CIMSEC – As the Navy focuses on preparing for a great power conflict potentially, the Navy needs to improve not just its peacetime ship repair capability but also expand its capacity to account for wartime repair requirements. 

The War Zone – The Navy is way behind in replacing its rickety fleet of C-130Ts that suffer from low readiness, which spells trouble in a fight with China.

Breaking Defense – The “greatest risk” for the Navy’s planned fiscal 2034 delivery of the nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile Nuclear (SLCM-N) is integrating it onboard Virginia-class submarines that were never designed to carry a nuclear weapon, one of the Navy’s top officers in charge of overseeing nuclear weapons programs said.

Naval News – With a price tag approaching $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion dollars each for the USS Constellation (FFG-62) frigate, Naval News asked RAND and CSIS if the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) and the DARPA No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) can replace the troubled FFG-62 frigate program.

The War Zone – Major delays could be on the horizon for the F/A-XX stealth fighter, which the Navy wants to replace its aging Super Hornets and Growlers.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that one hopes that Russian and Chinese capability and malevolence have landed a hard enough knock to induce Congress and the White House to persevere with a naval renaissance.

The War Zone – The Navy’s future Combatant Craft Medium Mk 2s will gain the ability to launch long-range strikes on their own.

The War Zone – USS Harry S. Truman has been striking the Houthis, with the other F/A-18 rolled off the deck during an attack on the ship by the rebels last week.

Atlantic Council – The United States desperately needs to plan for a long war in the Indo-Pacific region.

Center for Maritime Security – The U.S. Navy can learn from the Royal Navy by analysing mistakes it made in educating -or not educating- the British government about seapower. Across all naval, maritime, and wider defense and security debates, the baseline fact is that if education on the relationship between the sea and state is not carefully managed, all the efforts of seapower can be quickly undone. From that sea-state nexus flows political discussion, policy, funding, and direction. In short, why do nations invest in these costly, complex organizations known as navies? Land and land-based air perspectives have always been easy paths for policy; this is perfectly natural, as humans are land-dwellers who cannot see over the horizon. Consider how outer space was and remains such a challenge, maritime in nature but resistant to mastery due to vast distance. Shortsightedness is why the perpetual, pernicious and permanent challenge of ‘seablindness’ exists. It cannot be defeated, nor overcome, but it can be tamed.  

CIMSEC – Washington has many allies and partners across the Greater Caribbean, particularly among the region’s English-speaking nations. Despite having limited budgets and assets, the defense forces of the English-speaking Caribbean are training and increasing their capabilities to carry out missions, which aligns with US diplomatic and military objectives.

The War Zone – F-35Cs are also striking targets in Yemen, with their stealth being of unique importance as the Houthi air defense threat comes into the spotlight.

USNI News – The Department of the Navy is looking to lease a climate-controlled facility between 19,000 and 33,000 square meters near Subic Bay and Clark for the storage of equipment in the Philippines by 2026 under a ten-year-long lease which could mark the largest prepositioning effort to date between Washington and Manila since 1992.

USNI News – The Defense Innovation Unit has released a solicitation for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform, a large unmanned underwater vessel capable of supporting large payloads at range in contested environments.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that stakeholders in the maritime enterprise must think in grand Mahanian terms about rejuvenating U.S. sea power. Trump’s new executive order charts a path forward—but epoch-making trials lie ahead.

CIMSEC – If an unmanned hellscape is to move from fantasy to credible threat in the eyes of an adversary, the U.S. Navy, as part of the Joint Force, must take concrete steps to address weaknesses in its current conceptualizations of unmanned future warfare. To overcome these obstacles, the U.S. Navy can lead the way by appointing a robotics and autonomous systems czar to interface and invigorate industry, develop forward deployed naval robotics formations, and oversee a deeper investment in the forces needed to operate these systems.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that the U.S. Navy can learn much from the Russo-Japanese War—and from dueling interpretations of that conflict by naval theorists Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian S. Corbett.

Naval News – The Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive (HALO) missile in development for the U.S. Navy’s high priority Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 (OASuW Inc 2) program has been cancelled.

CIMSEC – The United States has a shipping problem and everybody knows it. From combatant commands to congress and maritime security outlets to the White House, everyone is talking about America’s lack of maritime capacity.  America, it seems, is waking up to its maritime problem and is ready to roll up its sleeves and start solving it in the only way it knows how—mostly alone. While there have been some nods to bilateral cooperation in shipbuilding, the United States has not made a concerted effort toward a robust, multilateral counter-China maritime strategy. That needs to change. A coordinated, multinational approach is required to counter Chinese shipping dominance. The US and its allies should form a Multilateral Maritime Alliance to secure maritime trade and create critical sealift capacity to sustain expeditionary combat operations.

Breaking Defense – Boeing’s MQ-25 tanker drone is set to make its first flight some time this year, but the head of Naval Air Systems Command warned that here is “a ton of work” to do before takeoff.

Defense News – America’s largest naval shipbuilder, HII, reached an agreement Monday to partner with South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries to boost shipbuilding across numerous vessel classes.

Breaking Defense – President Donald Trump today signed an executive order tasking the heads of the defense, commerce, labor, transportation and homeland security departments with developing a “Maritime Action Plan” (MAP) that will invest in the shipbuilding industrial base and disentangle the government’s clumsy procurement processes.

Breaking Defense – “The question is, are we at a point where we either quickly recover and get back on track with this? … Or do you say maybe we’re too far along with this and we go in a different direction?” said Rep. Rob Wittman.

Breaking Defense – “We have everybody on board getting to know each other and working on that synchronicity that’s required, and that’s really kind of the heart of COMPTUEX. This is a rehearsal, and we’re going to get it right,” says Capt. Rick Burgess, the Ford’s commanding officer.

Jerusalem Strategic Tribune – With all that is happening in the Middle East, it is important that our allies continue to assist with burden-sharing in the Indo-Pacific. Until America rejuvenates its maritime industrial base, there are just not enough ships available to counter all the threats we currently face. Thank you to our allies and partners. Keep up the good work!