USNI News – The Navy is set to debut its first at-sea hypersonic missiles aboard one of the service’s three Zumwalt-class destroyers in four years.

Associated Press – Ten years after they found and killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs are undergoing a major transition to improve leadership and expand their commando capabilities to better battle threats from global powers like China and Russia.

CIMSEC – CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Captain Spencer Johnson (ret.), who was instrumental in assembling the first briefed iteration of the Maritime Strategy in 1982. In this conversation, Capt. Johnson discusses how the strategy had to quickly come together to inform Navy programming, how it was received in its initial briefings by senior leadership, and how the Soviet Union reacted to the Maritime Strategy toward the end of the Cold War.

Naval News – As the Pentagon and Congress grapple on determining what to build to meet the “500-ship U.S. Navy goal,” a couple of years-old ideas and artist renderings may lead to a more flexible future for the U.S. Navy’s global operations.

USNI News – USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and its air wing and strike group had a chance to fully show off their combat capabilities, using a recent at-sea testing period to demonstrate not only that Ford can keep up with its Nimitz-class counterparts but can use its new gear to perform better and faster, leaders in the strike group told USNI News today.

1945 – James Holmes writes that the key point of the newly published Unmanned Campaign Framework is to advance a hypothesis, namely that unmanned systems promise to help maritime forces accomplish their mission “through unlocking constraints on manned systems.” It seems the chief virtue of a family of unmanned systems isn’t leap-ahead technology. It’s that they have no crews, and thus are unbound by the demands and resources necessary to field and operate manned aircraft, surface ships, and submarines. 

USNI Proceedings – Strategic purpose is not the same thing as operational necessities.

War Zone – In a possible glimpse of the future of naval warfare, an apparently new type of very small unmanned surface vessel, the ADARO, has been operating with U.S. Navy surface combatants during exercises off the coast of Southern California. The drone boat, which is reminiscent of a waterborne version of a mouse droid from Star Wars, is apparently intended, at least in part, to extend intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage for the fleet when operating in regions close to the coast.

War Zone – The stealth destroyer USS Michael Monsoor will act as a command and control hub for manned and unmanned assets during the experiment off California.

CIMSEC – The challenges posed by China’s offensive deterrence paradigm require a new and innovative future force design for the US Navy. 

USNI News – Off the southern California coast this week, the Navy has amassed a small fleet to help figure how its operational forces can use aerial drones, autonomous surface and subsurface vehicles in an integrated fight at sea and in the air to support the manned fleet.

Breaking Defense –  The Navy and Marine Corps are testing radically new ways of operating in the Pacific by sending experimental unmanned ships into an ambitious exercise next week. Underpinning that exercise is an ambitious new plan for island-hopping that demands a fast implementation timeline. 

War Zone – The U.S. military seems aloof to the fact that it’s being toyed with by a terrestrial adversary and key capabilities may be compromised as a result.

CIMSEC – The Service Squadrons played a pivotal role in sustaining the Fleet as it fought across the Central Pacific. It is a largely unknown history, but one worth relearning with the reemerging possibility of war between major powers. That experience highlights the need to make forward deployed logistics and repair capabilities both robust and mobile to better support the Fleet.

Defense News – As the U.S. Navy’s littoral combat ship program battles reliability problems, it is also wrestling another and potentially just as fearsome bear: operating costs. The service’s top officer said the original concept for a minimal crewing model — where as few as 32 sailors and eight officers manned the ship, and much of the maintenance burden fell to contractors — has driven up costs.

Defense News – As it gears up for its 2022 budget battle, the Navy has signaled it is time to move on and phase out the cruisers to make room for the next-generation Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, even if it means shrinking the fleet in the near term. The Flight III doesn’t solve the Navy’s missile problem, but it does have enough space onboard (it’s about 400 tons heavier than its Flight IIA counterparts) to house the air warfare command role that currently belongs to the cruisers.

USNI News – The sea service envisions a new way of doing business where it can field software fixes and entirely new software-based capabilities piecemeal, as soon as they’re developed by a small business or research team, instead of waiting for a large package of updates to all be ready to go in a more traditional update approach.

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)