Reuters – The United States conducted a cyberattack recently against an Iranian military ship in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that had been collecting intelligence on cargo vessels.

AP – Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its accompanying warships have spent four months straight at sea defending against ballistic missiles and flying attack drones fired by Iranian-backed Houthis, and are now more regularly also defending against a new threat — fast unmanned vessels that are fired at them through the water.

National Interest – Firing off more weapons than America buys causes stockpiles to decline quickly. These are the same weapons reserve the nation would need should Beijing seek to use force to take Taiwan while the United States is supporting wars in two other regions.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is incorporating lessons learned from its Red Sea engagements with Houthi missiles and drones, and are using them to improve tactics for seeing and eliminating threats.

Breaking Defense – Bilal Saab and Kevin Donegan of the Middle East Institute argue for a series of steps from the White House and Pentagon to secure global waterways against the threat of Houthi militants.

War on the Rocks – I propose a series of ideal typical missions in support of capabilities development and refining continency and campaign plans. Specifically, three concepts of operations emerge: imposing costs, denying terrain, and buying time. Swarms offer viable options for imposing costs linked to the concept of virtual attrition and how much an adversary expects to gain from a particular course of action. They offer low-cost ways — similar to mines and obstacles — of denying terrain. In an era of great-power competition between nuclear adversaries, drone swarms offer a new rung on the escalation ladder that buys time and space for political leaders to form prudent crisis response strategies.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy’s historically diminished size combined with the constraints necessary to maximize that diminished force’s availability paves a path to relative diminished quality against a PLAN which is growing and improving every day. If the U.S. Navy is truly serious about honing a cognitive combat edge against its numerically superior opponent, then it must recognize, advocate for, and invest in the quantity necessary to cultivate quality. There are no silver bullets for the Navy’s most likely adversary; they are communists, not werewolves. The U.S. Navy is going to need, in laymen’s terms, “more” – not merely to fight the next war, but enough to keep cultivating in ourselves the skills and mindset to win it.

Breaking Defense – Breaking Defense was given exclusive access to the Foundry, the US Navy’s office developing its Integrated Combat System, vital for the surface fleet.

Defense News – The Defense Innovation Unit awarded Anduril Industries a contract that will get its Dive family of large-diameter autonomous underwater vehicles into the hands of sailors for operations this year.

Naval News – A U.S. Navy missile destroyer plans to call at Ishigaki Port in Okinawa from March 11 to 14. This would mark the first-ever visit by an American destroyer to this politically sensitive island. It could draw strong opposition not only from China but also from Okinawans.

The War Zone – The U.S. Navy is interested in acquiring a relatively low-cost and compact air-launched stand-off anti-ship weapon, four of which could be carried internally by certain variants of the F-35 stealth fighter.

The War Zone – The latest San Antonio class ship has a new radar and lacks the low-observable mast enclosures that gave the type its futuristic look.

Defense News – South Korea and the United States are exploring whether the former’s defense industry could help maintain, repair and overhaul the latter’s warships and weapons, according to a series of news releases from South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

Defense News – Indeed, the service has dramatically increased its weapons spending in the last two years. After slowly ticking up from $3 billion to $4 billion over seven years, Navy weapons spending jumped more than 70% from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2024, when the service requested $6.9 billion. But output on production lines remains hampered by supply chain challenges, leaving the Navy with too few of the longest-range and most lethal weapons it would want in a fight.

The War Zone – Even before the entire fleet of V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft was grounded following a fatal crash of an Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan in November, the Navy’s version was experiencing serious issues that limited its ability to fully perform its assigned missions. Those findings by the Pentagon’s top testing office come even though the Navy’s former air boss called the CMV-22B a “game changer” after its first operational deployment in 2022. The Osprey grounding has also forced the Navy to resort to using its dwindling fleet of C-2A Greyhounds to perform essential Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) duties.

National Interest – The revolution in naval warfare continues. In fact, the revolution has gone into overdrive in this age of inexpensive, plentiful, lethal drones and guided missiles.

CIMSEC – This paper presents the collated opinions from participants in the Madison Sea Power Workshops, an informal gathering of navalists whose purpose is to explore key issues facing American sea power as we shift to an era of great power competition.

The War Zone – The Navy is interested in quickly enhancing its ships’ ability to down drones, reflecting concerns over what’s happening in the Red Sea.

The War Zone – The use of the multi-purpose SM-6 missile in the ongoing battle with the Houthis would mark a major milestone for the versatile weapon.

The War Zone – A new program envisions swarms of drone boats autonomously finding and chasing down target ships, and maybe even attacking them directly.

The War Zone – Recent events in the Red Sea again raise questions about whether 32 vertical launch cells is adequate for the Constellation class frigates.

The War Zone – For the first time since they began swatting down Houthi missiles and drones fired into the Red Sea region, a U.S. warship had to use its Mark 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) against an incoming threat, CNN reported. Taken at face value, this is a very unsettling revelation as Phalanx’s engagement envelope is very close to the ship and is seen as a ‘last ditch’ point defense system. How the missile managed to penetrate the Aegis destroyer’s defenses is unclear at this time.

USNI News – The U.S. military has taken the next step in building thousands of lethal sea-borne attack drones that could be key to deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is working on a new wartime response plan that would affect how ships and crews prepare and deploy for combat, according to the head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

Covert Shores – A mysterious vessel observed in San Diego harbor appears to be a prototype low-profile transport drone (USV – uncrewed surface vessel). The design is strongly reminiscent of many so-called “narco submarines”. Like so much in this field, most of it is hidden below the surface.

(Thanks to Alain)