War on the Rocks – Deterring China in the Indo-Pacific requires a different set of U.S. capabilities than wars in the Middle East or Ukraine. The vast maritime expanse and China’s buildup across the South China Sea would make it difficult for U.S. forces to operate within the first and second island chains. Most of America’s major weapon systems are 30 years old and many of the new major systems for a high-end conflict won’t be operational until the 2030s…The United States should implement a hedge strategy across all domains. This strategy would require developing and purchasing small and low-cost, unmanned, many, and smarter weapons and designs to complement existing exquisite (costly, complex, massive, and few) weapon systems. The hedge strategy should leverage emerging technologies with an emphasis on adopting these technologies at scale within the next three years.

Breaking Defense – The melting of the polar ice caps combined with increased Russianship movements is driving “heightened awareness” of the arctic region among US Navy leadership, who are increasingly concerned about the possibility for geopolitical rivals to make unfounded claims to vital sea lanes and natural resources.

1945 – Endorsed! This month over at the Naval Institute Proceedings, coastguardsman Steve Hulse urges the U.S. Navy to procure a flotilla of Sentinel-class fast response cutters (FRCs) to serve as missile patrol craft.

War Zone – Admiral John Aquilino, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), offered remarkably detailed comments on what he sees as critical future capabilities needed to fight and win a high-end conflict in his vast area of responsibility — namely against China.

CIMSEC – Digital Horizon presages a new paradigm in the way navies will think about uncrewed assets, no longer as “vehicles” but rather as “systems” that are nodes in a web of assets delivering far greater capability than the sum of the parts. World navies will conduct ambitious unmanned exercises, experiments and demonstrations throughout 2023 and beyond, and the lessons learned from Digital Horizon will no doubt inform those efforts.

USNI News – The Pentagon is betting that by fielding thousands of attritable autonomous systems across domains in fewer than two years, the United States can overcome China’s advantage of mass in manpower, ships, aircraft and missiles, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in a Monday speech.

War on the Rocks – The U.S. sea services should develop and deploy tactics, techniques, and procedures that stress-test the carrier strike group in order to ensure it can offensively operate under emissions control and a denied and degraded command-and-control environment all while maintaining superior battlespace awareness.

Defense News – During a major exercise this month, aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower was tied to the pier here at Naval Station Norfolk, but appeared to be operating alongside fellow carrier Gerald R. Ford across the Atlantic in European waters.

Defense News – China’s recent announcements of new submarine-hunting technologies are probably more hype than hardware, but they highlight Beijing’s goal of countering the threat posed by U.S. attack boats, which remain essential to U.S. war plans. The U.S. submarine force will not be able to rest on its laurels as the world’s finest for much longer. Soon it will need new approaches and capabilities to operate and potentially fight in the bastions that China and Russia consider their home waters.

USNI News – As the Navy and other services turn their attention to the Indo-Pacific as the next potential site of combat, researchers under the Navy Medical Research Center are thinking about blood.

CNAS: This report begins with a discussion of how the United States lost sight of great-power deterrence and why its legacy presence-reliant approach to deterrence is unsuited to the current challenge. Instead, the department should embrace deterrence by denial to improve simultaneous deterrence of China and Russia in the near term without consuming resources earmarked for modernization. The report redefines campaigning to demonstrate how it could support a denial strategy through the rigorous linkage of campaigning to warfighting. It develops a framework for how the U.S. Department of Defense could implement this revised approach to campaigning. The framework is applied to the Indo-Pacific and Europe to demonstrate how the United States can reimagine its forces and capabilities, posture, and activities to simultaneously deter China from aggressing against Taiwan and Russia from aggressing against the Baltics. These plans are analyzed to determine the implications of two-theater deterrence for U.S. defense strategy, peacetime activities, and resource management. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations for the DoD and Congress on how to manage the simultaneous threat of two major adversaries in the near term.

Breaking Defense – Earlier this year, a group of experts from RAND and the Special Competitive Studies Project launched a new wargame effort around China’s invasion of Taiwan — but unlike most DC-based wargames, this effort heavily involved members of the commercial technology sector, in order to understand what near-term capabilities might be brought to bear on a Taiwan scenario. In the exclusive analysis below, Jim Mitre of RAND and Ylber Bajraktari of SCSP lay out their key findings.

War on the Rocks – Frustrated by reports of the U.S. Navy’s underperformance in cyber operations, Congress has made an unusual request. The Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act instructs the secretary of defense to report to Congress by 2024 on whether the Navy should continue contributing forces to U.S. Cyber Command. This request raises the unprecedented possibility that an armed service would not contribute forces to a joint combatant command. 

Defense News – As she assumes the mantle of acting chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchettifaces a growing stack of challenges in her inbox, from readiness and recruiting to force structure and innovation. Fortunately, she is uniquely positioned to pursue solutions.

1945 – As so often, Admiral Jim Stavridis called it right. Of this week’s decommissioning of USS Sioux City, a Freedom-class littoral combat ship (LCS), after less than five years’ service, the retired NATO supreme allied commander and Fletcher School dean declared: “Hard to figure this one out . . . . Hate to see anything decommissioned when we are so far behind China in overall ship count.” 

Defense News – Can the U.S. Navy’s fleet fight two conflicts at once, while managing distributed forces with limited resources?

USNI News – Two years after the initial Large Scale Exercise 2021, the Navy and Marines are again testing their new theories of war at sea with a blend of real-live and virtual training designed to push the commands of three four-star fleet admirals to their limits.

Breaking Defense – The Army’s new Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) is closing in on the initial fielding of two new missile systems while preparing to pass the development and sustainment baton to the Program Executive Office (PEO) for Missiles and Space

Breaking Defense – The proliferation of 3D printers, combined with loosened rules on using them, could change the way the Navy fixes its ships at sea.

Defense News – The Navy plans to extend the service life of four guided-missile destroyers that were slated to be retired in the coming years, adding four or five years to each of the warships’ standard 35 years of service.

The Guardian – The US dispatched four navy warships as well as a reconnaissance airplane after multiple Chinese and Russian military vessels carried out a joint naval patrol near Alaska last week.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy believes a pair of contracts it awarded this week for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers — covering as few as nine and as many as 15 ships over the next five years — is the best way to help two shipyards recover from challenges and increase their output.

War Zone – Members of Congress are trying to block the Navy from putting just under half of its fleet of Spearhead class expeditionary fast transports into a state of reduced readiness with only skeleton crews assigned to them. Some of the vessels in question are very young, with one having first entered service just three years ago. This comes as the U.S. military is coming to terms with massive logistical hurdles if it were to go to war in the Pacific, which these fast, low-draft, multi-purpose vessels seem to be ideally suited for.

War on the Rocks – Of the 19 U.S. ships sunk or severely damaged since 1945, 15 were victims of mines, and yet mine warfare is carelessly neglected while U.S. allies, partners, and adversaries continue to expand their programs’ capability and capacity.

USNI News – Two sailors stationed in California have been arrested over national security concerns, Department of Justice officials.