War on the Rocks – Could Japan see an increase in the presence of U.S. military capabilities and personnel in the years ahead? It’s looking possible.

Defense and Aerospace Report – Chris Cavas writes that when it comes to big things the U. S. Navy has no problem with commitment…But when it comes to the small stuff, forget it. While there are passing fancies, the passion soon flames out and Big Navy is on to the next Big Thing.

WarZone – Two U.S. Navy destroyers will enter the Black Sea as a Russian military buildup around eastern Ukraine continues to grow.

USNI News – A U.S. carrier strike group and amphibious ready group are in the South China Sea as tensions increase between Manilla and Beijing over a Chinese maritime militia incursion into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

CIMSEC – Deterrence represents one form of coercive diplomacy, which the DoD defines as the “prevention of action by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction and/or belief that the cost of action outweighs the perceived benefits.” Compellence constitutes a different form of coercive diplomacy, representing the “use of threatened force, including the limited use of actual force to back up the threat, to induce an adversary to behave differently than it otherwise would.” States can employ these coercive approaches through various instruments of power in their pursuit of national interests.

CIMSEC – The Naval Academy must return to the warfighting mentality of its past. In 2007, the Naval Academy not only removed its only tactics and strategy course from the Midshipmen core curriculum, it stopped offering it altogether. Until recently, this decision signaled the end of a rich history of wargaming at USNA, which included Academy-wide games held at varying levels of classification. VTEs offer the Naval Academy an opportunity to reprioritize warfighting by providing the “ready, relevant learning” future naval officers will need to conduct 21st century warfare.

USNI News – The Navy continues to learn more about a pair of directed energy weapons, as the service installs the fourth and fifth dazzler system this year and begins land-based testing of a high-energy laser weapon.

Congressional Research Service – A nice overview of this topic.

(Thanks to Alain)

USNI News – A plan to keep the Navy’s guided-missile cruiser fleet operating through the end of the 2030s is struggling as the ships show there’s a very real cost in time and money to keep old platforms around for the sake of having a larger fleet.

CIMSEC – The historic success of the Coastwatchers provides valuable insight for naval intelligence in the future single naval battle. Proactive intelligence, multi-domain intelligence, and local access and support remain necessary for an effective naval intelligence operation. Naval forces will grow stronger through these lessons as the world’s security environment becomes more complex and dynamic. The future challenge is to harmonize these lessons into a single integrated naval force. As the naval force tackles this and other challenges, remember the Coastwatchers.

CIMSEC – The Naval Information Warfare Community has been a cornerstone of every decisive point in every major naval battle in history. Despite this pedigree, GPC has placed an exciting challenge on the NIWC. To deter and win a GPC fight in 2035 and beyond, the NIWC must evolve to meet the challenge. To embrace the problems of the future, the NIWC must build a force that can integrate with the most important disruptive technologies like AI, train the force to quickly integrate and employ those technologies, and to acquire those technologies at the right pace. 

USNI News – The Navy is leaning toward replacing its fleet of Super Hornets with another manned fighter that will work with emerging unmanned aircraft concepts under the umbrella of the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance program.

Navy Times – The Navy has recovered an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter that crashed into the Philippine Sea in January 2020 off the coast of Okinawa — and set a record while doing so.

(Thanks to Alain)

War Zone – The Russian sub might have used a torpedo to blast apart the ice during a recent exercise to prove it could launch its missiles during a time of war.

Defense News – Austal USA has broken ground on a steel production line in Mobile, Ala., as the Navy winds down its aluminum-hulled shipbuilding programs and plans on larger numbers of smaller ships.

CIMSEC – Today’s naval aviation intelligence training is mediocre. In a future peer adversary fight, inadequate aviation intelligence training will spell catastrophe. A future fight may require matching US forces against an even more advanced Chinese military and an equally determined and deadly Russian bear. The problems facing the naval aviation and intelligence communities are complex, and hard decisions must be made to invest more time in naval intelligence education and training. Naval intelligence must once again return to its historic roots of providing high value actionable intelligence to enable naval aviation success and save aviators’ lives.

CIMSEC – The most effective way to reinvigorate NAVINTEL’s focus on owning Red comes via two main methods: deep understanding of the adversary and the application of structured contrarian analysis. We describe these combined phenomena as Red Teaming, a two-pronged analytical methodology that can and should be applied at all levels of war.

Breaking Defense – The Army hasn’t yet figured out which countries would actually host the new long-range missiles it’s developing, an Army strategist acknowledged today. Experts point out that just hosting US weapons with the potential to threaten China may be a risky move for any nation in the region.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC discussed the development of the 1980s Maritime Strategy and the role played by the CNO Strategic Studies Group with Admiral William Owens (ret.). Admiral Owens was part of the first SSG during 1982. In this discussion, he discusses changes brought about by the Maritime Strategy, the implementation of the Maritime Strategy concepts by the fleet, and what lessons the Maritime Strategy and SSG have for the modern era.

USNI News – The Navy wants to emphasize the development of enablers for unmanned systems – the common interfaces and control stations, the networks, the secure data formats, the autonomy behaviors – as it pursues a hybrid manned/unmanned fleet for the future. However, the platforms still matter – and most of the ones the Navy wants to leverage in the coming years are still in development.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Irv Blickstein, who at the time served in the senior executive service in the Navy’s programming office. In this discussion, Blickstein discusses the tradeoffs programmers help leaders understand, the role Navy Secretary John Lehman played in managing the Navy’s program, and to what extent the Navy’s strategists and programmers had a relationship.

USNI Proceedings – The United States must build a naval force capable of managing its global responsibilities.

Navy Times – As the entire U.S. military pivots to preparations for a future conventional war after decades of asymmetrical conflict, the Navy’s diving community is giving increased focus to what it takes to operate in the frigid waters that Arctic missions may require in the not-too-distant future.

War Zone – The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the Navy.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy is exploring a major ship alteration for its three stealth destroyers that would further drive up the cost of the platform but could deliver a radical new hypersonic capability in the ongoing naval competition with China in the western Pacific.