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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Miami Herald – The Navy is considering restoring the Fourth Fleet in the Atlantic Ocean, a bureaucratic change that would raise the prominence of Pentagon maritime activities in Latin America and Caribbean.
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Washington Post – A federal judge yesterday severely limited the Navy’s ability to use mid-frequency sonar on a training range off the Southern California coast, ruling that the loud sounds would harm whales and other marine mammals if not tightly controlled.
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Air Force – The island is the pivot of a sweeping realignment of US forces in the Pacific.

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Washington Post – A federal judge in California is scheduled to release a decision this week that will outline what the Navy must do to protect whales and other marine mammals from the loud blasts of its sonar equipment.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper’s ruling in the closely watched case, expected by week’s end, will not only affect Navy training exercises scheduled for the waters off Southern California over the next year but could also clarify how closely the military must follow environmental laws.
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Virginian Pilot – The San Antonio broke the mold for amphibious ships but came with plenty broken, too. About $840 million over budget and plagued by design and construction flaws, it finally has been cleared for deployment.
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Florida Times-Union – One quarter of the Navy’s P-3C Orions are grounded after it was determined that these particular aircraft are likely to develop cracks in the trailing edge of the wing between the engines.
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Defense Technology International – Bill Sweetman notes that the roll-out of the first Lockheed Martin F-35B is a milestone in the development of a runway-free supersonic fighter. But it does raise a huge question: what is it for?
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Defense Technology International – The U.S. Navy has given its final approval for Lockheed Martin to proceed with the integration and shipboard installation of the world’s first, fully-open architecture Aegis weapon system for a major surface warship.
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Washington Post – The Army likes to brag that it’s got a significant navy of its own — even if there isn’t a destroyer or aircraft carrier in it.
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New York Times – China blocked the visit of a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and other American warships to Hong Kong last week in retaliation for the Bush administration’s proposed upgrading of Taiwan’s Patriot antimissile batteries, the state media reported Thursday.
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BBC – The US has formally protested to China over its refusal to allow a number of US ships to dock in Hong Kong.
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The Atlantic – Robert Kaplan on the new U.S. collaborative plan for policing the seas
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Associated Press – The top U.S. military commander in the Pacific said he’s “perplexed and concerned” by China’s last-minute decision to deny a U.S. aircraft carrier entry to Hong Kong for a previously scheduled port visit.
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Defense Technology International – Its origins date back to the 1970s. Yet the U.S. Navy’s Lockheed Martin-built Aegis weapon system will have to soldier on well into the 2030s. The arrival of the Aegis-equipped Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) at BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair, Calif., will herald a major renovation for this most widely-used naval combat system in service today.
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