– Defense News – The vessels could also prove useful in the Navy’s quest to identify a flexible hull that can meet a number of missions as it seeks to replace its aging logistics fleet.

– Defense News – With the world’s eyes on the embattled carrier Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. Navy is taking strong measures to make sure it can surge healthy aircraft carriers if needed. The carrier Harry S Truman, at the tail end of a seven-month deployment, is being held offshore as indefinitely as the Navy aims to keep its surge carrier deployment ready amid a global pandemic.

– Breaking Defense – Unmanned underwater vehicles will scatter anti-submarine mines as a new way to protect US Navy ships at sea, part of a larger push to screen the fleet from increasingly sophisticated Chinese and Russian subs prowling the seas.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy should increase the use of unmanned systems in ASW across the board, which cost a fraction to buy and operate compared to their manned counterparts.

– USNI Proceedings – A truly integrated naval service should have a single headquarters to provide common fiscal, acquisition, and technology policy and support to the operating forces.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy plans to test its developmental hypersonic missile from a submarine by the mid-2020s, and is pushing the burgeoning program through a series of static tests this year to demonstrate technologies as it gears up to equipping its Virginia-class submarines with the weapon.

– War on the Rocks – This is Part 2 in a series on command philosophies and command technologies.

– War on the Rocks – This is the first article in a series on command philosophies and command technologies.

– Defense News – The last of the U.S. Navy’s eight Block III Virginia-class submarines has joined the fleet.

– National Review – With the Navy lacking a well-balanced fleet, the U.S. must rely on destroyers to do the job of frigates.

– CIMSEC – Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Gilday’s December 2019 Fragmentary Order (FRAGO), “Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority,” emphasizes the importance of building alliances and partnerships to enhance U.S. warfighting capability, with a particular focus on “full interoperability at the high end of naval warfare.”…The U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Deployment Program (CDP), a framework for integrating partner nation (PN) navy units into deploying U.S. Navy strike groups, offers a particularly valuable instrument for advancing this goal.

– CNN – Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has submitted his resignation a day after leaked audio revealed he called the ousted commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt “stupid” in an address to the ship’s crew.

– USNI Proceedings – Long-range strike coupled with battlefield transparency will make ships targetable anywhere, any time. As some of these capabilities already are being fielded, the window for developing counterstrategies is closing fast.

– Task and Purpose – The Navy has hit a new low by firing an aircraft carrier captain who was trying to save his crew from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

– USNI News – The Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) are now in the Persian Gulf as USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) crossed the Suez Canal and is now operating in the Mediterranean Sea after spending several weeks in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations.

– Defense News – A $1.6 billion defensive ring around Guam. Millions in new military funding for partner nations. A billion dollars for increased stockpiles of long-range weapons. These are just some of the investments on a $20 billion wish list quietly submitted to Congress in recent weeks by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Adm. Phil Davidson. The wish list was specifically requested by members of Congress who are eyeing it as the basis for a new Pacific-focused pot of money to deter Chinese military action in the region.

– USNI News – The carrier commander who warned that his crew didn’t have enough resources to fight an accelerating COVID-19 infection aboard his ship, has been relieved of command.

– BBC – The US says it is sending warships to the Caribbean to stop illegal drugs.

– Naval News – U.S. Navy Expeditionary Sea Base ship USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3), assigned to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (USNAVCENT), has been conducting joint naval and air integration operations with U.S. Army AH-64E Apache attack helicopters assigned to U.S. Army Central Command’s (USARCENT) Task Force Saber, throughout the month of March.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy generated glowing headlines and cheering crowds when deploying its hospital ships Mercy and Comfort to Los Angeles and New York City respectively. But the ships are both pushing 50 years old and need replacing, and what those replacements will look like is anything but certain.

– USNI News – The commander of USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) asked U.S. Pacific Fleet leadership to take his crew off his carrier and send them all into quarantine ashore on Guam, as a COVID-19 outbreak on the carrier spreads at an accelerating rate.

– USNI Proceedings – The service must address this threat to the lifelong health of its sailors.

– War Zone – Two sailors onboard the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, which forward-deployed in Japan and presently pier-side there, have tested positive for the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. This comes just a day after the U.S. Navy announced it had quarantined the entire crew of another aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, on their ship in port in Guam after a number of sailors contracted the virus.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s first stealth destroyer, the Zumwalt, is on track to have its combat system installation completed and delivered within days.

– Navy Times – To combat a growing outbreak of COVID-19 on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, the Navy has ordered the ship to pull into Guam and have the whole crew of 5,000-plus sailors tested for the novel coronavirus.