Defense News – The U.S. Navy plans to operate a fleet of crewed and unmanned platforms within the next 10 years — an ambitious timeline that will require the service to quickly develop and mature autonomous systems, while ensuring confidence in the technology.

Defense News – What happens when the chief of naval operations wants more money for readiness — maintenance, spare parts, munitions and training time — to create a more prepared fleet, but lawmakers prefer to buy more ships? In this case, they both get their way.

CIMSEC – Massed fires and naval warfighting are greatly enhanced when different platform communities form combined arms relationships. Combined force development and shared platform fluency will strengthen integration between communities. Warfighters will better understand their role in the combined arms team and the operational dynamics that govern the behavior of their cross-community partners. While these relationships will not be without friction or challenging tradeoffs, they will create a force that is far more effective than one that struggles to rise above its silos and parochialism. 

War Zone – A new variant of the Virginia class nuclear submarine is being developed to execute espionage missions on the seafloor.

AP – The U.S. Navy has deployed a guided-missile submarine capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk missiles to the Middle East, a spokesman said Saturday, in what appeared to be a show of force toward Iran following recent tensions.

Breaking Defense – The Navy plans to resume testing one of its premiere large unmanned undersea vehicles, but the program’s future — including a previously planned competition among industry — remains in murky waters as engineering constraints conflict with lawmaker interests.

War Zone – The future carrier air wings will be 60% unmanned and there is now “unbelievable cooperation” with the Air Force on making that happen.

War Zone – In addition to being backups communications platforms, the Navy is exploring new missions for its CMV-22s beyond carrier group logistics.

USNI News – The Navy will finish the requirements for its future fleet of Large Unmanned Surface Vessels this year.

Naval News – NAVAIR PEO U&W looks to double LRASM and sextuple Tomahawk production.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy will expand its work with unmanned and artificial intelligence tools into U.S. 4th Fleet, following the success of Task Force 59 in the Middle East.

Defense News –  Ingalls Shipbuilding, the sole builder of amphibious ships for the U.S. Navy, is considering potential alterations to the San Antonio-class amphib design, amid a Pentagon-led pause of the production line.

USNI News – The Philippines announced Monday four additional locations that will host visiting American troops under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), sites that the country said will boost its disaster response as they would also be used for humanitarian and relief operations during emergencies and natural disasters.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy wants to explore the idea of using small uncrewed surface vessels, or USVs, armed with Stinger missiles as a relatively low-cost additional layer of defense against various threats in the air and on the surface of the water. The service says it is particularly interested in the possibility of using the drone boats to help protect critical, but ever-more-vulnerable logistics vessels, as well as Marine contingents during future expeditionary and distributed operations.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy has awarded separate contracts to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to design and build competing prototypes to meet its requirement for an air-launched, air-breathing hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile. The service says this weapon is key to addressing increasingly advanced naval threats in contested environments in future major conflicts, such as a potential one against China in the Pacific, and that it must be in service by 2029.

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.