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday.

The Strategist – Bill Sweetman writes that they say you can’t get anything done by sitting on your rear end, but US autonomy and unmanned systems specialist Shield AI expects to prove that wrong as it enters the realm of large uncrewed combat air vehicles (UCAVs) with its X-BAT proposal.

Center for Maritime Strategy – In the early 2000s the Oakland A’s showed the baseball world you didn’t need superstar salaries to win games. A’s general manager Billy Beane built rosters around undervalued statistics instead of traditional and costly “five-tool” players, proving you can recreate excellence in aggregate. Today, the US Navy is finding its traditional and costlyships aren’t enough to meet the needs of the nation. Defense circles are looking to unmanned vehicles, attritable systems, artificial intelligence, and other non-traditional military technologies and concepts as new ways to generate combat power. Advocates see a coming revolution, skeptics offer notes of reasonable caution and some are pushing back on the promised capabilities and utility of these systems replacing the venerable ships and aircraft of the past. The way to frame these new technologies is the same way the A’s thought about their unconventional players, not as perfect replacements for Cruisers, Attack Submarines, and Multirole Aircraft, but as “Ships in Aggregate.”

National Interest – James Holmes writes that a triad of SSGs, SSKs, and SSNs would comprise a forbidding implement of access denial for the US Navy in the Indo-Pacific. 

CIMSEC – With shipping and shipbuilding receiving high-level political and diplomatic attention across two administrations after decades of neglect, the United States has the chance to realize a much-needed maritime revival. Having initiated a change in course from the past forty years of stagnation, Washington should double down on its winning bipartisan strategy to build maritime power through allied investments in U.S. shipping and shipbuilding—and keep off the rocks and shoals that could run the nascent American maritime renaissance aground.

USNI News – The U.S. military conducted a fifth strike on a suspected drug boat, killing six people in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday afternoon.

National Interest – James Holmes says that after resting on its laurels for the better part of three decades, the US Navy must relearn how to fight a naval war—potentially as the weaker combatant.

National Interest – James Holmes writes in principle, he is all for fitting out a modern-day descendant of Iowa-class dreadnoughts. Whether doing so is practical is another question.

RUSI – Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Peru are preparing their fleets to secure resources and expand influence in the event of rivalries spilling into their maritime domains.

CIMSEC – The Navy must ruthlessly pursue two seemingly disparate capabilities – technical interoperability and the capability to operate in contested communications environments. The need for interoperability in naval operations has never been more critical. However, these operations will increasingly be forced to occur in contested communication environments, where data access and connectivity cannot be guaranteed. Balancing these two imperatives—interoperability and resilience in contested conditions—will be vital to successful maritime operations.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy must rebuild its capacity to shape and influence international maritime law.

CIMSEC – Small warships have a long history in the U.S. Navy and are poised to offer an evolutionary leap in capability. Small, highly automated, lightly crewed, blue-water warships will help offset the capabilities of competing fleets and ensure enduring maritime superiority for the U.S. Navy. It is time to build a prototype of the Lightly Manned Automated Combat Capability ship and its flotilla of innovations.

CIMSEC – The emergence of the Space Force’s fully funded, Long-Range Kill Chains (LRKC) satellite program for tracking moving land and maritime targets offers the Navy the opportunity to dramatically improve fleet tactical situational awareness and over-the-horizon targeting.

CIMSEC – The central challenge of modern naval warfare is grappling with profound decision-making under uncertainty. Our current doctrine, NDP-1 Naval Warfare, is an essential description of our forces, but it is insufficient as a guide for thinking through the friction, fluidity, and ambiguity inherent in conflict. To truly equip our Sailors to fight and win for tomorrow, the CNO should supplement this document with a doctrine focused on the cognitive art of warfighting. The solution is to champion a new, companion publication – NDP-1.1 Naval Warfighting.

CIMSEC – Unable to hide, the future of conventional air and sea-surface platforms is grim. When fighting competent opponents, those few, valuable, and conspicuous legacy platforms are likely to be destroyed. Modern warfare is not boxing, it is hide-and-seek. We should redesign our forces accordingly.

CIMSEC – The key to China succeeding is maintaining their anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) approach intended to keep adversary forces out of the first island chain. U.S. Navy operational concepts must make an explicit priority of targeting the C4ISR architecture that fundamentally enables China’s A2/AD approach and have it serve as a core organizing principle for Navy acquisition and force development.