– USNI News – The Littoral Combat Ship USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) is six months into its 16-month deployment and requiring an order of magnitude fewer hours of corrective maintenance than its predecessor, USS Freedom (LCS-1).

– USNI News – At a recent congressional hearing Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jon Greenert bluntly stated “[the] Navy remains challenged in this (anti-surface warfare) mission area due to both capability and capacity shortfalls.”

– USNI News – Targeted investments in improving weapons and decoys could propel the U.S. submarine fleet to be the underwater answer to anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) threats.

– BBC – In the North Sea, off the coast of Norway, Nato has been conducting its largest ever anti-submarine warfare exercise.

– Reuters – The Pentagon is considering sending U.S. military aircraft and ships to assert freedom of navigation around rapidly growing Chinese-made artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.

– Real Clear Defense – It’s tough to winnow the U.S. Navy’s priorities list down to five weapon systems. However, I applied a secret method to come up with the definitive, incontrovertible list of the Top 5 Weapons the U.S. Navy Needs Now. The list employs such metrics as a system’s national-level importance, its capacity to multiply the fleet’s offensive and defensive fighting power, and its ability to exploit enduring enemy weaknesses at manageable cost to the United States.

– War on the Rocks – Aviation history was made last week: an unmanned aircraft — the X-47B — successfully completed an air-to-air refueling demonstration, taking 4,000 pounds of fuel from a KC-707 tanker aircraft. This historic achievement followed last year’s equally revolutionary series of carrier launch and recovery operations by the X-47B. You would think that the Navy, cognizant of the need to take advantage of the promise of robotics would be aggressively pushing to do further testing, to make unmanned carrier-based surveillance and strike aircraft real, and thus extend the reach and power of the aircraft carrier — the crown jewel of America’s conventional power projection forces. Instead, the Navy wants to decommission the two X-47Bs (named Salty Dog 501 and Salty Dog 502) and put them in museums, even though they have 80% of their approved flight hours left. Such an action flies in the face of the imperative to counter the most strategically troubling elements of the emerging set of anti-access/area-denial threats that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his team are aiming to offset.

– Reuters – The U.S. Navy has stopped accompanying commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a mission it began last week in the wake of Iran’s seizure of a cargo ship.

– National Review – Jerry Hendrix of the Center for a New American Security took to the pages of National Review to advocate the elimination of the aircraft carrier from the arsenal of the U.S. Navy. A former naval aviator, Hendrix is a serious man and a gifted navalist, so his arguments should be taken seriously. Under scrutiny, however, his logic wilts, his understanding of modern warfare is revealed as unrealistic, and his ability to hone in on actual cause-and-effect relationships is questionable.

– USNI News – The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG-78) arrived in Spain on Thursday to being its ballistic missile defense mission. Porter will join USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) and USS Ross (DDG-71) in the forward-deployed naval force at Naval Station Rota to carry out the European Phased Adaptive Approach to BMD. USS Carney (DDG-64) will arrive later this year.

– BBC – Defence officials have said that US Navy ships will accompany US-flagged commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, to make sure they are not interfered with by Iran.

– Foxtrot Alpha – Submarines are a lot like Batman, they are covered in rubber and are great fighters, but they are gadget toting stealth detectives at their core. Of the Navy’s sub force, there is no boat more capable at sleuthing under the high seas than the heavily modified Seawolf Class submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter SSN-23.

– National Review – If the Navy wants to address its budget crisis, its falling ship count, its atrophying strategic position, and the problem of its now-marginal combat effectiveness — and reassert its traditional dominance of the seas — it should embrace technological innovation and increase its efficiency. In short: It needs to stop building aircraft carriers.

– Military.com – The Navy is considering extending production of its F/A-18 Super Hornet beyond 2017 because of delays in production of the Navy’s carrier-launched F-35C and increased demands on the Hornet fleet.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy will begin a permanent presence of two Littoral Combat Ships in Singapore next year with four planned to be forward deployed and based at the Changi Naval Base by 2017

– USNI News – Rapid growth in the capability and quality of guided missiles — mostly Chinese in origin — is causing the U.S. Navy to rethink the number of surface ships it needs to effectively fight a high-end war.

– USNI News – The Navy successfully tested autonomous aerial refueling for the first time with its Northrop Grumman X-47B test unmanned aerial vehicle on Wednesday, marking the end of the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Air Vehicle demonstrator (UCAS-D) program.

– USNI News – The build up of U.S. naval presence in the vicinity of Yemen is the result of the deteriorating security situation inside the country and to “preserve options” to maintain maritime security in the region.

– USNI News – Post-delivery testing on USS America (LHA-6) went far more smoothly than on previous big-decks, and the Navy and Ingalls Shipbuilding are trying to leverage this success as they move forward with the next two amphibious assault ships.

– Associated Press – In a stepped-up response to Iranian backing of Shia rebels in Yemen, the Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is heading toward the waters off Yemen to beef up security and join other American ships that are prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the Houthi rebels.

– Breaking Defense – Amidst unabated budget gloom, Navy and Marine leaders aren’t looking for salvation in big new programs. They’re “repurposing and reusing existing capabilities” to get the maximum out of existing hardware for minimum cost. It’s a vision of the future in which a junior Marine Corps officer might call for fire support from a ship-launched Tomahawk missile using a Samsung tablet.

– Washington Post – The U.S. Navy has seven combat ships in the waters around Yemen as the Saudi-led bombing campaign there continues, but U.S. troops are not participating in a Saudi naval blockade in the region.

– The Diplomat – The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence offers a wealth of new information on the PLA Navy.

– Defense One – Faster datalinks will allow the Navy’s EA-18 Growler to pinpoint insurgents with weapons-quality accuracy.

– War is Boring – Fat Leonard’s hookers and cash seduced the U.S. Seventh Fleet … and soaked taxpayers for millions