USNI News – Today, the Pentagon is using up aircraft carrier readiness faster than the Navy can generate it.

National Interest – Navy leaders must think of themselves as cultural stewards, not just administrators, strategists, or operators.

Defense News – In the coming months, defense planners at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill should converge on what kind of Navy they want and devise a plan to get there. Because until there is a steady, reasonable and workable plan, industry seems unlikely to invest in expansions to meet the latest here-today, gone-tomorrow shipbuilding plan.

Defense News – The littoral combat ship Detroit suffered another engineering casualty on its return trip to its home port in Florida and is being towed into Port Canaveral, the U.S. Navy confirmed Friday.

USNI News – At the beginning of the year, the Navy and Marine Corps sent a new fleet plan to Pentagon leaders that called for relying on smaller ships and unmanned vessels to meet future missions and defeat future adversaries. The Pentagon rejected the plan. Nine-months later, Pentagon leaders reached the same conclusion: the Navy needed to be more distributed and weighted towards small combatants and unmanned craft. What did that additional effort really get the sea services? Not much, according to some officials involved in both processes.

War Zone – The MQ-25s will be attached to E-2 squadrons during deployments and Hawkeye crews will cross-train to also fly the Stingrays.

Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s next Ford-class supercarrier, the John F. Kennedy, will be delivered to the fleet with its full suite of advanced electronics and with the ability to support the carrier-launched F-35C aircraft, a change from a planned two-phase delivery devised in the original contract.

CIMSEC – Now it is time to stop talking about the fleet’s future and start building it. This is why.

CIMSEC – Sitting inside a restaurant just yards from Bath Iron Works shipyard on a blustery October day, President Donald Trump’s top national security aide has two things on his mind: pizza, and the growing menace of Chinese naval expansion in the Western Pacific.

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Rep. Luria discusses investing in the industrial base to support the new fleet, carefully developing shipbuilding plans, and how Congress should become more involved with fielding new force structure.

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Dr. Kuehn discusses the pitfalls of designing a fleet around a short war, the historical context behind earlier fleet design efforts, and why naval leadership sometimes needs a push from Defense Secretaries to go in the right direction.

CIMSEC – How may the Hudson fleet in particular perform in applying U.S. naval strategy and American grand strategy, and what changes may be needed to employ this new fleet?

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Capt. Rubel discusses the Navy’s longstanding aversion to distributed force structure elements, why the Office of the Secretary of Defense may have seized the process of fleet design, and how to move the fleet toward move effective strategic and tactical dispersion. 

USNI News – The Navy fleets signed out a revision to the Optimized Fleet Response Plan Instruction, the first such update since OFRP was introduced in 2014.

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Col. Hammes discusses whether the Battle Force 2045 fleet can be afforded, how novel warfighting concepts provide a point of departure for experimentation, and how the increasing lethality of modern weaponry is driving changes in fleet design.

Defense News – The littoral combat ship Detroit is limping back to Mayport, Florida from a deployment to South America in a move that marks the latest setback for the Freedom variant’s complicated propulsion system.

CIMSEC – In this conversation, CDR Pournelle discusses getting away from exquisite legacy platforms, getting fresh perspectives in force structure assessment, and adapting the Navy to the National Defense Strategy.

USNI News – As the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) explores designs for a ship that could operate without humans aboard, the agency is keeping the Navy involved in the effort to ensure it progresses forward should the program’s work succeed.

C4ISRNet – The U.S. Navy is developing an campaign plan for unmanned vehicles that will prioritize commonalities across the service’s ever growing portfolio of drones and unmanned vessels.

CIMSEC – In this discussion, Capt. Tangredi discusses uncertainties facing the new fleet design, possible intentions behind the Defense Secretary’s rejection of the Navy’s force structure assessment, and alternative means to revamp the fleet for great power conflict.

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Capt. Kline discusses advantages realized by fielding a fleet with greater platform variety, how to mitigate risk to emerging fleet networks, and the impacts of the Robotics Age on naval force structure.

Popular Mechanics – The U.S. Navy is developing a new sea mine to make the lives of enemy submarines in wartime a lot trickier. The new Hammerhead mine is designed to lie in wait on the seabed floor, listening for the telltale signs of enemy submarines. Once a foe passes over, Hammerhead unleashes a homing torpedo that hunts down and destroys the offending sub.

(Thanks to Alain)

CIMSEC – In this conversation, Capt. Barber discusses the Navy’s longstanding resistance to new ship types, whether Battle Force 2045 can be afforded, and how to begin building this new fleet.

USNI News – Automated unmanned systems technology is advanced enough to allow the Navy to design a new mine-warfare concept of operations.

USNI Blog – Peer nations do not subscribe to the anti-CVN movement. The United Kingdom, China, and India have embraced aircraft carriers as a national priority despite advances in antiship missiles or price tags. China even has plans to develop four to six aircraft carriers by the 2030s with future variants approaching the size of Ford-class carriers with modern catapults, arresting gear, and nuclear propulsion.