– 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.

– C4ISRNet – A project inside the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has the potential to pull the Navy’s unmanned surface vessel aspirations forward a decade.

– Defense News – The Navy selected Fincantieri’s FREMM design for its next generation frigate, but as with most new platforms it will be a long time before the first ship hits the fleet.

– National Interest – Will U.S. Navy submarines be armed with laser weapons? That’s the implication of a new Navy research project.

(Thanks to Alain)

– War Zone – The Advanced Airborne Sensor is a powerful and shadowy intelligence gathering and targeting tool carried by a small number of P-8As.

– US Naval War College Review – Wayne Hughes writes that the predictive power of experts, operations analysis, and the value of information are interwoven subjects that are hard to winnow down to an essence. Prediction is a big subject, so I have limited this article to what I know best: the operational and tactical domains of conventional warfare.

– USNI Proceedings – The SEAL professional ethos serves as a reminder for Naval Special Warfare—and any who aspire to high standards—that excellence must be earned every day, on and off duty.

– Barents Observer – U.S. wants a more visible military footprint in the Arctic. The anti-submarine exercise off the coast of northern Norway on Friday comes amid increased Russian submarine sailings into the North Atlantic.

– CIMSEC – By taking a few notes from the narcos, the United States Navy can develop a class of hard-to-detect semisubmersible Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels that will be combat-effective in the high-end fight against China.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s newest surface combatant has Italian heritage. In a major win for Wisconsin’s Marinette Marine shipyard, the Navy selected Fincantieri’s so-called FREMM design, an acronym that stands for “European multi-purpose frigate,” in its original Italian.

– USNI Proceedings – The Navy is starting to pay attention to offensive mine warfare again.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy has decided to split the frigate class, recompeting the program after the first 10 ships are under contract, leading to a new award and another bite at the apple for the bidders who lost out the first time around.