– USNI Proceedings – The U.S. ally network is under attack, and the Navy must redouble its efforts to build and expand global partnerships.

– War Zone – The successful test of the powerful laser is a major step forward for the Navy’s directed energy weapons ambitions.

– CIMSEC – The United States has the largest and most advanced navy in the world, and is an important actor in the Caribbean region and the Western Hemisphere as a whole. Increased maritime enforcement is vital, especially to combat drug trafficking in the region. However, aiming to control drug trafficking will not make these criminal groups disappear. They will take alternate routes and capitalize on trading other illicit goods. In order to establish a sustainable and peaceful approach to the region’s maritime security challenges, the U.S. must take a holistic approach to maritime security threats and empower local organizations to solve regional security challenges at their source.

– USNI News – The Navy this week released a request for proposals for a Medium Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (MUUV) that is meant to streamline two existing unmanned systems into a single open architecture UUV.

– War Zone – The mini-torpedoes could be a game-changer and are set to be fielded on Virginia class submarines in the next few years.

– USNI News – USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is underway for the first time since its deployment was interrupted for 55 days to battle a COVID-19 outbreak that infected almost a quarter of the crew.

– USNI News – The increased technical complexity of systems and reduced manning make U.S. warships less able to operate if a disease breaks out on a ship than the previous ships that weathered the 1918 influenza outbreak, a panel of experts said last week.

– War on the Rocks – Malaysian oil exploration in a contested area of the South China Sea sparked a “five-nation face off” in April, with Malaysian, Vietnamese, Chinese, U.S., and Australian maritime forces sailing within relatively close proximity. When the responding U.S. Navy Expeditionary Strike Group departed after spending only a few days in the area, some observers panned the U.S. response as uninvited, insufficient, and having emboldened China. The passage of a few weeks has shown these accusations to be premature, but also highlighted a recurring weakness in the U.S. approach to maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. While the U.S. strike group may have departed, U.S. forces sortied from both forward deployed locations and the U.S. homeland to maintain a persistent presence over the South China Sea with platforms ranging from small surface combatants to strategic bombers. China’s presence has remained largely static. Overall, the United States shows progress in its approach but also an inexplicable missed opportunity to reach out to its Southeast Asian partners.

– War Zone – U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft flew a route close to China’s Hainan Island in the South China Sea, which is home to a massive People’s Liberation Army Navy base, earlier today. This particular aircraft is one of a small subset of the service’s Poseidon fleet that is configured to carry a shadowy radar system known as the AN/APS-154 Advanced Airborne Sensor.

– War Zone – Surviving below the waves relies primarily on stealth, but if detected, countermeasures may be your only shot of keeping out of a watery grave.

– Forbes – The U.S. Navy has patented technology to create mid-air images to fool infrared and other sensors. This builds on many years of laser-plasma research and offers a game-changing method of protecting aircraft from heat-seeking missiles. It may also provide a clue about the source of some recent UFO sightings by military aircraft.

– CIMSEC – Commander’s intent is the cornerstone of mission command. Yet, it remains a nebulous form of communication. In naval operations, commander’s intent is infrequently understandable, let alone actionable.

– Breaking Defense – Acting Navy Secretary James McPherson has scuttled a major initiative of his ousted predecessor, canceling a planned 6-month study on the future of the aircraft carrier, relying instead on a DoD-led effort to determine the size and structure of the future fleet.

– USNI Blog – In a conflict with China, the United States will be pressed for time, personnel, and especially ships. U.S. industrial capacity struggles to produce a 355-ship Navy even in peacetime. In a hot war where the Navy is contested on the high seas, losses will be taken. New ships will need be needed to fill the gaps left by bloody battles of attrition. If the industrial base has difficulty meeting the needs of a peacetime Navy, one can only speculate that the strain after the opening salvos of a conflict. Between 1975 and 2000, the U.S. shipbuilding industry declined from 80 ships a year to just eight. The lack of industrial surge capacity shows a serious weakness in U.S. military capability, especially for the Navy.

– Defense One – Great power competition requires more than preparing for great power conflict.

– USNI News – Almost three months after arriving in Guam, a pair of MQ-4C Triton autonomous, unmanned aircraft have integrated into fleet operations and training flights and stretched the Navy’s maritime domain awareness across the Indo-Pacific.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s Barents Sea patrol is the latest sojourn into an increasingly militarized Arctic, where questions of international law are proliferating.

– Defense News – Research in the Arctic Ocean is no small feat. The area can prove inaccessible at times, and sensors can fail to communicate data from under the ice or get crushed by slabs of ice.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy is continuing to run missions to ensure freedom of navigation and show presence in the Western Pacific while other militaries are scaling back their operations amid COVID-19 concerns.

– USNI Proceedings – To best support their warfighting customers, naval intelligence professionals must know the threat and U.S. combat capabilities.

– War Zone – Boeing has released a video of the rollout of the first of two Block III F/A-18F Super Hornet test jets for the U.S. Navy. The service plans to use these aircraft, which do not feature the full set of upgrades, for various flight tests and to explore new concepts of operation ahead of the delivery of jets with the complete Block III package, which is set to begin later this year.

– Breaking Defense – A mix of US ships have probed waters illegally claimed by China in the South China Sea in recent weeks, as the PLA Navy continues to harass civilian ships of neighboring countries.

– Barents Observer – The US and UK naval group leaves the Barents Sea Friday evening after five days in waters where Russia’s Northern Fleet normally exercises. The voyage marks a new age with U.S. Navy surface warships sailing in the north.

– National Review – Jerry Hendrix writes that the U.S. Navy’s decision last week on a new frigate design for domestic production undercuts the argument that the United States is withdrawing from the world.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy just isn’t equipped to deploy or sustain a new fleet of unmanned vessels yet.