USNI News – The Navy is asking itself how the service can sustain the fleet in high-end conflict when it no longer has government-owned or American-flagged merchant vessels feeding forward bases to rely on in wartime.

CIMSEC – NAVPLAN 2021 (NP21), despite being issued a year and a half after he took the reins of the Navy, is essentially Admiral Mike Gilday’s change of command speech.

RUSI – The US Navy needs to demonstrate that its mammoth investment in large surface combatants has a manifest purpose.

CIMSEC – A U.S. strategic posture realignment in Europe should go forward as long as the U.S. maritime posture in Europe improves as a result. Increasing forward basing for U.S. warships, collaborating better with NATO on MDA, and embedding more U.S. FAOs in the NATO command and force structures will enhance deterrence against Russia even more.

Defense News – The Maritime Administration has inked a deal for two more training ships for its prospective Merchant Marine officers in a move that could provide the Navy with a suitable hull for special mission auxiliary ships in the future.

Breaking Defense – Two of the Navy’s newest Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships will sit in port for months while Lockheed Martin develops, tests and installs fixes to a major propulsion issue found on all 16 ships in the class. 

USNI News – A longstanding slogan for the best use of unmanned systems is to perform “dull, dirty and dangerous” missions instead of humans.

Naval News – U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs and U.S. Navy F-35Cs will mature with Block 4 software upgrades. But Full F-35 Production Waits for the Biden Administration to Make Key Production Decisions. Meanwhile, the number of foreign operators of F-35B is growing.

CIMSEC – It is highly unlikely that this year, 75 years after the USS Missouri’s trip to Turkey for a show of force in the emerging post-World War II order, will be commemorated with a similar U.S. naval deployment – due to the absence of battleships in the American warship inventory, the raging pandemic, and the divide in Turkish-American and Turkish-NATO relations in the wake of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s politics. It should, however, signal the start to an honest effort conceptualizing American naval presence and seapower in Europe. It is as important for Americans as it is for Europeans.     

Defense News – The cost-management problem is best summarized by the replacement cost of the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard. Original cost in constant dollars is $1.3 billion. The Navy says that current replacement cost is $4.1 billion. This is a clear case of out-of-control requirements creep and manufacturing inefficiency at many levels.

USNI Proceedings – Today’s Navy faces many challenges. One of these is finding the optimum application and purpose for the LCS.

USNI Blog – The U.S. Navy should consider reestablishing First Fleet in Singapore to provide strategic deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and reduce transit time to the area of responsibility (AOR) in the South China Sea.

USNI News – As the Navy looks to smaller and cheaper manned and unmanned ships to fill out its future fleet, a larger amphibious warship program is positioning itself to remain in shipbuilding plans by highlighting the ability to continue bringing costs down – including through a potential first-ever multi-ship buy – and adding capability.

USNI News – Navy officials in Washington and on the waterfront are trying to help the Littoral Combat Ships grow more reliable and maintainable, amid a surface navy-wide effort to focus on crew-level maintenance as a means of improving operational availability.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy has halted deliveries of Lockheed Martin’s Freedom-class littoral combat ship, citing a design flaw with the ship’s transmission.

Breaking Defense – The United States could not make enough military equipment fast enough to sustain its military in the event of a major war. While much thought has been given to how a great power conflict might erupt or play out, far less has been written on how the U.S. industrial base could sustain U.S. wartime equipment losses in such a conflict.

Naval News – During the Surface Navy Association (SNA) 2021 Virtual Symposium held last week, Lockheed Martin was showcasing a new artist impression showing two LRASM fitted on a F-35 Lightning II.

USNI News – Surface warfare leaders throughout the Navy last week mused about how to employ new classes of ships such as the Littoral Combat Ship and Expeditionary Sea Base, as the fleet transitions to a new type of operations against peer competitors.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy and General Atomics in November used sonobuoys dropped from an MQ-9A Block V Reaper to track a simulated submarine target on a U.S. Navy Pacific test range, in what the contractor says is the first time an aerial drone has deployed a self-contained anti-submarine warfare system.

1945 – James Holmes writes that haste is a recurring theme in Chief of Naval Operations Mike Gilday’s 2021 “Navigation Plan,” released this week. 

Defense News – In his address this week at the annual Surface Navy Association symposium, top surface warfare officer Vice Adm. Roy Kitchener told a virtual audience that the surface community is increasingly relying on simulators to give officers and sailors alike the chance to keep their skills sharp, even if they are unable to get underway.

USNI News – The Government Accountability Office released a new report that warns Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine cost and schedule plans are at risk due to problems with a new digital design tool and cascading effects stemming from the design challenges.

Breaking Defense – Navy officials said this week that the destroyer, which still hasn’t been deployed almost five years after she was christened, might find a place in the fleet after all.

Naval News – It seems probable that a US Navy submarine, the USS Georgia (SSGN 729), has been detected by Iranian forces in the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz. The circumstances are unclear.

Defense News – Between 1991, when the Navy commissioned the USS Arleigh Burke, and 1998, when it commissioned the USS Mahan, the service built the class at a pace of three per year. Now, as those ships are bearing down on their 35-year expected hull life, the Navy wants to grow its fleet, but it lacks the budget and capacity to modernize those first 21 ships to the latest configurations. So while the fleet will try to keep them around as long as possible, it will have to get creative in its problem-solving approach.