Naval News – ‘Hellscape’ is the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s future asymmetric battlefield. What does it look like and what does it involve?

Naval News – Images have surfaced showing, for the first time, the U.S. Navy’s Orca Extra Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV) fitted with a payload section.

Defense News – As the U.S. and its allies and partners in the Pacific face down an increasingly aggressive China, a bi[artisan bill introduced in the Senate aims to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and key countries in the region in order to better protect supply lines and ensure sustained operations, should a conflict occur.

CIMSEC – The fifty-year dilemma of today’s aircraft carriers and airwings is how to embrace various technological developments in unmanned platforms, long-range weapons, and new methods of processing massive amounts of targeting data. Wartime experience in the Pacific clarifies that getting this right is never assured. Building flexibility and adaptability is paramount for today’s aircraft carriers and airwing.

CIMSEC – The concept of operations proposed is to marry various size unmanned surface, subsurface and aerial unmanned vehicles to perform missions that the U.S. Navy has—and will continue to have—as the Navy-After-Next evolves. Simply put, the Navy can use the evolving large, unmanned surface vehicle as a “truck” to move smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs into the battle space in the contested littoral and expeditionary environment.

USNI News – Due to Navy design decisions, the service’s next-generation guided-missile frigate might not have the weight margin for required modernization to meet its expected service life, according to a government watchdog report released Wednesday.

BBC – A temporary pier built by the US military to deliver aid to Gaza has been damaged by heavy seas and will take at least a week to be repaired, according to US officials.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s message to industry is coming through: the service is committed to buying and operating small unmanned systems on and under the water. What’s less clear is how the Navy will procure them and with what funding — but one company says it’s moving ahead in developing disruptive systems now and will figure out the business model later.

National Interest – Admiral Lisa Franchetti, America’s chief of naval operations or top uniformed naval officer, recently released her first Navy Professional Reading List. The list is solid on the whole. There are, however, many books one could look at. Here are a few ideas. 

American Affairs Journal – The priority of American national security policymakers today must be the revitalization of the nation’s defense industrial base. We have let it atrophy for far too long. But even within that priority, special emphasis must be placed upon the submarine industrial base, both new con­struc­tion and repair capacity. Because of the severity of the Chinese threat to American national interests in the Pacific, and the specific role of sub­marines in both deterring that threat and responding if deterrence breaks down, addressing shortfalls in submarine production and repair must be at the head of the line. Or our navy faces being sunk at the pier.

Center for Maritime Security – Last week, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Congress members released a document outlining their vision for a U.S. National Maritime Strategy to “reverse the decline of American maritime power and our susceptibility to coercion from strategic competitors on the world’s oceans.” Their effort is a welcome first step and an important signal of bipartisan Congressional backing for a major effort to revitalize America’s maritime industry and maritime national security; however, much more work remains to be done by both the legislative and executive branches.

Defense News – Since President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address that the U.S. military would build a humanitarian aid pier on the Gaza Strip, and that “no U.S. boots will be on the ground” in Gaza, Keith Robbins and other retired military logistics officers have been watching. And on Thursday, after weeks of preparation, security planning and weather delays, the Pentagon announced that a trident pier had been stabbed into the Gaza beach.

BBC – A floating pier designed to increase the amount of aid getting into Gaza will be operational “within days”, US officials say.

Defense News – A defense policy bill released this week by the House Armed Services Committee expresses concerns over the Navy’s aging cruisers, the cost and capability of a planned amphibious ship, development of capability to rearm vessels at sea, and more.

The War Zone – The flight limit means the Navy’s CMV-22Bs cannot perform their critical transport mission for carriers on deployment.

Defense News – Why the US Air Force and Navy created contrasting spending plans to prepare for conflict with China.

Defense News – On the surface, it might not make sense to give three to Australia, but there’s a logic to the deal

USNI News – Even with space available in shipyards, fewer than 40 percent of Navy ships completed availability repairs on time, the Government Accountability Office’s director of defense capabilities and management told the Senate Armed Services readiness subcommittee last week.

The War Zone – The USS Carney, which just returned to the U.S. last week, made history during a tumultuous six months in the Red Sea region.

US Navy Office of Naval Intelligence – The following is the Office of Naval Intelligence’s 2024 People’s Liberation Army Navy, China Coast Guard and maritime law enforcement recognition and identification guide.

CIMSEC – This analysis evaluates the naval response to the Red Sea Crisis so far, from cooperating with merchant shipping, the cost effectiveness and vulnerabilities of using warships and missiles to counter drones, and the role of allies, to the potential implications for a future conflict with China and current efforts in defense innovation to prepare for it.

War on the Rocks – Referring to the People’s Liberation Army, the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command recently reported to Congress that “we haven’t faced a threat like this since World War II.” The nature of this threat should compel allied militaries to strengthen their efforts in the Indo-Pacific. One way to do so is by creating a standing joint task force headquarters. The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act directed the establishment of such a headquarters in the Indo-Pacific by 1 Oct. 2024, but congressional leaders have conveyed concern with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s current approach.

CIMSEC – A discussion of the value of electronic warfare capability, deadly shootdown incidents involving electronic reconnaissance aircraft, and how the Joint Force came to rely so heavily on the Navy for airborne EW.

CIMSEC – Joint operations, while important in a general sense, and critical for first rate navies, are not the best option for weaker powers to contest command of the sea. Joint operations are resource-intensive and could prove more burdensome than helpful for a weaker naval power. Additionally, joint interoperability would likely be nonetheless reliant on the previous factors of asymmetric naval warfare, coalition leveraging, and attrition of distance sea lines of communication in order to be effective. Conversely, joint interoperability is not a prerequisite for those different factors. Asymmetric naval warfare can be conducted regardless of a joint force in a variety of ways, especially when possessing devastating technologies and employing surprise shifts in strategy that undermine an adversary’s understanding of the maritime environment.

Naval News – Naval News asked the RAND Corporation for their opinions on what the U.S. Navy’s next-generation destroyer, the DDG(X), should have in terms of designing the plug-in Payload Module. The DDG(X) Payload Module option is a hull insert that can accommodate, for example, additional vertical launch missile cells to a Mission Module Bay to additional interior rooms.