– 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.

– Virginian Pilot – As the military shrinks after a decade of war and faces mandatory cutbacks under sequestration, the budget proposal signals which ships the Pentagon considers most vital. Here’s a guide to some of the basic takeaways.

– San Diego Union Tribune – The Navy is launching a San Diego-based “Top Gun” school for young ship officers, modeling it on the aviator version that Hollywood made famous. The point is to create a generation of Navy “ship drivers” who are experts at tactics the United States hasn’t used in pitched battle since World War II — the guns, missiles, torpedoes and aircraft intended to defend their ship and fight others.

– War is Boring – The U.S. Navy’s newest and most powerful aircraft carrier has docked in Antalya, Turkey—meaning she is within striking distance of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. And it appears Russia is deploying anti-ship missiles in response.

– War is Boring – One day after the Pentagon announced it was sending an extra six F-15C fighters to help defend the Baltic against Russian warplanes, the U.S. Navy said its destroyer USS Truxtun was headed into the Black Sea for long-planned exercises with the Romanians and Bulgarians.

– San Diego Union Tribune – Navy helicopter pilots take part in historic shift from stick and rudder to joystick.

– National Defense – As ice melts in the Arctic, the Navy anticipates that it will have to increase its presence in the harsh northern region, but not until after 2020, according to a new roadmap released by the service Feb. 24.

– War is Boring – A summary of US naval forces in the region, primarily the USS George HW Bush carrier strike group and the USS Bataan amphibious ready group.

– Virginian Pilot – For sailors aboard deployed Navy ships, little sleep has long come with the territory.

– Virginian Pilot – The Navy started making plans in the late 1990s to retire the most powerful and crash-prone helicopters in its fleet. By then, several of the service’s MH-53E Sea Dragons – the only U.S. helicopter capable of towing a specialized sled through water to detect and clear mines – were approaching the end of their planned service lives, and Navy leadership needed to make a decision: Invest a significant amount of money to keep the helicopters flying, or develop a replacement. They chose the latter…

– BreakingDefense – At 11 years old, the robot helicopter called the MQ-8 Fire Scout is a at least a preadolescent. But ever since the reconnaissance drone’s first flight in 2002, it’s had one big problem: It’s a little bit…little. So, at the Navy’s request, manufacturer Northrop Grumman basically did a brain transplant. It put the Fire Scout’s software, appropriately modified, in a much larger helicopter. If the new adult-sized Fire Scout, designated MQ-8C, meets the Navy’s expectations, it will be able to fly about 50 percent faster, 25 percent higher, and more than twice as long than the current model, MQ-8B. That would make the C-model a much more effective scout for the fleet, which is especially important for a controversial warship with size issues of its own: the Littoral Combat Ship.

– USNI News – On Monday the Pentagon capped the Littoral Combat Ship program at 32 ships and the Navy has been tasked with finding a more lethal surface combatant to follow on to the two LCS hulls that have been mired in controversy for the better part of a decade. Announced Monday by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the Pentagon is directing the service to, “submit alternative proposals to procure a capable and lethal small surface combatant, consistent with the capabilities of a frigate,” he said in remarks to reporters at the Pentagon.