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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BBC – The US defence secretary has said that the shooting down of a disabled spy satellite with a missile shows the country’s missile defence system works.

Washington Post – Spy Satellite’s Downing Shows a New U.S. Weapon Capability.

CNN – Pentagon confident satellite’s toxic fuel destroyed.
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CNN – The U.S. Navy will likely attempt to shoot down a faulty spy satellite Thursday, the day after the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to land
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BBC – The US Navy is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite due to crash land on Earth in the next few weeks.

CNN – U.S. to try to shoot down errant satellite.
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Air Force – The American emphasis will be on air and sea power, with fewer boots on the ground.
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San Francisco Chronicle – For the second time this week, a federal court found today that a Navy anti-submarine training program threatened to subject whales and other sea creatures to harmful blasts of sonar and ordered protective measures in several sensitive zones, including one near Monterey Bay.
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Washington Post – The Bush administration overreached when it sought to limit the Navy’s obligations under national environmental laws related to sonar training exercises off California, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

In a sharply worded decision that will keep the Navy from continuing a series of 14 planned exercises, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that the Navy and the administration had improperly declared that an emergency would be created if they had to accept court-mandated steps to minimize risk to whales and other sea mammals. Because no real emergency exists, she said, the White House cannot override her decisions and those of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
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Christian Science Monitor – Goodwill missions could become the Navy’s chief strategy in the war on terror.
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Armed Forces Journal – The Navy needs a larger number of ships, not only for winning a war at sea against a stronger opponent but also for carrying out diverse missions in peacetime, ranging from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, security assistance, enforcement of maritime agreements, counterpiracy, vessel traffic service, multinational exercises, countersmuggling and counterdrug, to regional deterrence through forward presence in selected parts of the worldís oceans.
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San Diego Union Tribune – Despite legal sparring between the Navy and environmentalists over sonar transmissions off San Diego and other parts of Southern California, a sonar exercise involving the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group began as scheduled yesterday.
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San Diego Union Tribune – The Nimitz strike group is filling in for the Japan-based Kitty Hawk while that aircraft carrier undergoes several months of maintenance.
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San Diego Union Tribune – A federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday to consider the impact of a proposed military base in Japan on an endangered marine mammal revered in Japanese culture.
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Virginian Pilot – Since its inception two years ago this month, the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command has established several new units, sending sailors into ground and coastal missions around the world. Rear Adm. Donald K. Bullard, who retires today, and his staff have taken the command from a handful of planners to a force of 40,000 sailors.
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Washington Post – The White House yesterday sought to overrule a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises, exempting the service from complying with two major environmental laws.
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