USNI Blog – To effectively defend Taiwan from a military standpoint, the United States must be willing to defend Taiwan from outside of Taiwan. In other words, the defense of Taiwan from an invasion from China need not be confined to the main island of Taiwan, nor the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, expectations held by the United States should be that an invasion of Taiwan by China will look nothing like the previous four Taiwan Strait Crises (1954–55, 1958, 1995–96, 2022), which were generally limited, and instead be prepared for a conflict of a much larger-scale and intensity.

US Naval War College Review – The United States and the West already may have lost command of the sea. To deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or similar aggression, the Navy may need to pursue a very different fleet architecture, further integrate the maintenance and exercise of command, and seek modifications to a Unified Command Plan that ignores the indivisibility of the world ocean.

National Review – Jerry Hendrix says the United States must pursue a realistic approach to its defense and economic strategies, emphasizing the sea and the competition thereon.

USNI Proceedings – U.S. forces must act more deliberately to counter China’s at-sea insurgency.

Naval News – At the Surface Navy Associations’ Waterfront Symposium 2022, held on August 17-18, the U.S. Navy fielded audience questions regarding the status of the unmanned surface vessels (USV) that participated in Rim of the Pacific 2022 (RIMPAC 2022) naval exercise. Specifically, the USV panel discussed data and manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) of aerial, surface, and sub-surface vessels. 

CIMSEC – As the United States shifts focus from the Global War on Terror to peer competitors, senior naval leaders have increased messaging to the fleet that focuses on preparing for war at sea. Considering this shift, I investigated the state of the warfighter mentality in the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) community to gauge how the community felt about its own readiness.

Breaking Defense – The USV Mariner is a direct result of the Strategic Capabilities Office’s Project Overlord program. Breaking Defense recently went inside the high-tech vessel.

CIMSEC – A destroyer squadron (DESRON) staff’s employment as a Sea Combat Commander in the Composite Warfare Commander (CWC) construct is unnecessarily narrow and prevents a more lethal and agile strike group. Tomorrow’s fight requires multiple manned, trained, and certified command elements. These elements should be capable of maneuvering and employing combat power. This combat power is required to support area-denial operations, assure the defense of a high-value unit, or conduct domain-coordinated advance force operations to sanitize an operating area in advance of the main body. This ability to diffuse command and control, disperse combat power, and contribute to sea control operations is imperative to fully realize the Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept.

USNI Proceedings – Innovation is an important part of national security, but people are key.

CIMSEC – This article will discuss the role of the Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer (NGLO) as one human in a  JADC2-enabled theater. Any conversation about fires, lethality, and the Pacific leads either implicitly or explicitly to considerations of how naval vessels can support maneuver forces ashore. However, this legacy — maritime fires directed against terrestrial objectives — is now only one part of the equation. As concepts evolve for potential wars in the Pacific, the NGLO can provide maritime expertise that improves the integration of joint, multi-domain fires at the tactical and operational levels of war.

USNI Proceedings – U.S. sea power has always hinged on the nation’s ability to build and maintain partnerships.

War Zone – The E-2’s into its sixth decade in the air and has never been more potent. Here’s how the Navy and Northrop Grumman plan to keep it that way.

National Review – The U.S. Navy is currently dealing with the aftermath of a series of bad decisions regarding a unique category of ships within its overall force-structure design. 

Breaking Defense – The mine countermeasures USV is one piece of tech designed keep Navy ships safe from undersea mines.

Breaking Defense – Sailors operating the USVs at RIMPAC were more concerned about what the drones could do, rather than how they were controlled.

USNI Proceedings – Maritime contests are regional, requiring U.S. actions to be similarly conceptualized and executed while navigating a mosaic of local interests.

1945 – Today the chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, released an updated “Navigation Plan” for 2022. In effect, the Navigation Plan represents Admiral Gilday’s instructions to the service on how to execute the Triservice Maritime Strategy (2020), along with higher-order directives such as the National Defense Strategy and the interim National Security Strategy. Several things are worthy of note in the Navigation Plan, some of them head-scratchers.

USNI News – The latest plan to design a future force calls for a fleet of 373 manned ships, buttressed by about 150 unmanned surface and underwater vehicles by 2045, according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday’s update to his Navigation Plan for the Navy.

War on the Rocks – The challenge of logistics in the Pacific theater is different than those associated with land movements across a shared border in Europe. Failure in the Indo-Pacific theater might not be represented by lines of stalled vehicles, but rather troops and equipment far removed from the battle and without adequate intra-theater lift to move them across the ocean. Though the Army and Marine Corps (via the Navy), each have plans to acquire intra-theater watercraft, without coordination and a significant increase in scale, U.S. forces could find themselves without adequate numbers of watercraft or a joint logistics concept that captures the dynamic changes of force design and modernization that each of the services has embarked upon.

1945 – Niccolò Machiavelli, meet Chester Nimitz. In his Discourses on Roman history the Renaissance Florentine philosopher-statesman claimed that human beings do not relish change. In fact, he verges on saying people can’tchange as the times and surroundings change around them. They get stuck as events march on. Thankfully for World War II America, Fleet Admiral Nimitz was an exception to the Machiavellian rule.

Politico – No one can agree on how many ships the Navy needs, and Congress isn’t pleased.

USNI Proceedings – Disaggregated forces would provide U.S. Navy commanders with more options to deter China. 

USNI News – The Navy quietly slipped a new, classified assessment on the number of ships the service needs to meet its missions around the world to Congress earlier this month. The report calls for a battle force of 373 ships – 75 more than in the current fleet.

1945 – James Holmes says that a contender has to take the field of competition and stay there in order to compete.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has long sought more flexibility in how its deployable ships are used, but it’s been hard to break out of the mold: the high-demand destroyers, for example, go through maintenance and training, most likely deploy as part of a carrier strike group, have a few months of free time upon their return, and then start the process all over again.