CIMSEC – This article outlines the path that led to the U.S. Navy’s current strategic deficit and proposes a framework for a new maritime strategy, one that should be immediately developed along with the corresponding force structure assessment. With a modest 5% additional investment in the Navy over the next five years, 90% of the changes required by this strategy can be achieved.

USNI News – The Navy’s surface warfare community is weighed with a culture that values administrative chores over training to fight, ship commanders that are micromanaged and an aversion to risk, according to a new survey overseen by a retired Navy admiral and Marine general at the behest of a group of Republican lawmakers. That culture was at least partially responsible for a string “of high-profile and damaging operational failures in the Navy’s Surface Warfare community,” the report found.

USNI Proceedings – The Washington Naval Treaties had different effects on interwar innovation in Britain, Japan, and the United States.

Navy News – In a year’s time, progress has been made in all programs ranging from Combat Crafts to mini submersibles to Unmanned Underwater Vehicles as USSOCOM gears towards peer nation challenges. Naval News presents a summary of the NSW programs discussed at Virtual SOFIC 2021.

War Zone – The three-decade-old submarine appears to have received a big addition to its sonar system during a protracted refit.

USNI Proceedings – The United States and its allies must have sufficient combat power in key theaters such that the enemy will hesitate to undertake hostile operations.

War on the Rocks – The time has come for the U.S. Navy to pass the freedom of navigation mission set to unmanned systems

USNI News – The integration of Navy SEALs and special boat teams into carrier strike group and amphibious ready group training exercises reflects naval special warfare’s renewed commitment to support the fleet and joint force and reinforce its own roots as naval commandos.

War Zone – The Navy has shared some additional details about USS Alaska’s very rare stopover, which comes amid a flurry of naval activity in the region.

(Thanks to Alain)

War on the Rocks – The U.S. Navy is on the verge of strategic bankruptcy. Its fleet isn’t large enough to meet global day-to-day demands for naval forces. Due to repeated deployments and maintenance backlogs, the fleet also isn’t ready enough to meet these demands safely, nor can it quickly surge in an emergency. Finally, the fleet isn’t capable enough to meet the challenges posed by China’s increasingly modern and aggressive People’s Liberation Army Navy. How did this happen to a force that, as recently as two decades ago, dominated the world’s oceans to a degree perhaps unequalled in human history? The answer is gradually and then suddenly.

USNI News – The Navy will have six Littoral Combat Ships deployed by the end of the year – a record for the program

War Zone – The USS Montpelier’s publicized mine-loading exercise in Greece’s Souda Bay comes as naval tensions grow in the eastern Mediterranean.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is seeing improved maintenance on deployed littoral combat ships amid efforts to boost readiness and operational endurance, now that is has switched from contractor-based work to sailor-performed maintenance.

USNI News – The Navy’s Japan-based carrier strike group is now operating in the North Arabian Sea to support the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Defense News – One of the U.S. Navy’s first major projects under a 20-year shipyard modernization effort is facing cost-overruns and schedule slips, an unexpected circumstance which the Navy is hoping to learn from as it continues through the $20-billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program.

1945 – James Holmes says yes.

USNI News – Surface warfare officers are leaving the Navy at a higher rate than other unrestricted line officers despite reforms in training the service has instituted since two fatal collisions in 2017.

1945 – Having endured setbacks during the War of American Independence, Great Britain found wise political leadership—leadership that prepared the empire for tests to come during decades of war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Congress and the Biden administration should take note. If the United States genuinely means to keep its commitments to allies across the globe while acting as custodian of freedom of the sea, it must field maritime forces adequate to those purposes. Otherwise, its interests and world standing will suffer—perhaps grievously so. 

Defense News – The Navy submitted an update to Congress to its annual long-range shipbuilding plans, one that takes a step back from the much-talked-about standard of a 355-ship fleet and instead lays out priorities for a future distributed naval force.

USNI News – Lawmakers are asking the Navy to start adding capabilities to the emerging MQ-25A Stingray unmanned carrier tankers that are set to join the fleet in the next few years, service officials said.

War Zone – The Navy wants to build drones that are inspired by the ways animals move and behave in the natural world and can even transition between sea and air.

USNI News – U.S. aircraft carriers are already facing risks from hypersonic weapons that are now entering the inventory of American adversaries and the Navy has developed early defenses for the threat.

USNI Proceedings – Lessons for great power competition from Independence-class CVLs.

War Zone – A vehicle that can travel under the sea and in the air may seem like a fantasy, but the Navy says it is possible and relevant for special operations.

1945 – James Holmes writes that every now and again the idea that ultramodern technology will someday render the oceans and seas transparent—and expose submarine fleets to detection, tracking, and targeting—comes into vogue.