– USNI News – The Navy’s top officer met with firefighters Friday morning and inspected the damaged decks and spaces inside USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), six days after a devastating fire spread through the warship.

– USNI News – Days after the State Department publicly rejected China’s claims to much of the South China Sea, two carrier strike groups resumed operating in tandem in the region.

– Defense News – The uniformed head of the U.S. Navy is preparing to depart Washington and visit the stricken amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, after crews took more than four days to extinguish a major conflagration that has gutted the ship.

– USNI News – On midday Thursday, Navy officials declared all known fires aboard USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) had been extinguished after more than four days of battling the blaze that was sparked on Sunday.

– CIMSEC – As the U.S. Navy moves into the unmanned age and implements Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), there is a need for small, lightly manned warships to streamline that transition and fill roles which require a human crew. Congress has expressed concerns about unmanned vessels on a number of fronts and highlighted the need for a class of ships to bridge the gap. The Naval Postgraduate School’s Lightly Manned Autonomous Combat Capability program (LMACC) has designed a warship to meet this need.

– War Zone – As the fire aboard the ship approaches the four-day mark, its stability has shifted, prompting an evacuation of the vessel and its pier.

– War on the Rocks – One thing is clear: The ship will likely be, at best, out of action for years or, at worst, stricken from Navy rolls. In either case, there will be considerable impact to ongoing naval operations, force development efforts, and naval integration initiatives. While navalists tend to judge navies by the number of ships that comprise them, the plain truth is that not all ships are created equal. The loss of some ships is much worse than others. That is what Americans are watching happen before their eyes. Confidence in the Navy is shaken.

– CIMSEC – CIMSEC had the opportunity to discuss commanding the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) stealth destroyer with commanding officer Captain Andrew Carlson.

– USNI News – The more than 4,000 sailors and Marines of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit wrapped up a seven-month deployment to Europe and the Middle East.

– USNI News – The Navy has awarded a contract for the first unmanned surface vessel it will design and build on its own, a key milestone for the eventual family of unmanned systems that will be a key component of the future surface fleet.

– Defense News – The amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, which burned through the night while in port in San Diego, was at the tail end of two years of upgrades supporting the integration of the F-35B, according to Navy documents. That means the Navy will now have fewer options to deploy the next-generation fighter in the Pacific.

– USNI News – Fires are a constant worry for any ship, and every sailor is taught from their earliest days in the service that damage control is everyone’s responsibility. However, that responsibility becomes more complex when a ship is in maintenance. Fewer sailors are typically aboard, and opportunities are greater to spark a fire from welding or other hot work.

– War Zone – The Navy says it is throwing everything it has at fighting the blaze on the stricken amphibious assault ship as it enters into its 28th hour.

– USNI News – The USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) continued to burn after the sun had set in San Diego. It now appears that the fire has migrated to the ship’s island superstructure with its bridge seen engulfed in flames, which is a very bad thing. Additional large booms were also heard as the blaze continued to rage aboard some 14 hours after it started.

– USNI Proceedings – As the Navy and Marine Corps adapt to distributed maritime operations and distributed lethality, the types of aircraft carriers and their roles also must adapt.

– Defense One – Fleet-force planning has been seized by a Joint Staff and Defense Secretary who put budget-slicing before strategy.

– War Zone – For the past three weeks, there has been a big increase in U.S. military air activity in the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines.

– War Zone – Not since the introduction of the F/A-18A Hornet in the 1980s has the famed schoolhouse had to adapt to such an advance in air combat capability.

– War Zone – The U.S. Navy expects to have eight warships, in total, equipped with the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy, or ODIN, a laser directed energy weapon system, within the next three years.

– Defense News – The officer overseeing the deployment of the carrier Gerald R. Ford was fired Wednesday, the latest jolt to the trouble program that has been operating under a microscope as technical problems with nearly two dozen new technologies bundled into the lead ship have piled up.

– USNI News – The U.S. and Chinese navies are holding competing naval exercises in the South China Sea, as the Beijing accuses Washington of militarizing the region. On Saturday, the U.S. Navy’s Reagan and Nimitz carrier strike groups transited from the Philippine Sea to the South China Sea and held the first dual-carrier drills there since 2014.

– Modern War Institute – The reality of American military power has long been that the United States must project its forces into the enemy’s territory. This brings with it a host of challenges, some inflicted by the adversary and others that are self-inflicted (such as lack of strategic lift or production capacity). In any future war, the US military will likely play an “away game,” and an adversary will probably not allow the United States to leisurely amass personnel and equipment on its borders, but will actively try to prevent it. As a result, the US military will suffer from an inherent asymmetry and have immense costs imposed on it, at least in the initial phases of the war. This challenge lies at the heart of what is colloquially called the “anti-access/area denial” family of military concepts.

– USNI Proceedings – To better attract midshipmen, the Navy nuclear power community should prioritize warfighting over nuclear engineering.

– War Zone – The Navy has touted the addition of Naval Strike Missiles as a game-changer for the oft-maligned Littoral Combat Ships.

– War Zone – America’s remote island outpost in the Pacific is an essential fallback point for pushing airpower west during a major conflict.