– Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments – CSBA’s report finds that a robust maritime industry, and the policies that support it, are increasingly important in an era of great power competition.

– USNI News – The Navy intends to deploy its conventional prompt strike hypersonic weapon on Virginia-class attack submarines, after previous discussions of putting the weapon on the larger Ohio-class guided-missile submarine (SSGN).

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy in 2021 is planning to kick off a five-year research, testing and design effort for its next generation of large surface combatant.

– Defense News – The cost of upgrading and repairing the first four littoral combat ships is too high and it’s better just to decommission them, the U.S. Navy’s budget director said during the service’s budget roll-out.

– Defense News – The stunning growth of the Chinese fleet over the past decade has prompted the U.S. Navy to plan a full-on buying spree of ship-killing missiles over the next five years, according to projections in the sea service’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget documents.

– USNI News – The proposed Navy shipbuilding plan that cuts a Virginia-class submarine, a frigate and an oiler that were previously planned for FY 2021 received immediate bipartisan pushback from the House and the Senate.

– Defense News – The Navy is expected to buy its first next-generation frigate this year, so here’s what the next few years are going to look like in FFG(X)-land.

– Defense News – The Navy is pouring money into its manpower budget as the number of unfilled billets on ships has swollen to 9,000 — up 2,750 from last year.

– USNI News – The Navy wants to truncate production of the legacy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet in favor of pumping money into accelerating the development of its long-gestating next-generation carrier-based fighter program.

– Defense News – U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is calling for a 355-ship fleet by 2030, but for fiscal 2021, shipbuilding took a big hit in the Defense Department’s budget request.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy’s Osprey differs from the Marine Corps and Air Force versions, boasting an enhanced fuel capacity, which required wing modifications to deal with the greater weight.

– Naval News – The Secretariat of the Navy of Mexico (SEMAR) has held a ceremony marking final acceptance and delivery of the Long Range Ocean Patrol (POLA) Class vessel ARM Reformador.

– CIMSEC – Soon after a new year, it is worth considering again the forecasts of futurists and the impacts their predictions may have on the naval services.

– Defense News – Despite expected cuts to shipbuilding programs in the fiscal year 2021 budget request, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is committed to a bigger, but much lighter, naval force.

– Defense News – Six years after the U.S. Navy rolled out its “Optimized Fleet Response Plan” for manning, training and deploying its ships over a 36-month cycle, many of the key promises have failed to materialize, according to public statements from Navy officials and experts.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy conducted more freedom of navigation operations in 2019 than in any year since the U.S. began more aggressively challenging China’s claims in the South China Sea in 2015.

– USNI Blog – Given the advancement of anti-ship missile technology, saturation attack capability, and the opportunity to knock out a U.S. capital ship, carriers are becoming a liability in a peer-to-peer conflict.

– USNI News – U.S. 2nd Fleet is having deploying units test out new complex tactics on their way across the Atlantic, with each of these so-called Fleet Battle Problems contributing to an overall maturation of the concepts the Navy would use in a peer adversary fight.

– C4ISRNet – The U.S. Navy and Boeing demonstrated the ability to control unmanned aircraft with a manned jet, a capability that is critical for concepts intended to keep naval aviation relevant into the 21st century.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy plans to launch long-range, ship killing missiles from its premiere submarine-hunting aircraft, a clear signal the Pentagon is looking for new ways to meet the tyranny of distance in the Pacific theater.

– Naval News – Aki is the third vessel of the Hibiki-class of Ocean Surveillance Ships. Their mission is to gather undersea acoustic data emitted by foreign submarines. Therefore, Aki is equipped with a surveillance towed-array sensor system (SURTASS), which is a very long range active / passive sonar that can be deployed into the sea to collect various acoustic data.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald, which was badly damaged in a 2017 collision off Japan that claimed the lives of seven sailors, is underway for its first significant at-sea time since arriving at Ingalls Shipbuilding two years ago.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that battleship history casts doubt on the future of über-expensive behemoths like the U.S. Navy’s Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs). The question isn’t just whether the aircraft carrier is obsolete, a floating target in the missile age. That reduces the question to technology. The question is whether the carrier is worth its cost in strategic and political terms.

– USNI News – As the Navy moves forward with unmanned surface and undersea vessels in a range of sizes for myriad missions, some things remain constant among the vehicles: they’ll all need to continue making improvements in autonomy, they’ll all need parts that are reliable enough to go without human intervention for weeks or months at a time, and they’ll all need power sources for their long journeys. The Navy and its industry partners, even as they work through the acquisition and development of specific programs, are hard at work tackling the “foundational” technology areas that cut across programs.

– Defense News – The is U.S. Navy desperately trying to get away from shooting down anti-ship missiles with other missiles, and the carrier Gerald R. Ford could prove useful in the pursuit of alternatives.