USNI News – Six task groups from the U.S, U.K., Australian, Japanese and Indian navies are currently on operational deployments in the Indo-Pacific region amidst an intense fall and early winter period of multilateral exercises.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy appears to have all but scrapped its plans to equip its future Block III F/A-18E/F Super Hornets with conformal fuel tanks, or CFTs, at least for the time being.

CIMSEC – In order for US naval forces to compete in the polar regions and fight if needed, the military needs to invest in persistent and reliable communications capabilities. One solution is high-altitude balloons.

Naval News – The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a Request for Information (RFI) in mid-August 2021 seeking a Wing-in-Ground (WIG) cargo aircraft for the US military.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has completed the initial operational test and evaluation of its Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) program, bringing a key element of the littoral combat ship’s mine countermeasures mission package closer to final approval and fielding.

CIMSEC – The cognitive laser concept opens a diverse and challenging field of research for innovations in the application of AI methods to both laser weapon operations and the military tactical domain in general.

CIMSEC – One particular area that needs Navy-specific investment is that of machine learning systems is for passive sonar systems.

CIMSEC – Today’s maritime security environment recalls the early days of the United States Navy, when its economic and geographic limitations helped create a technologically bold yet focused fleet architecture. Just as the United States Navy couldn’t out build its rivals then, it can’t out build the Chinese Navy today. Even so, by drawing from its best traditions, and implementing a fleet design incorporating mission agile platforms and platform agile payloads, the Navy and Marine Corps team can affordably produce a fleet and fleet Marine force fit for purpose – even as those purposes change with the decades.

1945 – James Holmes writes that the U.S. sea services are currently prosecuting “Large Scale Exercise 2021.” The maneuver’s banal codename belies its ambition. Navy spokesmen bill it as the biggest exercise in a generation, and one that spans seventeen time zones. Its immediate goal is to prove out operational concepts that have remained mostly hypothetical—concepts bearing such arcane-sounding titles as Distributed Maritime Operations, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment, and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

USNI News – The Chinese military sees the Littoral Combat Ship armed with anti-ship missiles as a key element of a U.S. distributed maritime force in the Western Pacific.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is “well on its way” to delivering a replacement small unmanned underwater vehicle for mine countermeasures and is in source selection for a replacement medium UUV that will support both the submarine and the explosive ordnance disposal communities.

War Zone – A modified version of Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk could well be the aircraft to beat considering the Air Force is already buying hundreds of them.

Defense News – The air wing the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group is hauling around not only includes the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter for the first time in history but also a beefed-up complement of EA-18G Growlers and E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes for an “air wing of the future” leaders think can defeat high-end adversaries before they even spot the U.S. Navy coming.

CDR Salamander – Bryan Clark and Bryan McGrath suggest a way for the U.S. Navy to confront the threat posed by China.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy recently conducted successful flight tests of a UAV carrying an aerial laser system designed to map the ocean floor in shallow water areas. While details are scarce, we know that the tests used a Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR, system aboard a small unmanned helicopter. While such a system could be an important tool for making detailed topographic maps of waterways and littoral areas, there could be other potential applications of well beyond general cartographic ones.

Navy Times – Though U.S. defense leaders talk about the idea of great power competition, they often do so in the future tense — and often about a conflict that would start in the South China Sea. But the U.S. Navy’s regional leaders say great power competition is already taking place in Europe and there’s a race underway to assemble a strong enough coalition of allies and partners to keep day-to-day tensions with Russia at a simmer, instead of boiling over into an all-out conflict. Perhaps nowhere is that clearer than the Black Sea.

Breaking Defense – Shipbuilding executives say they can take the strain of maintenance for a fleet of unmanned vessels, but industry and the Navy have historically struggled with the warships they are currently managing. 

CIMSEC – Navy doctrine on planning for maritime security operations is inadequate.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy completed its three-part explosive shock trials on aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford on Aug. 8, with no major casualties on the first-in-class ship and less damage to repair during an upcoming maintenance availability than expected.

USNI Proceedings – Designing and fielding information systems capable of preventing compromise and weapon systems that cannot be hacked is a readiness imperative.

War Zone – An intriguing upgrade has been installed on the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Abraham Lincoln that points to new defensive capabilities.

Wired – The latest weapons in the global information war are fake vessels behaving badly.

CIMSEC – Fleet Problem IX—an exercise conducted almost a century ago—is still instructive for naval strategists, tacticians, and planners today. While it is remembered, and rightly so, for demonstrating the offensive potential of the aircraft carrier, it also demonstrated their vulnerability, particularly when the adversary presents an opposing carrier fleet with a multi-layered A2/AD system consisting of complementary capabilities. 

National Interest – James Holmes writes that a divest-to-invest strategy might yield a fleet equal to the challenges America will confront decades from now. But divestment might leave too little combat power in the fleet to, say, repel a Chinese assault on Taiwan in the next few years.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy has been experimenting with a variety of drone delivery concepts in recent years in order to ease its logistical burden.