– Breaking Defense – The Navy’s new plan to put mine-hunting gear on a wider range of warships could finally break mine warfare out of its ghetto — or it could keep mine-hunting the same redheaded stepchild but spread it across more decks.

– Breaking Defense – There are maybe half a million sea mines in arsenals around the world. To find and clear them, rather than rely solely on a small fleet of small Littoral Combat Ships, the Navy now wants at least some mine-hunting gear on a vessels ranging from modified oil tankers to catamarans to aircraft carriers.

– Defense News – The Navy’s rare move to simultaneously assemble three aircraft carriers in the Pacific will create a major display of American sea power at a time when President Donald Trump is planning to visit the region for the first time next week.

– USNI News – The Navy is trending towards a mix-and-match set of people, platforms and sensors to detect and destroy mines, a departure from the simpler legacy mine countermeasures setup with a single helicopter type and a single wooden-hull ship class, set for replacement by the new Littoral Combat Ship and its neatly defined mission package.

– Defense News – Northrop Grumman will not put forward a bid for the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 unmanned tanker aircraft, its CEO announced Wednesday.

– Breaking Defense – The President, Congress and the Navy now all want the fleet to grow from the current 278 ships to 355, but that will probably take until the 2050s, the Navy’s No. 2 civilian said Wednesday.

– CIMSEC – In the spring of 1798, the United States found itself in an undeclared naval war with France. Known as the Quasi-War, this eighteenth century “half-war” holds valuable lessons for maintaining maritime superiority in the twenty-first century.

– San Diego Union Tribune – The next frontier for unmanned military drones may not be solely in the skies. It could be under the seas.

– CIMSEC – In response to a Call for Articles, talented writers submitted fictional short stories that sought to envision the unique challenges of future conflict and the enduring relevance of the human element. Others sought to delve into individual emotional trials that accompany national security imperatives. Read on to see the stories featured.

– Defense News – The great Navy buildup promised by U.S. President Donald Trump during his campaign is so far all talk and no action, and with progress on Capitol Hill stalled on almost all fronts, the Defense Department seems more likely to eat another round of sequester cuts than cut steel for a bunch of extra ships.

– CIMSEC – Last week CIMSEC featured 6 fictional short stories related to the near-future of warfare at sea, that provide you with new ways to think about that topic. Highly recommended!

– Breaking Defense – The fleet needs smaller, cheaper aircraft carriers than the badly over budget, behind schedule Gerald Ford, ex-Navy pilot John McCain has long argued. No way, “Bigger Aircraft Carriers Are Better,” declares a recent National Interest article – widely publicized by the carrier industry’s advocacy group, ACIBC – citing a study that RAND did for the Navy. But McCain is unlikely to be convinced, and RAND actually thought at least one kind of smaller carrier was worth considering.

– Reuters – The USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier, patrolled in waters east of the Korean peninsula on Thursday, in a show of sea and air power designed to warn off North Korea from any military action.

– USNI News – The Navy selected Boeing and Lockheed Martin to pursue the Extra Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV) program, which will test the Navy’s ability to manage a rapid-acquisition project and the Navy-industry team’s ability to develop and integrate an unmanned system that operates completely independently of manned ships.

– Defense News – The Navy’s oldest cruisers have a friend in Congress. The influential head of the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee is calling on the Navy to enter its oldest 11 cruisers into a service-life extension program rather than retire them at the end of their 35-year hull life in the coming years.

– CIMSEC – When one thinks of a stealth ship, images of the Chinese Type 055 destroyer, the French La Fayette-class frigate, or Swedish Visby-class corvette come to mind. The use of material and technology to produce a smaller radar cross-section or to reduce sound and electronic emissions are all common attributes of what is commonly considered a stealth ship. Yet, if one was to ask what is the stealthiest ship in the U.S. Navy, the answer may prove surprising. It is not USS Zumwalt, the newest destroyer in the fleet. It is also not the most recent Virginia or Seawolf-class submarine, and it most assuredly is not one of the littoral combat ships. The ship that holds this title is not even a commissioned vessel in the U.S. Navy, or owned by the government, but leased from one of the largest ship operators in the world. MV Ocean Trader, chartered by the Military Sealift Command for the U.S. Special Operations Command, most assuredly holds this title.

– Navy Times – Amazing comments from three command climate surveys taken on the cruiser Shiloh during Capt. Adam M. Aycock’s recently-completed 26-month command. The Japan-based ship is a vital cog in U.S. ballistic missile defense and the 7th Fleet’s West Pacific mission to deter North Korea and counter ascendant Chinese and Russian navies.

– USNI News – The Navy is surging two guided-missile warships to cover gaps left by two ballistic missile defense-capable destroyers that were damaged in collisions with merchant ships.

– War Zone – The US Navy has sent out the final request for proposals and expects to pick a winning aircraft in September 2018.

– USNI News – The Navy completed the first phase of its initial operational test and evaluation on the AN/DVS-1 Coastal Battlefield Reconnaissance and Analysis (COBRA) airborne mine detection system and is awaiting Littoral Combat Ship availability to complete the remaining testing.

– CIMSEC – Aggressive recapitalization of the Combat Logistics Force (CLF) is needed because the Navy’s current logistics force structure is unprepared to support a distributed fleet in a fight against a peer competitor.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet will start losing some its biggest guns in 2020 at a two-per-year clip.

– War Zone – The service’s little known fleet is important to operations around the world, but is sorely in need of new watercraft.

– Defense News – Congress has also taken notice of the Navy’s continuing problems. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., the chairman of the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, traveled to Japan to visit the fleet and speak with Navy leaders and sailors about what Congress can do to help get the service back on track. Upon returning, he sat down with Defense News naval reporter David Larter to talk about the trip.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s top officer in the Pacific is reviewing a program that allowed ships from the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet to operate with expired certifications amid a wide-ranging probe into two deadly collisions that killed 17 sailors and caused untold hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to two destroyers.