– AP – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told sailors aboard the country’s oldest aircraft carrier that the U.S. is committed to maintaining a fleet of 11 of the formidable warships despite budget pressures, in part to project sea power against Iran.

– Los Angeles Times – The rescue of a U.S. aid worker and a Danish colleague held hostage since October was carried out by Navy SEALs from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden.

– AP – It’s getting a bit more crowded under the sea in Asia, where Andrew Peterson commands one of the world’s mightiest weapons: a $2 billion nuclear submarine with unrivaled stealth and missiles that can devastate targets hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.

– Jane’s – A senior official at the US Department of the Navy has painted an optimistic picture of the service’s 2022 force posture that will be focused on strategic choke points, humanitarian disaster response and the highest levels of maritime domain awareness.

– New York Times – C.J. Chivers on the air war in Afghanistan.

– Associated Press – The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group has entered the Arabian Sea and another is on its way, a Pentagon official said in a news briefing Wednesday — a shuffling of the U.S. fleet amid rising tensions with Iran.

– New York Times – If Iran’s warning on Tuesday to this American aircraft carrier was intended to disrupt the ship’s routine or provoke a high-seas reaction, nothing of the sort was evident on Wednesday.

– New York Times – A report from the indomitable CJ Chivers, who is with the USS John Stennis task force that rescued the Iranians from the Somali pirates. He reports from aboard their fishing dhow…

– Washington Post – In a stroke of good timing, Americans seize pirates days after Iran told U.S. to stay out.

– Wall Street Journal – The USS Gerald R. Ford was supposed to help secure another half century of American naval supremacy. The hulking aircraft carrier taking shape in a dry dock in Newport News, Va., is designed to carry a crew of 4,660 and a formidable arsenal of aircraft and weapons. But an unforeseen problem cropped up between blueprint and expected delivery in 2015: China is building a new class of ballistic missiles designed to arc through the stratosphere and explode onto the deck of a U.S. carrier, killing sailors and crippling its flight deck.

– Associated Press – The Pentagon says U.S. warships will continue to sail in the Gulf despite a warning by Iran’s army chief on Tuesday to stay away. The warning is Tehran’s latest tough rhetoric over the strategic waterway, part of a feud with the United States over new sanctions that has sparked a jump in oil prices.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – It’s 50 candles for the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the first nuclear warship to engage in combat.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – In the face of a Western Pacific underwater-fleet buildup, the United States must exploit emerging technologies and strengthen its regional partnerships to sustain dominance ‘on a budget.’

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – U.S. leaders should not be reducing military power at all, much less comparing navies by weights and numbers.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – What will naval aviation be 50 years hence? Still crucial, yet technologically far superior—as long as the public remains aware and supportive.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Calls for the big-deck carrier’s phase-out are wrongheaded—both fiscally and strategically.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The swaggering-flyer mystique forged over the past century has been stymied in recent years by political correctness.

– US Naval War College Review – In an attempt to improve the quality of the coming debates, this article will examine the prospects for future utility of the aircraft carrier, including that of the embarked air wing, from a different angle. Instead of making a holistic judgment on the future utility of aircraft carriers, it will focus on the ways they have been, are, or could be used. Within the bounds of security classification, it will also attempt to sort out the risk factors that attend their use. Others may then proceed to decide whether a continued investment in them is justified.

– Aviation Week and Space Technology – An exclusive Aviation Week Intelligence Network investigation into the U.S. Navy destroyer fleet and its accompanying combat systems strongly suggests the service will have to upend some $121.8 billion worth of plans for their development, effectively solidifying the grip of incumbent contractors on the work at the very time Navy brass say they’re trying to break such monopolies.

– Defense Technology International – The US Navy plans to launch AeroVironment’s Switchblade small, expendable unmanned aircraft from a submerged submarine during the RIMPAC 2012 naval exercise in the Pacific.

– Reuters – The US Navy will station several new littoral combat ships in Singapore and perhaps in the Philippines in coming years, moves likely to fuel China’s fears of being encircled and pressured in the South China Sea row.

– Brookings Institution – P.W. Singer says the future of naval aviation is unmanned.

– Aviation Week and Space Technology – With defense spending getting so tight, submarine programs in the U.S. and other countries are likely to come under greater scrutiny, the Rand Corp. warns in a recent report that provides some recommendations on how to buy and build the vessels.

– Virginian Pilot – Three Navy amphibious ships that left Norfolk ahead of schedule in March are set to stay at sea into February, which would make their cruise the longest ship deployment in decades.

– Virginian Pilot – It may seem like a trivial inconvenience in the scheme of things, but it’s become routine enough that some sailors aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush say it’s affecting their morale, their health and their job performance: Since the ship left for its maiden combat deployment in May, its toilet system has suffered outages so frequently that crew members sometimes can’t find a single working commode.