CIMSEC – In the Indo-Pacific and beyond, almost every speech, strategy document, and think tank report mentions “allies and partners” as a critical element of American national security. The military’s culture is organized around warfighting, a concept that may not immediately bring the criticality of allies and partners to mind. When officers in the sea services sit down to discuss big strategic issues, conversations more often center on the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries, while any assessments of our allies come as an afterthought.

War on the Rocks – As the U.S. Navy pivots to autonomous technologies for its future hybrid fleet of crewed and uncrewed ships, defense professionals and military officers (inspired in no small part by the novels Ghost Fleet and 2034) are keenly aware that every automated system is at risk of intrusion. The focus on cyber attacks, however, obscures a more fundamental cyber reliability problem. When computers replace people in the role of monitoring engineering systems, identifying equipment failures becomes more difficult. Leaving those problems unfixed makes vessels fail earlier, and fixing them puts ships and people at risk. In short, automated systems can introduce system-wide vulnerability even if nobody hacks them.

War on the Rocks – Most of us have no idea where we will be in 2050. But the U.S. Navy should — the ships that it is procuring now will most likely still be in service then.

War Zone – The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Demonstrator went from experiment to workhorse and undoubtedly cemented its place in U.S. Navy history.

War on the Rocks – U.S. Navy carrier air wings are not effectively managing their time, and this could cost America dearly given the centrality of the carrier to U.S. naval operations. There is a yawning gap between the desires of commanders and actual capabilities.

Marine Times – A sweeping slate of proposed ship retirements that would take nine littoral combat ships offline also would end the career of two unconventional seabasing vessels that have less than a decade in service.

War Zone – The alternate airbase facilities now under construction on Tinian would offer an alternative to Andersen Air Force Base if Guam gets attacked.

War Zone – The plan is to prove that large unmanned undersea vehicles can be launched and recovered by the Navy’s well deck-equipped amphibious ships.

USNI Proceedings – The United States should pursue offensive mining capabilities against China in the Yellow Sea and the Pearl River Delta.

USNI Proceedings – Orienting more resources to naval, space, and cyberspace capabilities may be a more effective deterrent to war in the Pacific than a strategy based on strikes against the Chinese mainland.

USNI Proceedings – Naval strategists and operational planners must consider chokepoints, bases, island chains, and vast oceanic distances as they draft warplans and consider adversary courses of action.

USNI Proceedings – The Navy should procure weapons to manage near-term risks, while revitalizing civilian shipyards to ready for long-term competition.

War Zone – The Freedom class USS Sioux City recently became the first of either of the U.S. Navy’s two types of Littoral Combat Ship to deploy to Middle Eastern waters. The service has long said that these vessels, the first of which entered service in 2008, would be ideally suited to operating in the region. However, this historical trip comes as the Navy now plans to decommission and potentially sell off all of its existing Freedom class ships due to a design flaw, combat relevancy, and other considerations.

War Zone – The first Boeing-built Orca unmanned submarine will begin testing this summer and its first mission will be laying sea mines.

CIMSEC – An integrated Navy and Marine Corps team could develop a composite ASW element for the ARG. This element should include Navy and Marine Corps aircraft outfitted for ASW, Navy personnel to support the Amphibious Squadron Composite Warfare Commander, and Command, Control, Computers, Communications, and Intelligence (C4I) systems to provide protection for the ARG in the ASW fight. Many of these systems already exist and only need to be adapted for the ships and aircraft of the ARG. 

Breaking Defense – For it’s Liberty Lifter project, the research agency is betting on a concept called the “wing-in-ground effect,” an aerodynamic principle that’s well-known but proven difficult to master.

USNI News – More than two years of lax oversight from leadership on one of the U.S. Navy’s most powerful submarines ultimately led to the grounding of the attack boat on an uncharted, underwater seamount in the South China Sea, according to an investigation into the Oct. 2 incident.

War Zone – After intense public speculation, stacks of official documents obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act, ambiguous statements from top officials, and an avalanche of media attention, it has now been made clear that the mysterious swarming of U.S. Navy ships off the Southern California coast in 2019 was caused by drones, not otherworldly UFOs or other mysterious craft. Raising even more questions, a similar drone swarm event has occurred off another coast, as well.

1945 – James Holmes asks can’t the Littoral Combat Ship be repurposed?

CIMSEC – The U.S. Congress should let the Navy retire its Littoral Combat Ships and shift small-ship missions to services committed to doing them.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps promised a “build a little, test a little, learn a lot” approach to unmanned vessels, and the lessons learned are already leading to some changes.

CIMSEC – Thomas Friedman’s 13 April New York Times opinion piece recounts an interview with John Arquilla, a distinguished former grand strategy instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School.  In explaining Ukraine’s impressive military performance in the face of the Russian invasion, Arquilla cites three rules of new age warfare from his book Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare, and their application is quite fitting.  If these rules concocted for cyberwarfare apply to ground warfare, might they also apply to warfare at sea?  If so, what are the implications?

War Zone – The U.S. Navy is considering tacking a few more operational years onto a number of its aging Ohio class submarines.

Breaking Defense – In interviews with Breaking Defense, lawmakers say they’re concerned about the Navy’s revitalization plan, but still aren’t sold on a fifth public shipyard.

Navy Times – Half of the Navy’s littoral combat ship fleet is suffering from structural defects that have led to hull cracks on several vessels, limiting the speed and sea states in which some ships can operate