– Defense News – The US Navy and Congress are in a sort of faceoff over the fleet’s cruiser force. To extend their service lives, the Navy is asking to take half its cruisers — CGs in Navy-speak — out of service now and gradually bring them back starting in 2019. Congress, fearful that Pentagon budget-cutters will instead decide to cut costs and reduce the force, is insisting the ships be modernized now and kept running.

– The Diplomat – An all-encompassing U.S. maritime strategy must include all the armed forces—not just the navy, coast guard and marines.

– The Diplomat – Without underway replenishment ships, America’s ability to project power in wartime will shrivel.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy has not yet tasked any of its surface ships to move closer to Ukraine following the suspected shoot down of Malaysian Airliners Flight 17. A collection of NATO frigates, electronic surveillance ships and mine sweepers are in the Black Sea following the conclusion of a minesweeping exercises.

– War is Boring – Undermanned and overworked crews can’t keep Littoral Combat Ships running.

– USNI News – A U.S. guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) has left the Black Sea on Tuesday, leaving a collection of NATO ships to maintain an ongoing presence mission following Russia’s seizure of the Crimea region from Ukraine.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Information dominance will be vital in future conflicts.

– USNI News – In a rare concurrence of events, a carrier strike group and all three ships of a Navy Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) are in the Persian Gulf.

– USNI News – A senior member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has called on the Navy and the Pentagon to have more open discussion about Chinese military capability and not grant, “Beijing a veto over what we can and cannot say.”

– New Republic – Find the places that resemble bars, play dominoes, imagine a fated connection

– Breaking Defense – “Failure to launch” isn’t a metaphorical concern when you work on nuclear weapons. That’s why the director of the Navy’s euphemistically named Strategic Systems Program (SSP) is a worried man. What has Vice Adm. Terry Benedict worried is something neither he, nor the Navy nor the entire Defense Department directly control. It’s the viability of what Benedict called “an already fragile industry” that produces the solid-fuel rocket boosters for the Navy’s Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The worst part is that the solid fuel rocket engine business is an industry that will live or die not on the military’s own decisions, but on NASA’s.

– Navy Times – New data shows the fleet’s underway time is out of balance, where some ships have picked up the slack for others that, for one reason or another, haven’t been out to sea as often.

– USNI News – Lockheed Martin outlined the range of options they presented to the Navy as part of the Pentagon mandated study into a follow-on ship to the Flight 0 Littoral Combat Ships.

– AP – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde into the Persian Gulf as concern grows over a militant group’s advancement toward Iraq’s capital.

– USNI News – The Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye maybe the U.S. Navy’s secret weapon against the emerging threat of enemy fifth-generation stealth fighters and cruise missiles. The key to that capability is the aircraft’s powerful UHF-band hybrid mechanical/electronically-scanned AN/APY-9 radar built by Lockheed Martin. Both friend and foe alike have touted UHF radars as an effective countermeasure to stealth technology.

– Los Angeles Times – A U.S. Navy plan for aircraft carrier-based drones has launched a dogfight in Washington over the role of the robotic planes in combat.

– Air and Space – Life aboard the USS George W. Bush.

– CNN – The U.S. Navy rescued 282 people from six small vessels in the Mediterranean Sea after one of the boats began to sink.

– Defense News – The task force working to come up with ideas for the US Navy’s small surface combatant (SSC) got a major data download Thursday, as industry submitted their proposals for modified or entirely new designs.

– DOD Buzz – The Navy is in the early phases of considering new sensors, aircraft and weapons it could add to its beyond-the-horizon strike and cruise missile intercept system.

– Navy Times – The East Coast’s busiest ship is also its best.

– USNI News – The Navy has quietly reduced the scope of upgrades to its guided missile destroyers in a move that could make up to a quarter of the fleet a target of early decommissioning due to obsolescence. Out of 28 early Arleigh Burke-class DDGs (Flight I/II), 21 will not receive a full upgrade to their Aegis combat systems and instead have a midlife upgrade that will focus on the mechanical health of the ship and some will have upgrades to the ships’ anti-submarine warfare systems as part of a cost saving strategy.

– AP – The US Navy warship USS Bataan has moved into the Mediterranean Sea and could be used, if needed, for any possible evacuation of American personnel from Libya.

– Navy Times – It’s small, fast, heavily armed, networked and one of a kind. But the new coastal command boat just starting to operate in this region is giving sailors in the Persian Gulf a taste of the swift and bad-ass boats coming to the brown-water Navy.