– Defense News – With no fiscal 2017 defense budget in sight and little chance of an agreement before April – if then – the military services are submitting second and possibly third rounds of unfunded requirements lists to Congress. The lists include items left out of the original budget requests, ranked in order of priority should Congress find a way to fund them.

– Washington Free Beacon – A political battle is underway in the Trump administration over whether the president should pick a former Hong Kong-based financier with extensive business ties in China to be the next Navy secretary.

– National Interest – What James Holmes, one of the world’s leading naval experts, would change.

– USNI News – The next six years will bring numerous offensive and defensive capabilities to the U.S. surface fleet, culminating in Fiscal Year 2023 when the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG-51) reaches initial operational capability and the first frigate delivers to the fleet.

I am a big fan of the Art of Future Warfare Project, whose work I have linked to in the past. The project advocates the use of fiction / science fiction to explore potential futures in warfare. Here is a list of naval fiction short stories from their most recent contest, which I highly recommend for use in helping one visualize what the future of naval warfare will be like. I will also be linking to 2 of their newest works in the next few days. Enjoy!

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The Navy has scrapped “3-2-1” crew manning of the Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) in favor of a Blue-Gold crew concept. It also will permanently assign mission modules to hulls and dedicate four hulls to research and development (R&D). These changes resulted from a program review initiated by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson that coincidently was announced shortly after the third and fourth LCSs suffered catastrophic engineering casualties.

– USNI News – A new strategy for the surface force – released today – creates an outline for a navy that anticipates a return to high-end warfare it hasn’t known since the Cold War.

– Virginian Pilot – A squadron of advanced early warning and control aircraft is moving from Norfolk to Japan as part of a Navy effort to place its most-advanced units in the Pacific as China grows more assertive.

– USNI News – On Tuesday Capt. James Kirk turned over command of the guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) to his executive officer and ended his tenure leading the crew of the Navy’s newest and most unique warship. Last week Kirk spoke with USNI News on what life’s like for the crew of Zumwalt and the transit from Maine to the ship’s new San Diego homeport.

– Breaking Defense – The phone call between President-elect Trump and the President of Taiwan sent shock waves through the diplomatic community. But it is time to turn the page and include Taiwan in shaping a 21st century deterrence strategy for Pacific defense.

– Defense News – The Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group chopped out of the European theater of operations Dec. 26, headed home to Norfolk after months of operating in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, where the strike jets of Carrier Air Wing 3 flew hundreds of missions against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. The homecoming is set for Dec. 30 – two days shy of the Navy’s stated goal of bringing the group home in seven months. US carrier groups regularly relieve each other in theater, often handing off duties within sight of the other in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea. But this time, no carrier is in the Eisenhower’s wake.

– CIMSEC – The ushering in of a new administration on January 20th has many wondering what campaign promises will materialize and meaningfully affect the U.S. Navy. Is it reasonable to expect movement toward a “350-ship Navy” and, if so, what might such a Navy look like? Where can increased military spending be focused to have the most immediate impact on the United States’ readiness to address near peer competitors? To answer these questions, we invited one of the United States’ foremost experts on American Seapower, the Hudson Institute’s Bryan McGrath, on this episode of Sea Control. [Transcript follows]

– CIMSEC – It usually comes as a surprise to learn that of the 19 U.S. Navy ships that have been seriously damaged or sunk by enemy action since the end of World War II, 15 – nearly 80 percent – were mine victims.

– Breaking Defense – Robot boats are getting smarter fast. Two years ago, on the James River, the Office of Naval Research dropped jaws with a “swarm” of 13 unmanned craft that could detect threats and react to them without human intervention. This fall, on the Chesapeake Bay, ONR tested ro-boats with dramatically upgraded software. The Navy called this experiment “Swarm 2” — but a better description would be “Hive Mind.”

– USNI News – The Navy is looked to expand the web of connections currently linking its ships, planes and weapons to include submarines, smaller ships and unmanned systems to create a warfighting network that would be challenging for an adversary to bring down.

– USNI News – The Navy is looking to Raytheon’s Excalibur guided artillery round to replace the effective but expensive Long Range Land Attack Projectile for the Zumwalt-class of guided missile destroyers.

– Military.com – In a pair of congressional hearings about the Navy’s embattled littoral combat ship program this month, service program managers and oversight officials fielded tough questions about unexpected increases from ship unit costs — from $220 million to $470 million over the course of the program — and concerns about a planned block buy of upgraded frigates based on the same design. But the panel also revealed new details about the cause and scope of a series of engineering casualties that have sidelined five of the eight active littoral combat ships in a little more than a year.

– Breaking Defense – One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. It turns out the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. A case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land – i.e., no runway needed.

– Proceedings – Decoupling naval intelligence from the information warfare community is key to ensuring the Navy maintains maritime superiority.

– AP – One after another, fighter jets catapult from the flight deck of the USS Eisenhower, a thousand-foot (305-meter) American aircraft carrier, afterburners glowing amber above the blue Persian Gulf, on their way northwest to join the fight in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State group.

– USNI News – The Navy is set to deploy unmanned buoyancy gliders from its guided missile destroyers in an effort to expand its anti-submarine warfare edge.

– National Interest – President Elect Donald Trump, correctly understanding the current strategic environment, is committed to building a 350 ship Navy.