– USNI News – The Navy will beef up the weapons, armor and sensors on its two existing classes of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) in an answer to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s call for a tougher Small Surface Combatant (SSC).

– FoxTrot Alpha – What does the Navy do when it needs to know for sure that a new weapon system or electronic countermeasure works, not just under stringent lab-like settings or at a land based range, but in its intended operating environment? They put it to sea on a giant remote controlled Destroyer and throw live missiles at it.

– Foxtrot Alpha – America’s primary anti-ship missile, the Harpoon, has been in service now for close to 40 years and the Navy has been very reluctant to evolve when it comes to its anti-ship capabilities. Times are changing, with China’s Navy on the rise and Russia flexing its muscle, the Cold War staple just won’t do. Enter Lockheed’s ninja-like Long Range Anti-Ship Missile to save the day.

– Nikkei Asian Review – Defense policymakers in Japan and the U.S. are privately voicing concern about the total absence of U.S. aircraft carriers from East Asian waters for four months next year.

– War is Boring – USS George H.W. Bush has been busy

– Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments – Within the next year, the Navy must take advantage of an uncommon opportunity to set the course for the future surface fleet or fall further behind competitors who will increasingly be able to deny U.S. forces access to their region. In this study, CSBA Senior Fellow Bryan Clark articulates the operational concept of “offensive sea control” as the new central idea to guide evolution of the U.S. surface force. This idea would refocus large and small surface combatant configuration, payloads and employment on sustaining the surface force’s ability to take and hold areas of ocean by destroying threats to access such as aircraft, ships and submarines rather than simply defending against their missiles and torpedoes.

– Breaking Defense – Someone shoots a cruise missile at you. How far away would you like to stop it: over 200 miles out or less than 35? If you answered “over 200,” congratulations, you’re thinking like the US Navy, which has spent billions of dollars over decades to develop ever more sophisticated anti-missile defenses. According to Bryan Clark, until 12 months ago a top advisor to the nation’s top admiral, you and the Navy are wrong.

– Information Dissemination – 5 part series by Jon Solomon on the future of the large deck carrier.

– Aviation Week – As the U.S. Navy’s vaunted Aegis combat system continues to shine during missile tests – especially for ballistic missile defense (BMD) – the system itself has become a target. For some, the best way to earn sea credit these days is to tarnish the gold-plated standard of shipboard electronic defense. The latest contender is the Russian company Kret, which says its gear made it possible for an aircraft to foil an Aegis-equipped destroyer during an at-sea confrontation a few months ago.

– US Navy – Navy Starts Design Work On Next Generation Amphibious Warship – Early design work on the Navy’s next generation amphibious warship — based on the San Antonio-class (LPD-17) hull — has begun ahead of a planned 2020 procurement.

– Breaking Defense – A look at the potential impact of fifth generation aircraft – stealthy, advanced radar and avionics – on the carrier strike group’s effectiveness.

– Defense News – When the US nuclear submarine Jefferson City left its homeport of San Diego April 9, its 150-man crew expected to spend six months cruising the Western Pacific and beyond. Instead, the sub has languished since mid-June in Guam, sidelined by a tiny leak that proved difficult to find and harder to repair.

– USNI News – Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has revised its plan to use the hull form of the San Antonio-class amphibious warship (LPD-17) as a candidate for the Navy’s next generation amphibious warship— LX(R)

– The Diplomat – To be effective, Zumwalt destroyers require command of the sea, which the US can no longer take for granted.

– Aviation Week – As U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Simcock acknowledges, when anyone mentions the number-one-country of concern in the Asia Pacific, everyone knows which one it is. But, China syndrome aside, there’s a much greater and immediate worry in the region. “The number-one threat in the Pacific is Mother Nature,” Simcock says.

– Breaking Defense – Navy readiness won’t fully recover from the second-order effects of the 2013 sequester for another year, the Chief of Naval Operations said this morning — and if the Budget Control Act cuts (known as sequestration) return in full force for fiscal year 2016, the nation might lose two of its five remaining major shipyards.

– Foxtrot Alpha – Yesterday, four EA-6B Prowlers belonging to Electronic Attack Squadron VAQ-134 ‘Garudas’ made a triumphant but bittersweet return to NAS Whidbey Island in upstate Washington. The squadron had been deployed aboard the USS George H.W. Bush for the last nine and a half months, and their arrival marked the end of the last EA-6B carrier deployment.

– Bloomberg – The U.S. Navy has deployed on a command ship in the Persian Gulf its first laser weapon capable of destroying a target. The amphibious transport ship USS Ponce has been patrolling with a prototype 30-kilowatt-class Laser Weapon System since late August.

– Foxtrot Alpha – The Navy and Marines’ sea basing dreams are quickly becoming a tangible reality, with two of their giant Mobile Landing Platforms already in the water. Now, the next variation of the sea basing concept has been floated, the Afloat Forward Staging Base USNS Willam P Fuller, which has more in common with the world’s first aircraft carriers than anything else.

– Navy Times – A senior Navy intelligence leader whose provocative comments this year about Chinese bellicosity stirred an international controversy has been shelved in the wake of an investigation into his conduct.

– Breaking Defense – “No one should be sleeping comfortably at night,” Rear Adm. Dave Johnson warned Navy submariners and contractors today. For the fleet’s top priority program, the replacement for the aging Ohio-class nuclear missile submarine, fiscal 2015 “is a crucial year,” the Program Executive Officer for all submarine programs said this morning.

– Aviation Week – The proposed new Pentagon strategy is called Third Offset because it is considered as important as two previous strategic changes that took advantage of U.S. technological leadership to overcome operational challenges: President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “new look” in the 1950s, which relied on nuclear weapons to offset Soviet force numbers, and the “offset strategy” pursued by Defense Secretary Harold Brown in the late 1970s, which combined precision weapons with new reconnaissance systems to disrupt potential Warsaw Pact aggression in Europe.

– Daily Beast – The U.S. Navy is slowly preparing the first of its massive, 15,500-ton Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers for sea next year. But questions remain about many of the technologies onboard the new ships. First and foremost: can the thing even stay afloat?

– Navy Times – NATO’s sea boss wants to see more of the U.S. Navy in Europe.

– Aviation Week – Today’s U.S. power-projection forces, and those currently planned for the future, will not be able to operate effectively or efficiently against anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) weapons and doctrine being developed by China and other adversaries, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) that details a new approach to defense strategy known as Third Offset.

Instead, the Pentagon should immediately refocus its development efforts on a global surveillance and strike (GSS) system based on long-range, very stealthy aircraft—including the Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) and a new family of unmanned combat air systems (UCAS)—and submarines. Tactical fighter, surface combatant and heavy land-force programs should be cut back, the report suggests, to pay the bills and rebalance the force.