– Defense Technology International – The Navy wasted little time in taking advantage of congressional support for the service’s dual-block-buy plan for its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), awarding fixed-price-incentive contracts tonight to both Lockheed Martin and Austal USA for the design and construction of a 10 ship block-buy each.

– Washington Post – Nice insight into how the US should be spending its defense dollars…

– Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments – A detailed look at the Air Sea Battle plan…

– New York Times – The Navy on Wednesday awarded two companies contracts that could be worth a total of more than $7 billion to build 20 of its new littoral combat ships, splitting the purchase to obtain the vessels more quickly.

– Los Angeles Times Magazine – An insider’s tale of a search for Soviet bombs in the Pacific can finally be told.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – Keeping the Joint Strike Fighter Program on track is essential to maintaining U.S. military primacy and preventing an aircraft inventory shortfall.

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – It is likely only a matter of time before terrorists attempt maritime attacks in the United States using small vessels. Why isn’t something being done about it? Whatever happened to the small-boat threat?

– US Naval Institute Proceedings – The course ahead for the Navy of the mid-21st century is still uncharted. The strategic alternative it chooses now will chart that course, for better or worse.

– BBC – Warships from America and Japan have just completed their biggest ever joint exercises, as tensions remain high in East Asia.

– Virginian Pilot – A futuristic new Navy weapon has achieved a testing milestone during a demonstration at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren.

– Virginian Pilot – Navy Secretary Ray Mabus minced no words Wednesday when asked for a yes-or-no answer on whether the Navy will drop its plans to shift a Norfolk-based aircraft carrier to Florida.

– Washington Post – In dispatching the aircraft carrier USS George Washington to the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday, the Obama administration said it was putting on a show of U.S. support for South Korea…But the carrier has another audience: China. Exasperated with a lack of help from Beijing on the Korean Peninsula, the Obama administration is trying to pressure China to constrain North Korea.

– Wall Street Journal – South Korea on Wednesday took its first steps to penalize North Korea for its artillery attack on a South Korean island, announcing a naval drill with the U.S.S. George Washington carrier group, cutting off humanitarian assistance and halting traffic into the North.

– BBC – A US navy ship, the USS Essex, is on a high profile visit to Hong Kong in a sign that military tensions between China and the US could be relaxing.

– Forbes – “When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that the first question that comes to everyone’s lips is: ‘Where’s the nearest carrier?'” – President Bill Clinton

– Defense Technology International – The Navy doesn’t seem to have figured out a way to align its stated need for 48 submarines with its build schedule for new Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), or its yearly shipbuilding budget.

– CNN – A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier resupplied the cruise ship Tuesday evening. Sailors stood on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan in 50-yard lines, handing off boxes of water, frozen bread, sandwich meats, granola bars, paper plates and more for the Splendor.

– The Australian – Australia has agreed to a major escalation of military co-operation with the US.

– Virginian Pilot – The Navy took a step toward breaking its dependence on petroleum Friday, powering up a boat with fuel derived in part from seaweed.

– Virginian Pilot – One of the Navy’s most trouble-plagued ships, the USS San Antonio, won’t deploy next year as planned.

– Stars and Stripes – The U.S. Navy firmed up plans Tuesday for a military buildup on Guam that could lead to a historic shift in military forces in the Pacific.

– Virginian Pilot – The Navy has sidelined its fleet of coastal patrol boats operating out of Bahrain after inspections revealed “significant structural damage,” and has limited the operations of five patrol boats homeported at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.

– Air Force – A new operational concept looks to prepare the US and its allies to deter or defeat Chinese power.

– Defense Technology International – In the interest of providing a little more perspective on what the recent postponement of the Littoral Combat Ship downselect and what frequent criticisms of the program might mean for the future of the U.S. Naval force as a whole, you have to look at some of the figures–numbers of ships, yearly shipbuilding goals, etc.–that the Navy is projecting in its five and thirty-year shipbuilding plans.

– Defense Technology International – Just a week after the Navy announced that it had pushed its contract award date for the Littoral Combat Ship back yet again, only committing to make its decision between the competing Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics hulls “as expeditiously as practicable,” the Government Accountability Office has come out with a highly critical report that raises some serious questions about the next two hulls that the bidders are currently building.