– US Naval War College Review – On the advantages of small surface combatants…

– USNI News – A pair of Navy MH-60 Seahawk helicopters have been assigned to aid in rescue effort following the Wednesday sinking of a South Korean ferry. The Seahawks will operate from big deck amphibious warship USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6)

– Aviation Week – Huntington-Ingalls’ concept for a BMD supership deserves attention, even if there’s no money for it

– USNI News – USNI News contributor Cmdr. Daniel Dolan, interviewed the commander of Zumwalt (DDG-1000), Capt. James Kirk, on 31 March. The ship—first in a class of three next-generation destroyers—is among the most expensive surface ships the U.S. Navy is building. The ship features a slew of new systems and the smallest crew yet for a ship her size. Dolan asked Kirk about the ship’s handling, the hull, some of the history of her namesake, and brought questions from members of the Naval War College staff ahead of the ship’s christening on Saturday at General Dynamics Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine.

– USNI News – The Navy has traded Raytheon’s Griffin IIB missile for Lockheed Martin’s Longbow Hellfire AGM-114L for the surface-to-surface missile for early increments and testing for the surface warfare (SuW) mission package for the Littoral Combat Ship.

– Defense News – The military could speed up deployment of a land-based missile defense shield in Europe to hem in a resurgent Russia, the Navy 3-star in charge of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said in early April. Vice Adm. James Syring said it was possible to speed up the deployment of the second Aegis Ashore installation, planned for Poland in 2018, but such a move would require some help from Congress.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Unmanned maritime systems will decisively alter the future of warfare, and the naval profession must adapt to the military and cultural changes under way.

– Virginian Pilot – A generation ago, the Navy promised to get better at finding and destroying sea mines. The proclamation came months after the first Gulf War, when Iraq’s use of more than 1,000 underwater bombs overwhelmed the Navy’s fleet of anti-mine ships and helicopters. Two U.S. warships were rocked by explosions, and the Pentagon was forced to abort plans for an amphibious assault on Kuwait, leaving some 30,000 Marines stuck at sea. More than 20 years after that embarrassment, the sea service is still working to make good on its pledge to fully address a centuries-old threat that some analysts have called the Navy’s Achilles’ heel.

– War is Boring – U.S. Navy’s top officer previews future battle fleet … and budgetary risk

– BBC – American Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has said the US will send two ballistic missile defence destroyers to Japan.

– War is Boring – Army aviators in Kuwait spent much of 2013 training for an unusual mission—flying from Navy ships. This new mission is a major shift for the ground combat branch in the Middle East … and elsewhere.

– Stars and Stripes – The Navy has published a thorough breakdown of what it needs for future surface operations in the Arctic, from new doctrine to platform assessments and an updated cold-weather handbook for sailors. The next step? Getting buy-in from the rest of the fleet.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Unmanned systems may be the magic bullet the U.S. Navy is looking for, but here are a few points to ponder to keep it from making some costly mistakes.

– Aviation Week – Despite a squeeze on investment accounts, the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget strategy prioritizes funding for the stealthy F-35—but at what cost, some in industry ask.

– Aviation Week – In the coming decade, enemy forces that focus on aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships of a carrier strike group and ignore the little Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) will do so at their own peril.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The Navy’s preoccupation with anti-access/area denial is a throwback to ‘counting battleships’ as a measure of naval capability. It’s time to shift focus to the Navy’s overwhelming dominance of its adversaries.

– USNI News – A team of U.S. Navy SEALs took control of a commercial oil tanker that was seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans.

– Stars and Stripes – Navy officials are sending a black box locator to the search area near Australia in support of the efforts to find the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that went missing more than two weeks ago.

– US Naval War College Review – An investigation of concepts for defeating wide-area oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance-strike networks.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy’s 22 Ticonderoga-class cruisers have been its biggest and most heavily-armed surface combatant warships since the mid-1980s. For years, the sailing branch tried and failed to design an even more powerful ship to replace the Ticos, but the high cost proved prohibitive. Now the Navy has finally identified its next cruisers. They’re the same cruisers as today, upgraded for a quarter-billion dollars apiece as part of a complicated plan that sees the last Tico finally leaving the fleet in 2045—at which point the vessel will have been in commission for a staggering 51 years.

– USNI News – The Navy is eyeing expanding its fleet of electronic attack aircraft to better fit into the service’s next generation plan for fighting a high end air war.

– Breaking Defense – Quantity has a quality all its own. The Navy announced this afternoon that it has changed the arcane rules by which it counts ships, adding 10 coastal patrol craft, two hospital ships, and a high-speed transport to what it calls the “battle force.” The new rules would also keep 11 cruisers the Navy plans to not-quite-mothball on the rolls.

– DefenseTech – A Navy destroyer recently test-fired a Block IV Tomahawk missile that quickly received updated target information in-flight, changed course rapidly and destroyed a moving target, Raytheon officials said. While the net-enabled Tomahawk Block IV missiles already have an ability to be re-targeted in flight, this Feb. 19 missile test aboard the USS Sterett demonstrated that the weapon can perform this function much faster, more frequently and with greater radio throughput, Raytheon officials explained.

– Aviation Week – The real and long-lasting effects of the recent Defense Department directive to cut the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) fleet are just starting to sink in.

– Defense News – Hardly anything is clear in Washington about what’s happening with the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. Details are embryonic, discussions are just beginning, the whys and wherefores still unclear, memos and specific directions yet to be issued, and sensitivities still raw.