– Defense News -With the size of the small combatant force rapidly expanding, US Navy chief of naval operations Adm. John Richardson is ordering a major 60-day review of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. “The idea,” said a Navy official, “is that with two deployments complete or nearly complete, and with new ships coming almost every six months, it’s time to see where things stand and get a feel for what’s been working, what’s not been working, and what we might need to change.”

– Navy Times – The U.S. Navy has dispatched a small armada to the South China Sea. The carrier John C. Stennis, two destroyers, two cruisers and the 7th Fleet flagship have sailed into the disputed waters in recent days.

– Defense News – Fourteen new F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet strike fighters top the 31 items on the US Navy’s fiscal 2017 unfunded requirements list (URL), along with final funding for an already-approved destroyer and two additional carrier-based F-35 joint strike fighters.

– USNI News – A newly revealed configuration of sensors set for next-generation destroyer Zumwalt (DDG-1000) could make the ship less stealthy than originally intended.

– USNI News – Increasing challenges in Europe and Northern Africa have sparked a discussion in the Marine Corps and Joint Staff about revamping how to deploy amphibious groups, including the idea of splitting up the three-ship Amphibious Ready Group from the start.

– Breaking Defense – Polar bears. Wind chill of 20 below. Ice floes drifting faster than ever thanks to global warming. Cutting holes in the ice big enough to drop unmanned mini-subs through. Keeping mini-drones aloft in the frigid winds to watch out for the aforementioned bears. Those are just some of the issues — many of them new — that Navy sailors face as they set up camp for Ice Exercise 2016.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy will scrap the troubled RMMV drone meant to hunt mines from its controversial Littoral Combat Ships, replacing it with a different type of robot boat.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy’s new flying robot fuel truck, CBARS, is being reviewed by senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

– National Interest – On January 20, 2013, the Seawolf-class attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter left her home port in Bangor, Washington. Less than two months later, the submarine appeared at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for repairs. It was all quite mysterious. During her time at sea, we don’t know where Jimmy Carter was or what her crew of nearly 150 were precisely doing. The Seawolf class is one of the most secretive weapons in America’s arsenal, and information about the Navy’s “Silent Service” is difficult to discover. . . by design.

– AP – Development of a futuristic weapon depicted in video games and science fiction is going well enough that a Navy admiral wants to skip an at-sea prototype in favor of installing an operational unit aboard a destroyer planned to go into service in 2018. The Navy has been testing an electromagnetic railgun and could have an operational unit ready to go on one of the new Zumwalt-class destroyers under construction at Bath Iron Works.

– USNI News – The Navy’s reconfigured unmanned carrier aviation program is set for success because it has a “legitimate” primary mission in the short-term but will be designed in such a way that doesn’t preclude it from taking on additional missions later, the Chief of Naval Operations said Friday. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, CNO Adm. John Richardson said the newly redesignated Carrier Based Aerial Refueling System – formerly the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program – will help ease the burden on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet, which is struggling to get out of a readiness trough, by covering the tanking mission.

– The Diplomat – The U.S. Navy’s largest unmanned surface vehicle designed to track Chinese and Russian subs will be christened in April.

– Defense News – The US Navy is absorbing a $7 billion reduction in fiscal 2017 funding – about 3.5 percent over last year’s plan, according to newly released budget documents. The service is reducing the number of ships it’s buying while adding more aircraft, and uniformed personnel also are being cut, up to as many as 6,400 sailors below previous forecasts.

– Breaking Defense – Of the four armed services’ budget plans for 2017, the one most likely to make Congress apoplectic is the Navy’s. On top of reintroducing a cruiser modernization plan repeatedly rejected by the Hill, the Navy proposes deactivating a carrier air wing — which tangles with the touchy issue of how many carriers the US should have — and turning its highest profile drone from a stealth bomber to a refueling tanker with limited strike capabilities with an 80 percent smaller budget.

– National Interest – The United States has conducted another freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea. On January 30, the guided-missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur sailed within twelve nautical miles of Triton Island, a naturally formed feature, in the Paracel islands in the South China Sea. That group is claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam but is occupied by China. The purpose of the latest FONOP was much clearer than that of America’s previous FONOP in the region.

– National Interest – The United States Navy’s fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers are getting a massive boost in lethality. For years, many believed that America’s mighty surface combatants were on track to be outgunned by their Russian and Chinese counterparts—however, a newly unveiled modification to the Raytheon Standard SM-6 changes of all of that.

– USNI News – Secretary of Defense Ash Carter confirmed the Navy was developing a modification to the Raytheon Standard Missile 6 that will give the service a supersonic anti-ship weapon to reach a target more than 200 nautical miles away.

– Breaking Defense – Arsenal plane. It’s a great name, no? And the Hyper Velocity Projectile. Whoa. Fast flying swarming micro drones. Neat! There’s much more being developed, but it’s classified. Where is all this coming from? The Strategic Capabilities Office, or SCO for short.