War Zone – The U.S. Navy’s F-35C stealth fighters, one of which has recently grabbed unwanted attention after a landing mishap aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson sent it into the sea, are also showing some fairly significant wear and tear on their debut operational cruise. Radar-absorbent skins are historically made of materials that are notoriously sensitive to environmental conditions. While it is known that significant leaps in the maintainability of radar-absorbent materials (RAM) were integrated into the F-35 design, recent images from the F-35C’s inaugural cruise raise potential questions about the ease of maintaining the jet’s coatings in the demanding maritime environment.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is unlikely to pursue a formal program for unmanned surface vessels in the next five years, instead focusing on the enabling technologies first, several leaders said this month.

War on the Rocks – It’s time for an intervention. For the last decade, the Pentagon has been promising a more distributed and resilient posture in the Indo-Pacific, but it has not kept that promise. Highly concentrated with few active or passive defenses, American forces — and lives — remain dangerously vulnerable to attack. As Chinese military capability and capacity continue to grow, the failure to address this vulnerability is one major reason America has failed to reverse the erosion of the conventional military balance in the Indo-Pacific and restore the credibility of American deterrence.

CNN – The United States Navy is trying to retrieve its most advanced fighter jet from the depths of the South China Sea, an extremely complex operation that analysts say will be closely monitored by Beijing.

Breaking Defense – Analysts say straying too far from a parent design can cause problems, but so can being too faithful to it. 

War Zone – NATO and Russian warships mass in the Mediterranean as signs grow that the Kremlin is about to launch an invasion of Ukraine.

USNI News – Two U.S carriers and two amphibious ships, along with their escorts and 26 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters drilled with a Japanese large deck warship last week in the Philippine Sea.

CIMSEC – It is high time that we remove the term “non-traditional security” from our consideration of maritime affairs, and either abandon it outright or confine it to the debates of sea-blind international relations pundits. A phrase that crept into the strategic lexicon in the long, calm lee of the last Cold War, “non-traditional security” is little more than a dismissive hand-wave relegating human-centric security issues to a nebulous category with no real meaning. As a term, non-traditional security at best adds no value in either the operational realm or in the analytic sphere. At worst, particularly in the maritime domain, it skews thinking and undermines a balanced approach to dealing with the challenges we face.

Defense News – Steps by Lockheed Martin to virtualize its Aegis Combat System are helping underpin the U.S. Navy’s vision for its future integrated combat system as well as the Pentagon’s vision for joint all-domain operations.

USNI Blog – As 2020 ground to a close, the Air Force’s Deputy Chief of Operations, Lieutenant General Joseph Guastella, made the case for American sea power: “If you want airpower, if you want space power, then you have to be able to defend [it]. . . . What requirement does the Air Force levy upon the Joint Force? I’ll tell you, it’s called protection.” What in the world does the general’s call for protection have to do with sea power? The answer lies in America’s atrophied naval capabilities.

USNI Proceedings – Augment sailors with predictive maintenance and virtual reality tools.

War Zone – The new system is capable of making pinpoint electronic attacks but it’s so big that it requires major alterations to a destroyer’s superstructure.

Naval News – U.S. Navy program manager of the Constellation-class frigate provided the latest updates on the program, during the Surface Navy Association 2022 National Symposium.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is paying more attention to its battle damage assessment and repair capabilities, as it considers what it needs in order to win a war against a sophisticated adversary.

USNI News –  The reluctance across the Navy to be self-critical and a tendency to hide mistakes and minimize flaws have resulted in systemic problems in the service and stalled efforts to improve, Chief of Naval Operations Adm Mike Gilday said on Tuesday.

Navy Times – The Navy should be piqued more easily by the things it’s not doing well, according to the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command.

USNI News – The Navy wants its next warship to fire hypersonic missiles and lasers that would be ten times more powerful than the service’s existing laser weapons, according to the most detailed outlook to date of the DDG(X) next generation warship issued by the service.

CIMSEC – The core issues with the current LUSV concept arise from one fundamental problem. It’s trying to perform two separate roles – a small surface combatant and an adjunct missile magazine – which have sharply conflicting requirements and require radically different hulls. 

Defense News – Surface navy leaders are turning to fleet commanders for ideas about how they want to use littoral combat ships, as the U.S. Navy tries to refine its operational concepts for these ships.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC had the opportunity to discuss the evolution of the Surface Navy’s tactical development with Rear Admiral Christopher Alexander, commander of Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC). In this discussion, RDML Alexander covers new initiatives on measuring tactical experience, the increasing demand for Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT) exercises, and how SMWDC is transforming to accelerate tactical skill across the surface fleet.

Defense News – The head of the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet has laid out a plan to prepare his force to deter or defeat a top-notch adversary, calling for specific steps to improve ship maintenance, successfully and rapidly field new weapons, develop high-end tactics, and ensure sailors and officers have high-quality training and mentoring.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has made noticeable improvements in its ability to maintain surface ships — but hasn’t eliminated the repair period overruns as the chief of naval operations wanted.

Defense News – This year, the troubled Freedom-variant littoral combat ship will look to catch up with its Independence-class counterparts, which were fielded faster and expanded their operations more broadly in the last several years.

CIMSEC – In Part 1, we summarized the principles and functions underpinning the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s (NDS) Global Operating Model (GOM). We outlined the factors that motivated GOM development, and showed how the GOM’s historical lineage informs its contemporary utility. In today’s second and final installment in this series, we will outline the strategic importance of forward “competition operations” to deterrence. We will then identify the necessary attributes for naval forces operating in the Contact and Blunt layers, as well as factors that strategists should consider when thinking about such operations. We will conclude with some thoughts regarding the GOM’s overarching implications for future naval strategy and force employment.

War on the Rocks – Today, leaders in naval aviation are impeding the rapid adoption of reconnaissance and strike-capable aircraft carrier drones through deliberate incrementalism, purposefully constraining autonomous platform capabilities and delaying deployment with cautious and lengthy feasibility studies — all while adversaries accept greater risks to rapidly field imposing capabilities.