– Defense News – The luster is off a bit for the Virginia-class submarine building program, long considered a model US Navy construction effort that routinely brings down the building time and cost for each successive sub. One submarine has just missed its contract delivery date — pushed back even more when sea trials were halted to return to port — and shipbuilders are working harder to keep construction on schedule.

– Breaking Defense – The usefulness of the aircraft carrier, long the centerpiece of American naval power in the world, was in serious question, one year ago. Chronic underfunding, poor strategic assumptions and bad acquisition decisions had left the carrier defensively unprotected and offensively underpowered as its airwing both shrank in size and striking range. President Trump’s election and his public commitment to a 350-ship Navy as well as his explicit call for a twelfth carrier, effectively truncates these concerns, bringing the promise of additional capabilities that will ensure the safety and effectiveness of the carrier.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy is quietly converting a 633-foot-long cargo ship into a secretive helicopter carrier with facilities for supporting a large contingent of Special Operations Forces and all their gear, including jet skis.

– Stars and Stripes – It’s the end of an era for Navy patrol squadrons that have flown the sub-hunting and surveillance P-3 Orion out of Hawaii for more than half a century. The final three planes of Patrol Squadron 9, or VP-9, are expected to wing away from Kaneohe Bay by week’s end with about 60 crew and maintainers on a deployment that started in Hawaii but will end at the squadron’s new home at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington.

– National Interest – A Sea-Based Pershing II missile can blunt China’s A2/AD threat and help restore regional strategic balance.

– CIMSEC – The future of the Helicopter Sea Combat Community (HSC) community is at risk. HSC, which is made up of both carrier air wing (CVW) and expeditionary (EXP)squadrons that employ MH60S helicopters, struggles with its purpose to the fleet. Platform capabilities fail to keep pace with technological advancements and HSC warfighting relevancy is diminishing. A focused vision, careful risk mitigation, rebalanced mission priorities, and thoughtful platform acquisitions are needed in order to strengthen the fleet and secure the future of the HSC community.

– America Space – The U.S. Air Force’s 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg AFB Calif., along with United Launch Alliance (ULA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), are poised for the planned March 1 launch of the NRO-79 mission carrying the Intruder 8 Ocean Surveillance satellite payload on board an Atlas-V 401 rocket.

– CIMSEC – The age of the strike carrier is over. As the United States enters an era where the potential for modern great-power war is increasing dramatically in Eurasia, a return to the traditional roles of the aircraft carrier is required to maintain maritime access. Carrier-borne over-land strike warfare has not proved decisive in previous conflicts in heavily contested air defense environments, and will not prove so in the future. In the potential high-end conflicts of the twenty-first century, the likely utility of carrier-based land strike is largely non-existent. Thankfully, the traditional carrier aviation roles of maritime interdiction and fleet air defense remain highly valuable in wars against modern navies, but are precisely the roles, missions, and tactics sacrificed for sea based over-land strikes over the past sixty years. Regaining this capability will require a modest investment in existing and developing systems and capabilities and should be the force’s, the service’s and the nation’s highest objective in the coming years.

– Breaking Defense – Trump’s promised defense budget boost probably won’t materialize, the former Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said today, so we can’t afford to grow a larger military. Instead of more ships and troops, retired Adm. James Winnefeld said the military should prioritize investment in new ideas. His own service, for example, should overcome its post-1945 reluctance to lay mines off enemy shores and deploy networks of smart mines. The Army should cut soldiers to buy more modern equipment and stockpile a lot of it in Europe.

– Asian Times – While the Pentagon insists its warship maneuvers – the first under President Donald Trump – are routine, Beijing has denounced them as a threat.

– Navy Times – The embarked crew of the littoral combat ship Coronado, forward deployed to Singapore, was supposed to be home for Thanksgiving after a four- or five-month tour. But now the crew has been on board and overseas for eight months and there is no end in sight.

– Breaking Defense – The Army and Navy must link their missile defense systems into a single network so Navy weapons can hit targets spotted by Army radars and vice versa, the chief of Pacific Command said today. That’s a daunting technical task but, if surmounted, it could dramatically improve defense against North Korean, Chinese, or Russian missile salvos.

– CIMSEC – Distributed lethality depends on being hard to find and securing the element of surprise enabled by superior situational awareness. With the adoption of the distributed lethality concept, it is essential that the concept and doctrine for establishing and maintaining the Common Tactical Picture be reviewed and optimized to assure warfare commanders enjoy the tactical advantage of decision superiority over an adversary.

– BBC – US aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson has started what it calls “routine operations” in the South China Sea, with a fleet of supporting warships.

– Air Force – The US is pressing ahead with plans to improve airpower capabilities in the critical Pacific region.

– CIMSEC – The future of naval warfare is increasingly shifting to undersea competition, in both manned and unmanned systems. American seapower has excelled in this domain and holds a competitive edge today beneath the waves. But the U.S. Navy, by a combination of compressed funding and potentially crippling procurement cost increases, may not be well positioned to sustain its mastery of undersea warfare.

– USNI News – Three congressionally mandated studies outline what the Navy of 2030 could look like and present three very different takes on how the service could tackle its roles and responsibilities in the future.

– Breaking Defense – Light carriers. Robot PT boats. Unmanned subs. A congressionally chartered study, the Alternative Future Fleet Platform Architecture Study, “does not represent any official Navy position,” but offers a surprisingly bold vision for the future of the US Navy.

– USNI News – After a two-month gap, the U.S. Navy is again launching carrier-based strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria from the Mediterranean. Strike fighters from USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) launched Monday against targets in Syria as part of the ongoing Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR).

Navy Times – U.S. Navy and Pacific Command leaders want to ratchet up potentially provocative operations in the South China Sea by sailing more warships near the increasingly militarized man-made islands that China claims as sovereign territory.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy needs a vastly larger fleet — 414 warships — to win a great-power war, well above today’s 274 ships or even the Navy’s unfunded plan for 355, the think-tank MITRE calculates in a congressionally-chartered study.

– Defense News – A U.S. Navy office set up less than two years ago to oversee the warfare development of unmanned systems has been eliminated.

– Defense News – The US Navy’s F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike fighters are the tip of the spear, embodying most of the fierce striking power of the aircraft carrier strike group. But nearly two-thirds of the fleet’s strike fighters can’t fly – grounded because they’re either undergoing maintenance or simply waiting for parts or their turn the aviation depot backlog. Overall, more than half the Navy’s aircraft are grounded, most because there isn’t enough money to fix them.