War Zone – MQ-8Cs loaded with sonobuoys could help speed up searches for enemy submarines while reducing the workload on human personnel.

Naval News – The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was a “Hot Topic of discussion” at Surface Navy Association (SNA 2021) Virtual Symposium held in mid-January 2021 during the end of the President Trump Administration. The U.S. Navy discussed the status, plans, upgrades, new weapons, fixes, and Mission Packages of this troubled and often criticized program.

USNI News – The three-ship Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, the 2,500 Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters have taken position in U.S. 5th Fleet in the North Arabian sea and are an easy sail to the Strait of Hormuz.

War on the Rocks – The Maritime Cybersecurity Plan offered an imperfect but useful path forward for the United States to advance its interests in cyberspace. The Biden administration should avoid the classic mistake of ignoring the content because they dislike the messenger. This plan lays out a need for new thinking and new incentives in working with allies and the maritime private sector.

CIMSEC – Organizational inertia and a desire to compete for dollars lead U.S. military services to plan for scenarios that privilege their largest existing programs–even as America’s adversaries are moving on to an entirely different type of warfare.

USNI News – The U.S. Navy’s two key advantages in the Arctic are its partners and allies and the flexibility of the forces it could bring to bear, the head of U.S. naval forces in Europe said today.

USNI News – The Navy’s engineering community has already started conducting light carrier design and engineering studies, even as the Navy and the joint force still consider whether they’d even want to invest in a CVL to supplement supercarriers to bring more distributed capability to the fleet for less cost.

USNI News – The Navy plans to deploy the early models of its Razorback medium-sized unmanned underwater “as soon as we can” even as the service is in the midst of procuring an upgraded model.

USNI Proceedings – James Holmes writes that the responsibilities the United States has taken on require it to build a Navy capable of managing them.

War Zone – The U.S. Navy is looking toward next-generation vertical-lift platforms to replace existing types starting in 2030.

Naval News – At the Surface Navy Association 2021 Virtual Symposium, Naval News asked RADM Paul Schlise, USN, Director, Surface Warfare (N96), whether the U.S. Navy intends to replace the aging Patrol Coastal boats. The direct answer is, “No.”

War Zone – The Navy says conformal fuel tanks, long-touted as a critical upgrade for its Super Hornets, may be turning out to be more trouble than they’re worth.

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.