– 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.

– The Diplomat – The U.S. Navy’s post-Cold War holiday from history is drawing to a close—if it hasn’t expired already.

– Aviation Week – Bill Sweetman writes that nowhere other than inside the Pentagon will you find more truth in Machiavelli’s warning about the hazards of change: “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage … For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new.”

– USNI News – Video of the first F-35C trap.

– Aviation Week – With the recent commissioning of the amphibious assault ship LHA 6 USS America in its new San Diego home, the U.S. Navy may be getting ready to soon deploy a perfect kind of ship to roam the waters of the Asia-Pacific.

– Information Dissemination – *Excellent* series of posts by Jon Solomon on the Soviet Union’s strategies and tactics for using the Backfire bomber in the Cold War and the lessons they teach us in today’s AA/AD environment. Make sure to read all 5 posts indexed at the top of this one.

– Navy Times – The flip-flop of two carrier deployments has revealed the Achilles’ heel of the latest deployment plan — designed to make ship schedules more predictable — before it was even able to get started.

– USNI News – The George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group (CSG) has left U.S. 5th Fleet headed home after seven months of supporting air operations in the Middle East.

– USNI News – Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has signed an internal memo recommending the service base its next generation amphibious warship (LX(R)) on the existing San Antonio-class (LPD-17) warship design.