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.

Defense News – Maintenance issues are hindering the East Coast fleet’s readiness, according to Adm. Daryl Caudle, who leads U.S. Fleet Forces Command. 

CIMSEC – Despite rumors to the contrary, the United States is not interested in disengaging from the Middle East. The Indo-Pacific is the new focal point of U.S. foreign policy, but the Middle East remains essential for U.S. interests. However, current patterns of interaction between the United States and its Middle Eastern partners are tied to routines that were hardened during the Global War on Terror. While these routines have proven difficult to escape and a source of political divergence at times, the reality today is that U.S. priorities are more disparate globally—and U.S. presence in the region should not remain locked within previous formulas.

Defense News – The initial response to the July 2020 fire that destroyed the multibillion-dollar amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard was uncoordinated and hampered by confusion as to which admiral should cobble together Navy and civilian firefighters, according to new information from the then-head of Naval Surface Forces.

USNI Proceedings – Countering China’s gray-zone tactics starts with a simple but challenging premise: the U.S. Sea Services have to be there.

USNI Proceedings – Leading strategists examine China’s insurgency in the South China Sea and offer ways for the United States and its allies and partners to push back.

Defense News – The Navy will order fewer F-35C jets in fiscal year 2023 than manufacturer Lockheed Martin could produce under a pandemic catch-up plan, with officials hoping to use the lull to spend money on other priorities.

USNI News – The Biden administration plans to station two more forward-deployed Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in Rota, Spain

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.