War Zone – Adding modular weapons launchers to the Navy’s experimental unmanned vessels will allow the service to explore new distributed warfare concepts.

CIMSEC – From the effects of the Goldwater-Nichols act, to tensions between analysis and strategy offices in OPNAV, Wills discusses how Navy strategy and strategy development has changed over recent decades.

USNI Blog – What more can the Navy take away from the last 20-yrs of combat that it needs to remember and implement as a lesson identified to prepare for the next war?

Defense News – A port of vital interest to the U.S. military is bombed and destroyed in a future great-power battle, with sunken ships and piers in the water blocking access for ships trying to resupply American forces. Navy Seabee divers and salvage divers are scattered across the theater conducting smaller missions, but the fight can’t continue until this major job is done — the underwater wreckage cleared and the port infrastructure rebuilt so resupply at this hub can resume. In this worst-case scenario for the U.S., the only way to get the port operating again may be to integrate the usually-separate divers — underwater construction and salvage — into a single unit unlike anything the Navy has fielded in the past.

CIMSEC – It is these two emerging technologies, maritime drone vessels and large satellite communication constellations, that could allow for the Navy to solve some of its ongoing issues and permit the creation of a more nimble, lean, and modern force able to better confront the rising security threats facing the United States in the years and decades to come.

CIMSEC – This article is an exercise in “visualization,” looking at the art of the possible in combining science and technology— and changing Navy culture—to improve shipboard human performance. 

Breaking Defense – The Pentagon’s premiere research agency published a request for information earlier this month eyeing a new class of aircraft capable of utilizing the “wing-in-ground” effect. But analysts tell Breaking Defense the military’s request, on a relatively short turnaround time, will be a difficult for the industrial base to oblige — and worry that the system might not be viable for more than short trips.

Naval News – At the virtual Surface Navy Association’s 2021 Waterfront Symposium held on 26 August, 2021, the “U.S. Navy Operators Panel,” consisting of Captains and Lieutenant Commanders sitting on 

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.