– Defense News – As the U.S. Navy pushes forward with developing its large unmanned surface vessel, envisioned as a kind of external missile magazine that will tag along with larger manned surface combatants, a growing consensus is forming that the service needs to get its requirements and systems right before making a big investment.

– Naval News – NAVSEA answers some internet myths, rumors, and questions on the three high-tech stealthy guided missile destroyers: USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), USS Michael Monsoor (DDG 1001) and the future USS Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG 1002).

– War Zone – There’s a lot more involved with punching a torpedo out of a submarine than stuffing it in a tube and opening the hatch.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that President Donald Trump gave a radio interview last Tuesday during which he declared he would call on an unlikely source for military advice: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. Trump told host Hugh Hewitt, “You know, if I ever had a military battle, I’d call up Belichick and say what do you think? What do you think? Give me a couple of ideas.” Does Coach Belichick have what it takes?

– USNI Blog – The Navy has issued its requirements for the T-45 replacement and, not surprising to anyone who has followed naval aviation for the past 20 years, the request for information published by the Navy indicates that the trainer does not have to land or launch from the carrier. It merely has to do landing practices ashore and touch-and-go landings at sea.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is on the brink of what could be a major shift in how it operates, but first the service’s top officer wants a plan to both field technologies that have been lagging for years and develop a path forward to add new unmanned tech to the mainstream fleet.

– War on the Rocks – How does America best prevent its own naval decline? This is a good question. The problem is that it is a question asked decades too late. The Navy is in decline right now. So is the United States in terms of relative international power. The proper question for today is, “How does the United States decline gracefully?” Taking a look in the mirror, the U.S. Navy should find marked similarities to the late Victorian-era Royal Navy. Since the United Kingdom managed the declining supremacy of its naval power relatively well during this period, it would behoove Uncle Sam to borrow a lesson or two from Her Majesty.

– US Naval War College Review – American Cold War planning experienced important failures in strategic intelligence and in the way planners used that intelligence. These shortcomings were overcome through massive material investment, technological advantage, and good fortune, but in the twenty-first-century era of great-power competition the Navy cannot count on these advantages. More-careful and better-integrated intelligence-planning processes would improve our chances of success greatly.

– War Zone – The unit is intended to provide Navy submariners and anti-submarine forces with an opponent that fights just like a wide range of potential foes.

– Heritage Foundation – As the United States returns to great-power competition, it will rely more heavily on its Navy to defend the nation’s interests and meet its responsibilities around the world. And the Navy needs an effective repair base to keep its ships operational. This repair base may evolve—and Navy leaders should think strategically about its evolution—but for now it requires modernizing and reconfiguring the four existing public shipyards to meet the nuclear fleet’s requirements. Leaders’ choices to prioritize Navy shipyard modernization will have an outsized impact on Navy readiness and on national security as a whole.

– War Zone – The ability to fight and win in the high-stakes game of undersea warfare is all about the art of listening. Here’s how it’s done.

– Naval News – The United States Special Forces Command’s (USSOCOM) miniature wet and dry submersibles are progressing as planned despite some program delays related to the Coronavirus pandemic.

– CIMSEC – Do the regular functions of the sea services figure in U.S. national strategy, and if not, what must they do to adapt to competition? In so answering that question, we can gain a deeper insight into what it means to compete more fundamentally in the modern era.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy Saturday commissioned its latest littoral combat ship amid a top-level push to fix the ship’s nagging reliability issues and forge a path to make the small surface combatants useful in the years ahead.

– USNI Proceedings – A major test of U.S. power is coming, and the nation’s military must prepare.

– National Interest – James Holmes asks what should naval architects incorporate into a design to guarantee its longevity amid change? Versatility should be their watchword. It’s possible to experiment with versatile hulls—subtracting, adding, or recombining sensors, weapons, and embarked aircraft to keep the ship combat-relevant in a variety of circumstances.

– Heritage Foundation – A strong Navy has been a bedrock of U.S. national security, as well as an assurance of American prosperity through secure trade. To ensure that this remains the case, the nation urgently needs to build, train, and sustain a Navy that can effectively compete in peacetime and win in war. Several years of scandals and dwindling preparedness have reduced the Navy’s effectiveness. The challenges confronting the nation from China and Russia are intensifying. If the Navy is left unreformed, these are challenges that the Navy will struggle to meet.

– War on the Rocks – As the U.S. Navy waits for the smoke to clear onboard USS Bonhomme Richard, naval experts and sailors around the world ask the same thing: “Again?”

– The Hill – James Holmes writes that…turnabout is fair play in diplomacy and warfare. PLA commanders can try to deny the U.S. armed forces access to Western Pacific seas, skies and shores all they like. But American commanders can reciprocate if they apply intellect and material resources to this strategic problem, and do so with imagination and verve.

– CIMSEC – In April of this year, the U.S. Navy, U.S Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard (collectively, the U.S. Naval Service) jointly published the latest version of Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare, superseding the previous version released in 2010. The difference between the two documents is stark, and indicates a change over the last ten years in the way the United States views naval warfare – simultaneously reaching back to its historical roots, while also looking over the horizon to future conflicts.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s path to 355 ships was unrealistic, prompting the Pentagon to delay the release of the Navy’s annual 30-year shipbuilding plan, the presumptive incoming head of the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s in-house think tank told Senate lawmakers Tuesday.

– National Interest – In a sense the U.S. military could take advantage of role reversal in the Arctic, making the theater a laboratory for anti-access American style. Hostile forces may operate off U.S. seacoasts and will need managing if so. Fielding armaments able to reach out from land in concert with seagoing forces, and devising and practicing the necessary joint tactics, could let U.S. commanders glimpse the methods deployed by red teams around the world. And getting in the red team’s mind is a crucial step toward defeating it.

– Washington Post – David Ignatius opines on the current state of the US Navy.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is taking major steps in an attempt to shake off years of false starts and setbacks with the Littoral Combat Ship program, an effort Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he’d oversee on his watch.

– The Diplomat – The new ocean surveillance ships are expected to begin entering the fleet in 2025.