Associated Press – The U.S. military intercepted a ballistic missile Thursday in the first such sea-based test since a Navy cruiser shot down an errant satellite earlier this year.

The military fired at the target, a Scud-like missile with a range of a few hundred miles, from a decommissioned amphibious assault ship near Hawaii’s island of Kauai.

The USS Lake Erie, based at Pearl Harbor, fired two interceptor missiles that shot down the target in its final seconds of flight about 12 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

The $40 million test showed that Navy ships are capable of shooting down short-range targets in their last phase of flight using modified missiles, the military said.
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Defense Technology International – The customer sounds happy as the first EA-18G Growler reaches the operator.
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The Times – The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines???When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in 1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.
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Associated Press – The oldest active ship in the U.S. Navy, the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, made its final departure from Japan on Wednesday to be decommissioned after nearly half a century of service.
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Associated Press – Japanese seeking to block a nuclear-powered U.S. warship from being permanently based in Japan took their lawsuit to a higher court Monday.
The latest move by the 248 plaintiffs follows the May 12 rejection by a district court of their lawsuit demanding a halt to harbor work to accommodate the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which is scheduled to be based at Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, starting August.
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Virginian Pilot – Riverine Squadron Two, with 130 sailors, is expected to return to Norfolk today after nearly eight months on deployment in Iraq.
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Northwest Cable News – The Boeing 737 is the most popular airliner in the world, but Boeing is also building a militarized version.
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Associated Press – The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk sailed into Hong Kong on Monday on its final away-from-home port call five months after being turned away by China.
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New York Times – A critical look at the troubled gestation of the Littoral Combat Ship.
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Virginian Pilot – The Navy will review maintenance and training across the surface fleet after a recent inspection found the Norfolk-based destroyer Stout unfit for sustained combat.
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Defense Technology International – Surprisingly few airframe changes are needed to make Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk into the US Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance System, although the RQ-4N will have a different mission profile than the US Air Force’s RQ-4B.
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Aviation Week – Within three years, the U.S. Navy’s fleet will have fielded the technology for precisely locating small, flying targets. The target set embraces some of the Navy’s latest nightmares, including the next-generation of stealthy – sometimes supersonic – cruise missiles.
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Armed Forces Journal – A comparison of good risk with bad risk. Successful implementation of the new maritime strategy depends on the Navy leadership seizing the first while mitigating the latter.
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Armed Forces Journal – A questioning of the wisdom of introducing three major new ship platforms (DDG 1000 destroyer, CVN 78 carrier and LCS) at the same time – all based on untested designs. Is this bold new thinking or reckless risk?
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Armed Forces Journal – The author points downward to a potential threat still overlooked: an attack on seabed infrastructure critical to the economy and to U.S. security.
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Virginian Pilot – When the George Washington ties up in Yokosuka, Japan, in August, it will become the first nuclear-powered carrier based in the only nation ever to be attacked by nuclear weapons.
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Virginian Pilot – The aircraft carrier George Washington, with a crew of about 3,200, is slated to depart Monday en route to its new home base in Yokosuka, Japan, where it will replace the Kitty Hawk as the United Statesí only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier.
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Armed Forces Journal – A challenge to the US Navy to align its old-style, carrier-heavy procurement strategy with the new maritime strategy.
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Virginian Pilot – The Navy could spend nearly $500 million to ready Mayport Naval Station in Florida for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – perhaps from Norfolk – by 2014???Or it could choose to make no changes in the base’s operations.
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Associated Press – The Justice Department on Monday asked the Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar off the Southern California coast because of potential harm to dolphins and whales.
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Virginian Pilot – The Navy should delay plans to build a series of expensive and unproven new ships and instead buy more destroyers, amphibious ships and airplanes from production lines now open, lawmakers told top service leaders on Thursday.
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Washington Post – A former Navy sailor was convicted Wednesday of leaking details about ship movements to suspected terrorism supporters, an act that could have endangered his own crewmates.
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Christian Science Monitor – The USS Cole has deployed off the coast of Lebanon as that nation’s political crisis deepens.
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New York Times – American naval forces fired submarine-launched cruise missiles into southern Somalia on Monday, aiming at what the Defense Department called terrorist targets.
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Virginian Pilot – As the Army struggles to meet monthly recruiting goals, awarding huge cash bonuses and lowering educational standards, Navy recruiters say they might have found a powerful and distinctive sales pitch for the sea service.
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