– USNI News – The U.S. Navy is in the process of switching out a number of warships forward deployed to Japan with newer vessels.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy is quietly converting a 633-foot-long cargo ship into a secretive helicopter carrier with facilities for supporting a large contingent of Special Operations Forces and all their gear, including jet skis.

– Fox News – The Navy and General Dynamics Electric Boat are testing a prototype of a system that would allow the launch and recovery of unmanned underwater vehicles and other payloads from the missile tube of a cruise missile submarine.

– National Defense – A laser gun that looks like a telescope will go to sea later this year aboard a Navy warship. Over a 12-month trial deployment in potentially hostile waters, sailors will attempt to prove whether laser beams can serve as legitimate weapons against approaching small aircraft or high-speed boats. For Navy officials and military contractors, much is at stake in the success of the demonstration. The performance of the fiber solid-state laser — to be installed aboard the USNS Ponce amphibious transport ship — will be seen as a litmus test for the wider use of energy-based weapons.

– USNI News – Warships from the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet have entered the Black Sea ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the service announced on Wednesday. According to the Navy, the command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20), which carries 300 military and civilian personnel arrived in region on Tuesday. The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Taylor (FFG-50) is expected to enter the Black Sea later today…Though not explicitly stated, the two vessels would be used to evacuate U.S. citizens from Sochi in the event of a terrorist attack…

– Aviation Week – In the view of the U.S. Navy, the Mach 10 test of a hypersonic glide vehicle that China conducted on Jan. 9 reflects its predictions of future warfare. If and when China can put the technology into service, Beijing will have a weapon that challenges defenses and extends the range of its ballistic missiles against land and sea targets, but its offensive application is still some years away and depends on solving tough challenges in targeting and guidance. The hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) test appears to mark a step beyond China’s anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) program, featuring a slower, shorter-range maneuverable reentry vehicle (RV)—and may point to a second-generation ASBM.

– DOD Buzz – The Navy has begun early design work, affordability studies and planning with industry partners for its third big-deck America-Class Amphibious Assault Ship, or LHA 8, slated to enter service in 2024. Unlike the first two America-Class amphibs now in development, the USS America and the USS Tripoli designed as aviation-centric large-deck amphibs, LHA 8 will be built with a classic amphibious assault ship well deck designed to move personnel, vehicles and equipment from ship to shore.

– Defense News – The reality of finalizing the fiscal 2015 budget submission is driving top US defense officials and the White House to quickly make major decisions, and indications are growing that the elimination of one carrier and one carrier air wing could be among the defense request’s key features.

– USNI – The prevalence of unmanned systems operating below, on, and above the oceans over the next few decades will inevitably influence the Navy’s culture and approach to operational art at sea. Today most of these vehicles are controlled remotely, with a human operator directing the platforms, monitoring their systems, and re-tasking them as the weather deteriorates, operational priorities shift, or mechanical problems occur. In the near future, however, changes in technology and threats will drive unmanned naval systems away from remote operation and toward autonomy.

– USNI News – The Navy has already made some powerful assumptions about its next fight in the air. It’ll be away from home. It will be against a sophisticated and well-armed enemy. It’ll depend as much on information technology as it will on bombs or missiles. And it’s a fight for which the service isn’t ready.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy is about to cut in half the number of aircraft carriers it keeps ready for combat. Starting in 2015, just two American flattops will be on station at any given time, down from three or four today.

– Weekly Standard – A strategy to meet the challenges to the U.S. Navy.

– DOD Buzz – After first entering the water in October of last year, the Navy’s first DDG 1000 next-generation destroyer is gearing up for additional tests and heavy weather trials.

– DOD Buzz – Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert cited the Littoral Combat Ship, Mobile Landing Platform and Joint High Speed Vessel as critical new ship programs essential to the service’s future surface warfare strategy.

– Forbes – …But the Navy’s surface warships can’t simply abandon the Western Pacific as Chinese anti-ship missiles proliferate. They need active defenses that can improve the cost-exchange equation for defenders by greatly reducing the cost of successful engagements. Some senior officials, including apparently the Chief of Naval Operations, think lasers might be the answer. Lasers are tightly focused beams of electromagnetic energy that hit targets at the speed of light, while costing only a few dollars per engagement. The Navy has proven it can hit fast-moving targets with them even in turbulent weather and high seas.

– Aviation Week – The U.S. Navy surface fleet must steer away from depending on defensive missiles and must move toward becoming more offensively lethal, says the admiral in charge of those ships.

– Breaking Defense – The Littoral Combat Ship was supposed to be one of the fastest things in the fleet, but it seems like the skeptics – and the sequester – have caught up with it. The question is, what’s next?

– Virginian Pilot – Thousands of sailors in Hampton Roads will deploy less frequently but for longer periods under a new policy the Navy is launching later this year.

– Aviation Week – Sure there’s a lot more to the U.S. Navy than its surface fleet, Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program and the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific. But those three are inextricably interlinked and they form the tripod of one of the major foundations upon which the Navy will stand and grow or fall and wither.

– Navy Times – The four-star commander of U.S. Pacific Command says the era when the U.S. military enjoys uncontested control over the Pacific’s blue water and its airspace is coming to an end.

– Military.com – The U.S. Navy is in the early phases of a series of engineering and combat systems modernization upgrades to its current fleet of 62 commissioned Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, service officials said. The planned upgrades are what the Navy calls “Hull, Mechanical & Electrical” or “HME” modernizations. Separate combat systems upgrades are also part of the effort, Navy officials said.

– USNI News – Lockheed Martin has demonstrated that its Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) can be launched from the Mk-41 vertical launch system with only software modifications.

– The National Interest – The U.S. Army has a storied history of preparing for the wrong wars. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. has usually fielded an army trained to harness America’s superior technologies to defeat similarly organized nation-state armies in conventional conflicts. In places like Vietnam and Iraq, the army has found itself in messy contingencies fighting ragtag groups of insurgents where its training and capabilities were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. Despite some admirable efforts at adaption, the U.S. Army has usually found it difficult to overcome these initial disadvantages enough to achieve a favorable, lasting outcome in such conflicts. The U.S. military should keep this history in mind as it seeks to counter China’s growing capabilities and assertive diplomatic posture in the Western Pacific [3]. Although China is the type of nation-state peer competitor that the U.S. military prefers to deal with, this fact by no means ensures that Beijing will engage the U.S. on America’s terms [4]. The old adage that the enemy gets a say in the fight is as true of the People’s Liberation Army as it was of Iraqi insurgents. Any U.S. strategies for winning the “contest for supremacy” against China must grapple with this reality.

– USNI News – Navy leaders are in the midst of a series of studies to see whether the MV-22 can be flown off the sea service’s expected fleet of Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) ships.

– Stars and Stripes – The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, a multibillion-dollar behemoth that is the first in a next generation of carriers, is beset with performance problems, even failing tests of its ability to launch and recover combat jets.