Navy Times – The Navyís traditionally safe P-3 Orion patrol aircraft community has suffered six in-flight mishaps this fiscal year ó including its first Class A mishap in at least 10 years. But despite a steady uptick in mishaps, and the December grounding of 39 P-3s because of fears that wing sections could break off in flight, Navy and civilian officials insist the Orion is still safe to fly.
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BBC – A US warship has arrived in the Georgian port of Batumi carrying the first delivery of aid supplies by sea.
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Virginian Pilot – The carrier George Washington left San Diego on Thursday, bound once again for Japan after undergoing several months of repairs caused by a shipboard fire.
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New York Times – Turkey refuses a US request to allow the hospital ship Comfort to transit the Bosphorus Straits to deliver aid to Georgia.

Baltimore Sun – USNS Comfort won’t go to Georgia
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Associated Press – The Navy has changed course and decided to push for construction of a third DDG-1000 destroyer that would be built at Bath Iron Works.
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Washington Post – A National Research Council blue-ribbon panel of defense experts is recommending development and testing of a conventional warhead for submarine-launched intercontinental Trident missiles to give the president an alternative to using nuclear weapons for a prompt strike anywhere in the world.
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Virginian Pilot – Port of Call – Iraq???
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Defense Technology International – Tests this summer of Raytheon Standard Missile 2 weapons from the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie were intended to demonstrate technology for a quick-reaction defense against ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. In the dry terminology of missile defense, this may not sound critical, but it indicates that the Navy is very worried about a new threat: the anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM).

Indications are that China, in particular, is developing an ASBM – an intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a guided warhead. The weapon outranges any sea-based weapon, including strike aircraft, and is hard to intercept with the most widely used versions of the Standard Missile, which are designed to hit aircraft.

The Navy is responding rapidly, according to RAdm Alan Hicks, program director for Aegis missile defense at the Missile Defense Agency.
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Associated Press – A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine leaked radiation for more than two years, releasing the bulk of the material in its home port of Guam and at Pearl Harbor.
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Defense News – Top Navy acquisition officials dramatically reversed course during a congressional hearing July 31, saying the service needed to purchase more Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 destroyers, and no longer needs the next-generation destroyer it has been pushing for over the past 13 years.
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Virginian Pilot – Debate has long raged over how the military’s use of sonar to detect enemy submarines affects dolphins and whales, which use sound to navigate, communicate and locate food. Now, researchers are moving closer to getting some solid answers.
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Virginian Pilot – The Navy on Wednesday relieved the two top officers of the aircraft carrier George Washington from duty, following a fire that caused about $70 million in damage.
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Virginian Pilot – The US Navy continues to emphasize fire-fighting training???
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Defense Technology International – The US Navy has decided not to build more than two DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class land-attack destroyers. Official word comes Thursday???
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Virginian Pilot – The DDG 1000 was to be a class of two dozen destroyers with a radar-evading profile and a crew half the size of those on similar vessels. But purchases are on hold because of the cost ñ up to $5 billion each ñ and reliance on unproven technologies.
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Defense News – Even before the first test version of the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon is completely built, program managers have their eye on future versions of the submarine-hunting, intelligence-gathering plane.
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Associated Press – Thousands of Japanese rallied against the permanent basing of a nuclear-powered U.S. warship near Tokyo, saying a recent onboard fire made it unsafe.
About 13,000 protesters gathered at a park near the port of Yokosuka, just south of the capital, where the USS George Washington aircraft carrier will be based.
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Armed Forces Journal – Adding small combatant ships would beef up the Navyís capabilities.
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Air Force – The US military now feels a need to keep a wary eye on the Strait of Malacca and its neighborhood.
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Virginian Pilot – During the last five months in the Middle East, tensions grew in Syria, unrest delayed Lebanonís president election more than 15 times, and Iraq struggled to keep oil pumping to its main offshore terminals. The USS Nassau Expeditionary Strike Group has had front row seats for all of the action.
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Associated Press – The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was moved out of the Persian Gulf and to the Gulf of Oman, shortening the time that the carrier’s strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.The decision reflects both the worsened state of the fight in Afghanistan but improvements in Iraq as well.
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Defense Technology International – A recent report (PDF) by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, titled, ìRange, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-Based Unmanned Combat Air Systemî by Thomas P. Ehrhard, PhD and Robert O. Work takes the U.S. Navy to task for not pushing harder to develop and field unmanned air combat systems for its aircraft carriers.
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BBC – US military prosecutors have filed charges against the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship that left 17 sailors dead.
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Armed Forces Journal – The Navy today is overly focused on the tactical employment of its combat forces, in its doctrine and practice. This might not be a problem in case of a conflict with numerically and technologically inferior forces. However, the Navy would have a much greater problem and possibly suffer a major defeat in a war with a relatively strong opponent that better balances the employment of his forces at the tactical and operational levels of war. The Navyís superior technology and tactics would not be sufficient to overcome its lack of operational thinking.
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Armed Forces Journal – It might be tempting to dismiss the U.S. Navyís potential focus on China as a passing fad ó part of the now-familiar phenomena of ìChina fever.î Another perspective holds that this focus can best be explained by a simple case of enemy deprivation syndrome. While there is a kernel of truth in both of these intellectual approaches, facts on, above and especially under the water increasingly belie these conclusions and demand serious attention from American strategists.
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