War on the Rocks – If you play the game, you must know the rules. How will the laws of targeting and rules of engagement apply in such a contingency? Unfortunately, U.S. military commanders are poorly trained on these matters, if they are even trained at all.

As the Defense Department shifts toward deterring war or winning a conflict in the Western Pacific, a grasp of the legal concepts required for mission accomplishment has lagged.

USNI News – The U.S. is planning to upgrade a Philippine naval base crucial for Manila’s South China Sea operations with a maintenance facility capable of supporting unmanned surface vessels, according to documents.

Naval News – A U.S. Navy destroyer simulated wartime repair in the Philippines through an initiative that seeks to improve the fleet’s readiness during a port visit to Subic Bay earlier this year. 

Naval News – Incoming Navy Secretary John Phelan, a seasoned investor with decades in private equity, takes office with a clear mission: to rebuild America’s Navy and revitalize the maritime industrial base. This will require bold, unconventional solutions to expand the fleet, integrate advanced combat capabilities, and, most importantly, restore fleet readiness. To do this, the Navy must look beyond traditional shipbuilding solutions. A “submarines-as-a-service” model—leveraging private industry and allied diesel-electric submarine producers—presents a way to quickly field Navy-trained, civilian-crewed undersea vessels that can fill critical training and development gaps.

The War Zone – A 500-pound-class Quicksink bomb offers a lower-cost anti-ship weapon that bombers and fighters could carry in significant numbers.

National Interest – The U.S. Navy could procure roughly seven diesel boats for the price of one nuclear-powered boat—and boost the inventory toward 66 subs far sooner than midcentury.

CIMSEC – As the Navy focuses on preparing for a great power conflict potentially, the Navy needs to improve not just its peacetime ship repair capability but also expand its capacity to account for wartime repair requirements. 

The War Zone – The Navy is way behind in replacing its rickety fleet of C-130Ts that suffer from low readiness, which spells trouble in a fight with China.

Breaking Defense – The “greatest risk” for the Navy’s planned fiscal 2034 delivery of the nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile Nuclear (SLCM-N) is integrating it onboard Virginia-class submarines that were never designed to carry a nuclear weapon, one of the Navy’s top officers in charge of overseeing nuclear weapons programs said.

Naval News – With a price tag approaching $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion dollars each for the USS Constellation (FFG-62) frigate, Naval News asked RAND and CSIS if the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) and the DARPA No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) can replace the troubled FFG-62 frigate program.

The War Zone – Major delays could be on the horizon for the F/A-XX stealth fighter, which the Navy wants to replace its aging Super Hornets and Growlers.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that one hopes that Russian and Chinese capability and malevolence have landed a hard enough knock to induce Congress and the White House to persevere with a naval renaissance.

The War Zone – The Navy’s future Combatant Craft Medium Mk 2s will gain the ability to launch long-range strikes on their own.

The War Zone – USS Harry S. Truman has been striking the Houthis, with the other F/A-18 rolled off the deck during an attack on the ship by the rebels last week.

Atlantic Council – The United States desperately needs to plan for a long war in the Indo-Pacific region.

Center for Maritime Security – The U.S. Navy can learn from the Royal Navy by analysing mistakes it made in educating -or not educating- the British government about seapower. Across all naval, maritime, and wider defense and security debates, the baseline fact is that if education on the relationship between the sea and state is not carefully managed, all the efforts of seapower can be quickly undone. From that sea-state nexus flows political discussion, policy, funding, and direction. In short, why do nations invest in these costly, complex organizations known as navies? Land and land-based air perspectives have always been easy paths for policy; this is perfectly natural, as humans are land-dwellers who cannot see over the horizon. Consider how outer space was and remains such a challenge, maritime in nature but resistant to mastery due to vast distance. Shortsightedness is why the perpetual, pernicious and permanent challenge of ‘seablindness’ exists. It cannot be defeated, nor overcome, but it can be tamed.  

CIMSEC – Washington has many allies and partners across the Greater Caribbean, particularly among the region’s English-speaking nations. Despite having limited budgets and assets, the defense forces of the English-speaking Caribbean are training and increasing their capabilities to carry out missions, which aligns with US diplomatic and military objectives.

The War Zone – F-35Cs are also striking targets in Yemen, with their stealth being of unique importance as the Houthi air defense threat comes into the spotlight.

USNI News – The Department of the Navy is looking to lease a climate-controlled facility between 19,000 and 33,000 square meters near Subic Bay and Clark for the storage of equipment in the Philippines by 2026 under a ten-year-long lease which could mark the largest prepositioning effort to date between Washington and Manila since 1992.

USNI News – The Defense Innovation Unit has released a solicitation for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform, a large unmanned underwater vessel capable of supporting large payloads at range in contested environments.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that stakeholders in the maritime enterprise must think in grand Mahanian terms about rejuvenating U.S. sea power. Trump’s new executive order charts a path forward—but epoch-making trials lie ahead.

CIMSEC – If an unmanned hellscape is to move from fantasy to credible threat in the eyes of an adversary, the U.S. Navy, as part of the Joint Force, must take concrete steps to address weaknesses in its current conceptualizations of unmanned future warfare. To overcome these obstacles, the U.S. Navy can lead the way by appointing a robotics and autonomous systems czar to interface and invigorate industry, develop forward deployed naval robotics formations, and oversee a deeper investment in the forces needed to operate these systems.

National Interest – James Holmes writes that the U.S. Navy can learn much from the Russo-Japanese War—and from dueling interpretations of that conflict by naval theorists Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian S. Corbett.

Naval News – The Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive (HALO) missile in development for the U.S. Navy’s high priority Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 (OASuW Inc 2) program has been cancelled.

CIMSEC – The United States has a shipping problem and everybody knows it. From combatant commands to congress and maritime security outlets to the White House, everyone is talking about America’s lack of maritime capacity.  America, it seems, is waking up to its maritime problem and is ready to roll up its sleeves and start solving it in the only way it knows how—mostly alone. While there have been some nods to bilateral cooperation in shipbuilding, the United States has not made a concerted effort toward a robust, multilateral counter-China maritime strategy. That needs to change. A coordinated, multinational approach is required to counter Chinese shipping dominance. The US and its allies should form a Multilateral Maritime Alliance to secure maritime trade and create critical sealift capacity to sustain expeditionary combat operations.