– USNI News – The heads of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) expressed disappointment in the progress of the Mine Countermeasures (MCM) package for the Littoral Combat Ship and are recommending the Navy review other mine hunting technologies to fill looming needs in the fleet.

– USNI News – The Navy’s summer series of bilateral exercises in the Pacific gave the Littoral Combat Ship USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) a chance to demonstrate emerging capabilities of the new platform, using its rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIBs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the first time in an operational context.

– USNI News – Later today of Nimitz-class carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) will depart San Diego, Calif. for its new home in Yokosuka, Japan.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy has begun testing a new, radar-evading, air-launched anti-ship missile — a big step forward in the sailing branch’s march toward a more lethal fleet. In the next few years, the Navy could add three new ship-killing weapons to its warplanes and surface ships, augmenting existing Harpoon missiles that began entering service in 1977 and today are badly outclassed by Chinese- and Russian-made designs.

– War is Boring – Strategic interdiction focuses on depriving Beijing of energy resources.

– Associated Press – As it tries to get the most out of each of its $2.6 billion attack submarines, the U.S. Navy is finding a lot depends on the right paint job.

– USA Today – The first thing you notice when you step aboard this sleek new warship is that there aren’t many sailors — but almost all are doing double duty.

– USNI News – APKWS “fills in a very important part of the lethality gap in (the MH-60S’s) weapons footprint,” hitting a sweet spot between the AGM-114 Hellfire missile and unguided 20mm cannons and 2.75-inch rockets.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy appears to have a new low-cost plan to counter Iran’s fleet of speedboats.

– Bloomberg – The U.S. Navy wants to upgrade its ability to detect Russian submarines in response to assertive naval moves by President Vladimir Putin.
The Navy is seeking to deploy a sophisticated surveillance device made by Lockheed Martin Corp. in the Atlantic Ocean. The device, towed by a ship, already is in use in the Pacific. As soon as mid-2016, the service also wants to send to the Atlantic a prototype networked “undersea sensor system” that “addresses emergent real-world threats.”

– War is Boring – USS Jimmy Carter is an underwater spy.

– USNI Proceedings – Proponents of the newest method for putting information technology and networks to best military use must build a superhighway to the future, not the past—or even the present.

– Air Force – The Air Force isn’t rebalancing to the Pacific. It never left.

– USNI Proceedings – Congress must take a strong position in promoting naval innovation.

– USNI Proceedings – In an age of precision-strike weapon proliferation, a big-ship navy equals a brittle fleet. What’s needed is a revamped force structure based on smaller surface combatants.

– USNI News – The Navy’s quest to cut weight from the planned Littoral Combat Ship anti-submarine warfare (ASW) mission package is neither the result of weight gain in the planned systems nor a new requirement of the program. The need to reduce at least 15 percent of the weight of the systems is born instead of the service’s decision to use proven systems and always has long held plans to mount a weight reduction.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency has proved a modified Raytheon Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) missile can not only tackle cruise missiles and aircraft threats but also inbound ballistic missiles.

– Foxtrot Alpha – The Virginia Class fast attack submarine, the USS John Warner, was just commissioned into service. She is the second Block III Virginia Class boat to be produced, and has a pair of new huge Virginia Payload Tubes on her bow. These replace twelve individual vertical launch tubes used to fire Tomahawk missiles in previous Virginia Class boats.

– CNN – The U.S. Navy will not be able to keep an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf for much of the fall season.

– USNI Blog – Rowden’s model of distributed lethality for the surface navy, today’s changing maritime security environment will require a shift in the core focus of the composition of our fleet. Distributed lethality demands that “if it floats, it fights,” according to N96 Director Rear Admiral Peter Fanta. To adequately meet modern challenges, the Navy must invest in a more robust fleet composed of a larger number of small surface combatants (SSCs), in addition to the traditional capital ships.

– Foxtrot Alpha – Meet Proteus, the brainchild of Huntington Ingalls Underwater Solutions Group, Bluefin Robotics and Battelle. This streamlined mini-sub goes far beyond being just another swimmer delivery vehicle, it is a “dual-mode” vehicle that can operate manned or unmanned for a wide array of missions.

– American Conservative – William Lind writes that its perfect symbol isn’t Prussia, it’s the F-35.

– USNI News – The lessons learned from the U.S. Navy’s strikes in Libya informed features on Australia’s planned fleet of a dozen Boeing E/A-18G Growler electronic attack jets.

– War is Boring – To the sailing branch, the stealth fighter is a sensor.

– USNI News – The Navy has created a new task force to address ballistic missile defense and integrated air and missile defense in the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) area of responsibility.