– USNI News – The Navy isn’t planning on buying the rocket assisted guided round designed for a key system in the Zumwalt-class of guided missile destroyer.

– The Diplomat – New contract augments old Cold War “SOSUS” arrays.

– Breaking Defense – The Army’s long-range artillery rocket, ATACMS, will get upgraded to strike moving targets on land and at sea, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced today. After at least two years of pressure from Congress and vague promises from Pentagon leaders, and for the first time since the Coastal Artillery Corps was disbanded 66 years ago, the Army is officially back in the business of killing ships. That gives the largest service a big new role in countering Russian aggression in the Baltic and Black Seas or defending allies like the Philippines against China.

– CIMSEC – Newly appointed U.S. Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. gave a signature speech at the Naval War College in Newport, RI in 1981. In his remarks Lehman hailed, “the return of naval strategy” to the forefront of the Navy’s planning.1 Such a message was again issued last week by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson. While the CNO’s 18 October naval message (R 182128Z OCT 16) did not have Secretary Lehman’s dramatic turn of phrases, it is no less important and in fact is the most significant change in the role of U.S. naval strategic thinking since late 1991. The CNO’s message implements a major change in the planning and execution of the annual Navy budget statement known as the Program Objective Memorandum (POM.) For the first time since July 1991, the Navy Staff (OPNAV) Operations, Plans and Strategy (N3/N5) office will have the first input to the Navy POM building process. While this may not seem significant at first glance, it is a major course correction in Navy thinking. It could signal a return to the halcyon days of the 1980s when the Navy’s Maritime Strategy served as the service’s global blueprint for operational naval war against the Soviet Union, informing Navy programs, budgets, exercises, war games, education, training, and real world operations.

– USNI News – The Navy should prepare for a future operating environment where anti-ship weapons propagate globally and attacks such as the recent ones against guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG-87) are more commonplace, one the service’s top budget officials said.

– Free Beacon – Senior White House officials blocked the Navy from conducting needed freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea amid growing concerns that China is militarizing newly reclaimed islands, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board.

– Breaking Defense – The multinational Unmanned Warrior exercise off the coast of Scotland is doing “really groundbreaking” work on naval drones, said one participating US scientist. There’ve been “a number of world firsts” in networking unmanned vehicles of different types and from different nations into a single unit.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy’s Commander of Logistics Group Western Pacific/Task Force 73 is in the process of expanding its maintenance and support capabilities.

– Breaking Defense – “Outranged and outgunned” by Russian and Chinese missiles, the US Army wants a new long-range artillery rocket of its own. The nascent Long-Range Precision Fires program could do much more than replace the 25-year-old ATACMS missile, however. LRPF could become a linchpin of what the Army is calling Multi-Domain Battle, extending ground-based artillery’s reach not only to unprecedented ranges — hitting distant targets once reserved for airstrikes — but out to sea.

– Breaking Defense – The $13 billion supercarrier USS Ford and the $500 million Littoral Combat Ship are both suffering engine trouble. But Navy Secretary Ray Mabus took pains today to defend LCS even as he derided Ford as “a textbook example of how not to build a ship.”

– BBC – The US has hit radar sites in Yemen after one of its warships in the Red Sea came under missile attack for the second time in days.

– Defense News – It’s almost a given that when a new administration takes over in Washington, international opponents find ways to test the will of the new leadership. Russia and China, Iran and North Korea, ISIS and Al Qaeda can all be expected to take actions that will put pressure on the new president to show what he or she is made of. And when the issues arise next year, a new set of leaders are likely to ask the proverbial question, “Where are the carriers?” The answer, at least in the first weeks of the next administration, may not be what people want to hear.

– USNI News – The guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG-87) was unsuccessfully attacked with two missiles fired from Yemen on Sunday.

– CIMSEC – As the United States and the U.S. Navy move into the 21st century, the United States faces the duel challenge of engaging in a “long war” against Islamofacism and meeting the threat of emerging “peer competitors” in a period of economic and fiscal constraints. Meeting these dichotomous challenges requires a fundamental rethink of the nature of naval forces and their roles. Is the U.S. Navy moving from an era of exceptional “ships of the line” – including LHA’s & LPD’s, FFG’s, CG’s, DDG’s, SSN’s and CVN’s – to one filled with USV’s, UAV’s, LCS’s, CV’s, SSK’s and perhaps something new – Long Range Patrol Vessels (LRPV’s)? But what in the world is an LRPV?

– USNI News – Three U.S. warships are operating off the coast Yemen following a guided missile attack against a UAE operated ship by Houthi rebels.

– US Naval War College Review – We suggest that a number of unique and complex ethical questions are likely to arise regarding the applications of autonomous UUVs and USVs…

– USNI Proceedings – Dispersing ships in smaller groups will increase the surface Navy’s ability to deceive and defeat the enemy, but such distributed lethality cannot exist without distributed authority.

– USNI News – As the Navy and Marine Corps work through a high-end warfighting exercise in the Pacific, which features a traditional three-ship amphibious ready group (ARG) operating with a guided-missile destroyer as a peek into future operations, a similar ship pairing is performing real-world missions in the Mediterranean today.

– Defense News – For over a year, the US Navy and its shipbuilders have been anxious to get the new aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) to sea and begin engineering trials of the first-of-class design. A number of publicly-announced target dates have come and gone, but the ship is still firmly moored at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. Now, however, a key factor in preventing the ship from casting off lines and getting underway is coming into view. A serious voltage regulator problem on the carrier’s four main turbine generators (MTGs) has prevented engineers from running the motors up to full power, and only now has the problem been identified and a fix decided upon.

– USNI News – The Navy took risk in many of its destroyer fleet’s mission sets during a period of uncontested operations at sea, and U.S. Fleet Forces Command has now been tasked with regaining sea control and all-domain access.

– Defense News – After more than twelve years insisting the unique crewing and modularity schemes for the Littoral Combat Ship will work, US Navy leaders are changing those plans as part of a larger shakeup of the long-troubled program.

– Breaking Defense – After a series of embarrassing breakdowns, the Navy is overhauling how it operates its controversial Littoral Combat Ships. It’s not only big news for the Navy but a cautionary tale for would-be innovators.

– Breaking Defense – After two years of embarrassing breakdowns in both variants of the embattled Navy Littoral Combat Ship, there are worrying signs that a reliability problem is built into the design. At issue: the unhappy combination of an unusually small crew struggling with a uniquely complex propulsion system, one that yokes gas turbines and diesel engines together.