Virginian Pilot – The crew of the Little Creek-based dock landing ship Oak Hill has helped an Indian-flagged vessel believed to have been looted and then set adrift by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
more…

Naval War College Review – The SSGN cruise-missile submarine, when it enters service, will be the nationís only asset that can deliver significant and immediate deep strikes without reliance upon land-based aircraft. To do that in the political and operational circumstances likely to arise, it will have to be able to work for several masters at the same time. How could this be done given todayís command and control constraints?
more…

Washington Post – Federal ocean scientists said yesterday they were unable to determine whether Navy sonar caused a mass stranding of whales on the North Carolina shore last year.
more…

Virginian Pilot – The US Navy will send The USS George Washington carrier strike group, with four ships, a 60-plane air wing and 6,500 sailors, to Caribbean and South American waters for a major training exercise – UNITAS.
more…

BBC – Thirteen suspected pirates involved in clashes with the US Navy off the Somali coast on Saturday have been captured, a spokesman for the men says.

Virginian Pilot – Captain praises response of crew to pirate skirmish.

Virginian Pilot – U.S. prowls Africa’s coast to extinguish threats from pirates.
more…

Virginian Pilot – Tomorrow’s sailor is going to look a lot like today’s Marine.
more…

Popular Science – Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater.
more…

Daily Telegraph – Shark brain implants that could turn the fish into “stealth spies” are being studied in a research project funded by the Pentagon.
more…

Copley News Service – Following the directions from a recently released defense analysis to increase its presence in the Pacific, the Navy said it will shift six submarines from the East Coast to the Pacific Fleet.
more…

Virginian Pilot – Another nail in the coffin of the USS John F. Kennedy.
more…

Government Computer News – Light, fast and laden with IT, the experimental Stiletto would support special operations forces.
more…

Virginian Pilot – It costs the Navy $1 million to $1.5 million to train one Navy aviator. How do you persuade one to stay for five more years? How about $125,000?
more…

Virginian Pilot – U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, who in December capped a successful drive to save the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, on Friday jumped to the forefront of a new effort to retire the ship.
more…

San Diego Union Tribune – Following the directions of the recently released defense review to shift its focus westward, the Navy plans to hold a series of major exercises involving four different aircraft carriers in the Pacific this summer, the Pacific Fleet commander said Tuesday.
more…

Naval War College Review – As the U.S. Navy transforms itself for new missions in a new strategic environment, five issuesócivilian mariners and sea basing, unmanned aerial and underwater systems, hospital ships, the Law of the Sea Convention and the future of naval warfare, and conflict resolution in the exclusive economic zoneóemerge as having particular importance not only for the serviceís planners but for their legal advisers as well.

more…

BBC – US Navy ships are patrolling the Yemeni coast to try to recapture 23 convicts who broke out of jail on Friday, in case they try to flee by sea.
more…

Associated Press – The Navy submitted a plan today for reversing the decline in the size of the U.S. fleet, expanding from 281 ships this year to 313 within several years, though the number of aircraft carriers would drop by one, to 11.
more…

Virginian Pilot – Enlisted sailors who worked on the Navyís aircraft for years, cleaned their windshields, even changed their engines but could never fly them unless they joined the officer corps can now apply to wear wings of gold.
more…

Virginian Pilot – A look at how the QDR affects the US Navy.
more…

Virginian Pilot – Though construction of the Navyís next-generation aircraft carrier wonít start for two years, workers at Northrop Grumman Newport News are already building it in a lab ñ virtually.
more…

Washington Post – William Arkin on how last August, the USS Virginia, first of a class of new nuclear-powered attack submarines, slipped out of its homeport in Groton, Connecticut, for a 90 day clandestine deployment in support of the global war on terrorism???to South America to spy on cell-phone conversations.
more…

Virginian Pilot – The guided missile destroyer Forrest Sherman, the latest of the Arleigh Burke class, is to be commissioned into service today during ceremonies at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida.
more…

Virginian Pilot – A workhorse for four decades, the Navyís last two operational H-3 Sea King helicopters rumbled off toward the ìbone yardî Friday in a retirement ceremony made up mostly of sailors half their age.
more…

Virginian Pilot – The Pacific Fleet has made training to track and destroy submarines its top combat priority amid concerns its sailors’ skills have not kept up with the advanced diesel submarines China and other Pacific Rim countries have been buying.
more…

Bloomberg – The Pentagon has directed the Navy to assume a greater presence’ in the western Pacific by adding at least one aircraft carrier and five nuclear submarines over the next decade, according to a draft of the Pentagon’s review of strategy and forces.
more…