1945 – James Holmes writes: I think a zombie has been slain. Zombie in this context meaning an idea that’s hard to kill. You shoot it down coming from one commentator or institution and ten or a hundred others repeat it anyway. It shambles on despite the headshot. This particular ghoul is the fallacy that a navy’s combined tonnage—the amount of water its hulls displace—is somehow the decisive factor in naval warfare. The number of ships in the inventory somehow doesn’t matter much. 

USNI News – The U.S. is sending a mix of Air Force fighters and a guided-missile destroyer to escort ships in and out of the Persian Gulf.

BBC – Now, 30 years after the movie The Hunt for Red October, Darpa is working on a marine propulsion system similar to the “caterpillar drive” described in the movie.

War Zone – The Navy has posted new pictures of its Seawolf class nuclear fast attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN-22), which was badly damaged when it struck a seamount while on patrol in the South China Sea on October 2nd, 2021. The Connecticut is currently in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, undergoing a long series of repairs that will last until 2026, at the soonest.

CIMSEC – Dale Rielage recently spoke with CIMSEC about the role of Navy staffs in command and modern naval warfare. 

Defense News – The nomination of U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo to be the 33rd chief of naval operations could herald a renaissance in the CNO’s staff office not seen since the 1980s in terms of strategic and operational focus for the fleet.

Defense News – With the aircraft carrier George Washington back at sea — albeit two years behind schedule — the U.S. Navy is combing through lessons learned from the delay in order to apply them to two other ships.

CIMSEC – For generations, the primarily defensive roles of the surface fleet and the lack of long-range anti-ship weapons have sapped the offensive spirit of the Surface Warfare Officer community. As ships begin to utilize the SM-6 in anti-surface mode, an offensive spirit is beginning to build. The surface warfare enterprise needs to continue to invest in longer-range weapons to put the enemy on the defensive and to put our own ships on offense.

Breaking Defense – It’s 10,000 kilometers from L.A. to Taipei. How will supplies cross that vast distance in event of war with China? Two RAND experts argue only Congress can force the services to work together.

BBC – The US Navy detected sounds “consistent with an implosion” shortly after OceanGate’s Titan submersible lost contact, a navy official has said.

USNI News – As maiden deployments go, the one USS Charleston (LCS-18) just wrapped is one for the record books. The Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship returned to its San Diego, Calif., homeport last week, closing out a 26-month rotational deployment overseas. During that time, the ship operated across the U.S. 7th Fleet and 3rd Fleet regions with five rotations of its two crews, with the gold crew completing three rotations and the alternative with the blue crew, which did two.

War Zone – The Navy has other deep-sea rescue, and search and salvage capabilities, but the depths around the Titanic exceed some of their abilities.

USNI News – Over the last year, the Navy surveyed 2,500 officers on the highs and lows of a surface warfare career. The results surprised no one.

AP –  A $600 million-plus expansion will make Nome, population 3,500, the nation’s first deep-water Arctic port. The expansion, expected to be operational by the end of the decade, will accommodate not just larger cruise ships of up to 4,000 passengers, but cargo ships to deliver additional goods for the 60 Alaska Native villages in the region, and military vessels to counter the presence of Russian and Chinese ships in the Arctic.

USNI News – Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Michigan arrived in Busan, South Korea, Friday, the Navy announced.

Defense News – The House Armed Services Committee’s members may take a more active oversight role on Navy ship maintenance, after one lawmaker was “bitterly disappointed” the service let some of its cruisers “decay” amid high demand.

Defense News – A flurry of trips to shipyards shows Capitol Hill’s intensified attention to shipbuilding, with several lawmakers from the Gulf Coast and other shipbuilding states assuming key leadership positions on congressional defense committees. They have made clear they want to maximize ship production and repair lines, and some have proposed spending billions of dollars to upgrade shipyard infrastructure. They also want to expand the workforce and continue to approve multiyear, multi-ship procurement contracts. And they’re now in position to help make that happen.

Hudson Institute – The US fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) has long been considered an asymmetric advantage against potential adversaries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, which lacked robust and effective anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. Relying on this advantage, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has increasingly relied on SSNs to compensate for the impact of improved air defenses on the ability of bombers and strike fighters to execute attacks. However, the unfailing ability of US SSNs to reach their targets is eroding as emerging technologies and weapons proliferation combine in new approaches to ASW that could neutralize America’s undersea advantage.

1945 – James Holmes writes that the world’s oceans and seas could become transparent to advanced sensors and processing methods. Submariners could find their world turned upside down soon and suddenly.

Breaking Defense – The commander of US Transportation Command says her agency is working on finding and recruiting 10 additional tanker vessels, especially those that can operate in shallower water, as part of a congressionally authorized program to boost the Defense Department’s ability to move fuel in and around the Indo-Pacific.

War Zone – The Navy once toyed with the idea of putting heavyweight anti-submarine torpedoes on its frigates, an idea that could be relevant again today.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy should pursue commercial containerships and compatible containerized mission systems. These ships and systems will allow the U.S. Navy to rapidly field new technologies, expand the maritime industrial base, grow the ranks of experienced seafarers, and provide surge capacity in times of national need. Containerships, as well as combination containership/roll-on roll-off vessels (ConRo), would allow the U.S. Navy to affordably procure a large number of hulls compared to typical naval warships, and open options to augment a range of missions. These ships would allow conventional combatants to focus their high-end capabilities on the highest priority missions, while augmenting many of their capabilities with containerized support. Containerships can act as valuable force multipliers and retain a significant amount of modularity in a time when conventional naval force structure is at risk of falling behind the rapidly evolving state of capability.

Military.com – A years-long investigation reveals that the Boxer unintentionally compromised its own water supply in 2016, when it intentionally and potentially illegally dumped diesel fuel into the ocean and immediately sucked the noxious liquid back aboard the ship and into its water supply. Those conclusions can be revealed by Military.com for the first time after interviewing key personnel on the ship at the time of the incident, as well as through a review of documents obtained from sources.

Defense News – The Navy fleet’s overall material condition declined slightly in fiscal 2022, “resuming a slight but steady negative trend” that has occurred since fiscal 2017, according to the Navy’s annual Board of Inspection and Survey, or INSURV, report released by the Navy on Friday.

CNN – It’s a growing problem that has United States naval commanders scratching their heads: How to keep up with China’s ever-expanding fleet of warships.

A potential solution is within reach, if the US is prepared to think outside the box.

Allies in South Korea and Japan are building some of the highest spec – and affordable – naval hardware on the oceans. 

Buying ships from these countries, or even building US-designed vessels in their shipyards, could be a cost-effective way of closing the gap with China.