Breaking Defense – The Navy’s top officer is on board with advancing laser weapons — and believes the new Trump-class battleships will drive the service to equip other Navy ships with the weapons, too. 

National Interest – James Holmes writes that during World War II, Japan’s fleet was large and qualitatively peerless, but unsupported by a broader defense-industrial base. The United States finds itself in the same position today.

The War Zone – A second carrier group would provide additional tactical airpower for a sustained operation against Iran, but it wouldn’t arrive for weeks at the earliest.

USNI News – Buoyed by billions in investments into robotic systems, the Navy is considering how it will manage the swarms of unmanned surface, subsurface and aerial drones throughout the fleet.

Defence Blog – The U.S. Navy said it completed the final planned flight test of the Harpoon Block II Update on Jan. 16, concluding system-level flight testing for the obsolescence update. The test validated the missile’s land-attack profile following earlier trials against guidance performance and moving maritime targets, with initial deliveries planned later this year.

(Thanks to Alain)

The War Zone – The A-10, now in the twilight of its career, is uniquely suited to protect naval assets from lower-end threats, such as swarms of Iranian small boats.

USNI News – New Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle says he is crafting a plan for formations beyond the carrier strike group that don’t have peak military capability, but are good enough to meet the needs of U.S. commanders downrange.

CIMSEC – Expectations of a genuine American shipbuilding renaissance should be kept in check. The United States is ill-suited to quickly transform from a virtual non-participant in commercial shipbuilding to a competitive producer of large cargo vessels. More likely is another round of costly subsidies, continued shipbuilding dysfunction, and little progress toward addressing the country’s key maritime challenges. Rather than devote substantial resources to this questionable enterprise, U.S. policymakers should pursue pragmatic solutions that more directly remedy commercial and naval shortcomings.

CIMSEC – The strategic imperatives facing the United States, Japan, and South Korea demand immediate, decisive action to secure enduring maritime security across the Indo-Pacific. Trilateral collaboration in naval shipbuilding is no longer optional, it is necessary. Together, the alliance has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to counter China’s expanding naval power, restore American shipbuilding strength, and ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific for decades to come. By pooling resources, expertise, and industrial capacity, the alliance can design and produce a fast-attack missile corvette tailored to the region’s urgent needs: maritime domain awareness, deterrence, and enhanced interoperability among allies and partners. A corvette fleet, built with Asian shipyards and American innovation, will empower ASEAN partners on the frontlines of maritime coercion, illegal activities, grey-zone conflict, and Great Power Competition.

Defense News – After a U.S. warship visited the Chinese-built Ream Naval Base on the south coast of Cambodia last week, analysts warn the government here should brace for a response from Beijing.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that Chief of Naval Operations Daryl Caudle’s advice on reforming US Navy doctrine is at once prescient and rooted in age-old wisdom.

USNI News – Two aviation companies under contract to develop armed, unmanned aircraft and control systems for the U.S. Navy teased what they are working on this week during the Singapore Air Show.

USNI News – A Marine F-35C Lighting II fighter shot down an Iranian military drone that approached a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea,

The War Zone – The U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Preble used its High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system to down four drones in a demonstration last year, Lockheed Martin has shared.

Breaking Defense – While the carrier strike group will remain the backbone of naval power projection, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle says its time to look for alternative options, especially unmanned systems, for more specialized regional scenarios — part of a Tuesday preview of what he called his forthcoming “hedge strategy” for the Navy.

Naval News – General Dynamics NASSCO is looking to U.S. Navy for interest in new VLS reloading destroyer tenders, known as AD(X), as part of a combined buy of common hulls with the future AS(X) submarine tender.

The War Zone – Boeing expects to close out production of new Super Hornets in 2027 and has already stopped building EA-18G Growlers.

The War Zone – Amid the ongoing military buildup, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that no one knows who would lead Iran next should the Khamenei regime fall.

SeaPower – Rather than continuing to field a shrinking force of exquisite ships and aircraft, the Navy should field a larger force of crewed and uncrewed platforms that gain an edge over opponents through their payloads and ability to combine in a diverse array of changing effects chains across domains. By shifting complexity from inside individual ships and aircraft to the kill chains between them, this fleet could gain decision-making advantages over adversaries and generate capacity or capability when and where it is needed.

USNI News – The surface force will net a total of seven Littoral Combat Ships after the Navy shelved plans to decommission the hulls ahead of their expected service lives, USNI News has learned.

Navy Lookout – The announcement of the Defiant-class battleship signals a sharp reorientation of US naval force structure, moving away from distributed lethality towards massed, concentrated firepower to address the widening magazine gap with China. However, the revival of such leviathans sits uneasily with a fragile US industrial base that has struggled to deliver even basic escorts, raising doubts over the programme’s deliverability.

The War Zone – The last four Avengers in Bahrain were carried off on a heavy lift vessel at a time of crisis, where mining the Persian Gulf could come into play.

The War Zone – Assets continue to pour into the Middle East, including high-end air defenses, but there still hasn’t been a large migration of airpower.

RUSI – If the US no longer abides by rules, how does it expect revisionist states to do so?

Australian Strategic Policy Institute – Bill Sweetman’s view on the future of the US defense industry.