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.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy may have to pick just one of three major modernization programs on the horizon to fund — pursuing a new destroyer, a new attack submarine or a new fighter jet, the acting Navy secretary warns in a recent memo. The other two due would be postponed to budget limitations, he wrote.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy hopes to boost the number of days the littoral combat ship is operational by targeting the drivers of down time: design flaws in 32 parts that need to be replaced and a sluggish contractor-based maintenance model that needs to be made more responsive.

War Zone – The Boeing demonstrator for the MQ-25 Stingray program successfully passed fuel to an F/A-18 Super Hornet jet.

USNI News – The Navy and other services had hoped to be able to fire hypervelocity projectiles from various guns at a range of surface and aerial threats.

USNI News – U.S. Pacific Air Forces is crafting a dual strategy of defensive capabilities and dispersal of forces in order to negate the threat posed to its forces and bases by China’s increasing military capabilities, the PACAF commander said.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has created a new program office to usher the next class of destroyer into the fleet, after the service has struggled to find a replacement for its aging cruisers and destroyers over the past decade.

Strikepod Systems – With great power competition driving shifts in weapons priorities, offensive mine warfare, long neglected since World War II, is on the cusp of dramatic change both within the United States Navy, and within the navies of U.S. adversaries as well.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Captain Pat Roll (ret.), who served as a staff tactician for Admirals Ace Lyons, Joe Metcalf, and Hank Mustin. In this conversation, Capt. Roll discusses how tactical development fleshed out the execution of the Maritime Strategy at sea, the Navy’s use of cover and deception operations to move battle groups undetected, and the core relationship between strategy and tactics.

Breaking Defense – The first 12 Constellation-class frigates will all be based out of Everett, Wash.