Defense News – Reloading a vertical launching system, or VLS, is a challenging maneuver, given the crane must hold missile canisters vertically, while slowly lowering the explosives into the system’s small opening in the ship deck. It’s also a maneuver the Navy cannot yet do at sea.

War on the Rocks – As the People’s Republic of China expands claims within the South China Sea, the United States should work with partners to find a way to deter further expansion while avoiding escalatory actions that could spark conflict. To do so, the United States government should leverage Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act. This section allows for the United States military to create, develop, train, and maintain partner relationships with irregular maritime forces from across the region. By working with partners, the United States empowers regional nations to defend their respective interests against the encroachment of China while reducing the need for American naval forces to be the sole ever-present bulwarks in the region.

Defense One – Last week, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps got into a rare public dispute. The disagreement revolves around the Navy’s decision to drop a planned purchase of a San Antonio-class amphibious warship from its 2024 budget. While this is about a warship, the impasse arises from a major problem: the Pentagon’s political leaders have thus far failed to articulate a workable long-term vision for naval shipbuilding.  

CIMSEC – The first step in this analysis will be to analyze a traditional concentrated force versus another concentrated force using the salvo equations. The second step will be to look at a distributed force that is able to mass fires against a concentrated force. The final step will be to look at a concentrated force that engages part of a distributed force. We will also look at what “firing effectively first” means in practice, and what happens if the enemy force distributes.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy released a short wish list to Congress that would mostly accelerate efforts to make the fleet more ready and more lethal for high-end combat in a contested environment.

Defense News – Dualities are emerging in the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding plans, leaving industry to wonder what to make of the sea service’s near-term spending plans.

1945 – Last month the Joint Chiefs of Staff published a directive entitled Joint Concept for Competing, aimed at defining strategic competition and explaining how the U.S. armed forces will go about it. But because the concept’s framers define it as “adversary agnostic,” it’s hard to judge how commanders and their political masters will put it into effect at particular places and times.

War on the Rocks – The current trajectory of the forward air control program indicates declining relevance due to neglect, changing operational paradigms, and preservation for the sake of tradition. Naval aviation’s commitment to this mission and alignment with previous tenets are atrophying, and the program’s future is at a crossroads. 

CIMSEC – There is more to the lethality of a volume of fire than sheer numbers. Missile salvos can take on different patterns, both in how the missiles are arranged within a single salvo, and how multiple salvos can be arranged together into a combined volume of fire. These patterns reflect how the aspects of concentration and distribution apply to the weapons themselves, and how these configurations apply within salvos and between salvos. Different patterns will affect how a volume of fire takes shape and can multiply the threat it poses. Commanders and autonomous missiles can leverage these patterns to increase tactical advantage by changing how salvos are maneuvered throughout key elements of the fight. These patterns have considerable tactical implications for defending against missiles and maximizing offensive volume of fire.

Defense News – The first wave of defenses designed to counter complex missile threats against Guam will include radars, launchers, interceptors, and a command-and-control system, and they’ll be place on the island next year, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency director said this week.

Defense News – After decades of service, the guided-missile destroyer Arleigh Burke — the first of its class — appeared likely ready to retire. Commissioned in 1991, the warship may have in recent years started mapping out its shadowbox for when its reaches the end of its expected 35-year service life, in fiscal 2026. But Big Navy has other plans. Naval Surface Force Atlantic announced this week that the Arleigh Burke will continue plying the seas through fiscal 2031, when the ship will be 40 years old.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy says the rising cost of the San Antonio-class amphibious warship program is justifying the service’s decision to indefinitely pause the program.

CIMSEC – In the 1970s and early 1980s, it was not uncommon to find critics on the left disparaging military servicemembers in terms that cast them as immoral and bloodthirsty agents of the American war machine. These attacks were unjustified and well beyond reasonable debate about the size and shape of, or even the need for, the armed forces. They fed a distorted narrative about American military life that deterred many young people from even considering service. Critics on the right who claim without evidence that the military is now corrupted by wokeness are committing the same sin. In fact, the military is full of smart, dedicated, and tough men and women. The true corruptors are those who refuse to rise above partisan politics to serve the nation and a greater cause.

Defense News – Defense officials are optimistic that billions of dollars of investments in the U.S. submarine industrial base will increase capacity to and even above the required two-a-year attack sub construction rate, allowing the U.S. to build for Australia under a new international agreement without restricting the American fleet.

CIMSEC – Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy has greatly expanded its data-technology and collection capacity to meet analytical needs, creating a challenging paradigm:  a data glut and an information deficit. Data literacy is key to reducing the disparity.

Defense News – The Navy and Marine Corps’ fiscal 2024 budget request would invest in long-range missiles and the platforms that shoot them — surface combatants, fighter jets and nimble Marine Corps units — while slashing the amphibious ship fleet.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy intends to decommission 11 ships in fiscal 2024, including eight ahead of their planned end of service life — fewer than the 24 it requested to decommission in its FY23 submission, but still likely to reignite debate on Capitol Hill.

CIMSEC – The concentration and distribution of a force will flex and evolve as its platforms suffer depletion. As commanders look to employ mass fires, they must be mindful of how to spread depletion across the force, how to interpret the adversary’s expenditures, and how inventory pressures can be manipulated through the last-ditch salvo dynamic.

Defense News – The next five-year defense budget plan, slated for release later this month, will focus its surface Navy investments on Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Constellation-class frigates, according to the service’s surface warfare director.

EurAsian Times – On Saturday, the US 7th Fleet announced the arrival of its fast-attack submarine USS Springfield at the naval base in the South Korean port city of Busan in an apparent show of force aimed at the North.

(Thanks to Alain)

China Maritime Studies Institute – If there is a war over Taiwan, an extended Chinese blockade is likely to determine the outcome. While a blockade might include intercepting ships at sea, the primary focus would be on sealing airfields and ports, particularly on the west coast of Taiwan. China could sustain that type of blockade indefinitely. Penetrating a prolonged blockade and keeping Taiwan alive would require a serious U.S. investment in systems and operational concepts that we currently do not have. Unless we make that investment, we may win the first battle, defeating an attempted landing. But we cannot win the war.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is taking a “strategic pause” from buying amphibious ships, and using that time to study not just how many ships it wants but also the capabilities they should have when the service resumes buying them.

CIMSEC – From the Seminole Wars to Vietnam and Iraq, American riverine capability has been critical for irregular warfare and beyond, but assembling the brown-water navy has always been an ad hoc process. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated how important rivers and the riverine environment are to larger, more conventional conflicts in today’s era, characterized by strategic competition as well as irregular conflict.

1945 –  There are two pressing reasons to keep irregular warfare at the forefront of debates over American strategy, operations, and tactics. 

CIMSEC – Assembling massed fires from distributed forces will be a complicated challenge. It will involve mixing and harmonizing the kill chains of different payloads, platforms, communities, and services. Each of these factors comes with a variety of its own dependencies and pitfalls. As the services look to operationalize mass fires, they must be mindful of how too much complexity and too much sensitivity to tight coordination can threaten to yield brittle operational designs.