– Defense News – Over the coming year, Ford will be underway 11 times over 220 days, working out the kinks, training sailors and writing the book on how the new class of carriers will operate.

– War Zone – Proponents argue that the warheads give the United States added deterrent flexibility, but critics warn they lower the threshold for using nukes.

– USNI News – The role of the aircraft carrier is a keystone issue as the Navy crafts its fleet of the future.

– Breaking Defense – Planning for a 21st century Navy of unmanned vessels, distributed operations, and great power competition has collapsed. Trapped by a 355-ship force goal, a reduced budget, and a fixed counting methodology, the Navy can’t find a feasible solution to the difficult question of how its forces should be structured. As a result, the Navy postponed announcement of its new force structure assessment (FSA) from January to “the spring.” That means the navy will not be able to influence the 2021 budget year much, forfeiting a major opportunity to reshape the fleet and bring it in line with the national defense strategy.

– CIMSEC – Norman Polmar and Scott Truver write that a family of large, medium, and small USVs will take advantage of new technologies – some only dimly perceived in early 2020 – to provide increased capabilities to the Fleet with reduced construction, maintenance, and manpower. Getting there from today’s fiscal environment is critically important, and there is still much work to do to increase trust and develop CONOPs, but the potential for these unmanned vehicles to transform the future Navy is astounding.

– USNI News – The Navy’s surface warfare community wants to increase the proficiency of its officers and its ship crews by reassessing how it teaches fundamental warfighting skills and adding more complexity to pre-deployment training.

– National Interest – James Holmes asks if it is time to admit the U.S. Navy’s littoral combat ships are a failure? Yes. And no—maybe.

– Naval News – The U.S. Navy’s first MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have arrived in Guam for their initial deployment in the Pacific theater.

– Defense News – After years of stability questions about the hull design for the Navy’s new three-ship class of stealth destroyers, the commanding officer of the lead ship, USS Zumwalt, is satisfied: It handles the seas as well, if not better, than previous classes of surface combatants.

– USNI News – Even as Textron is awaiting a decision to move from development of its Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV) into production, the company also has its eye on using the vessel for missions such as surface warfare and amphibious operations.

– Defense News – The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched its newest foray into unleashing robot warships on the world’s seas: NOMARS.

– USNI News – The Navy will now commission all of its Expeditionary Sea Base ships to allow them to conduct a broader and more lethal mission set, compared to original plans for them as Military Sealift Command ships with a USNS designation.

– USNI News – The 3,000 sailors aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) arrived at their new California homeport this morning having spent more time deployed than any carrier since the mid-1970s – 294 days.

– National Interest – To a degree, anyway. Back then naval grandees, administration officials, and lawmakers discerned grave dangers gathering along the Western European and East Asian rimlands and resolved to rebuild American military might to manage them. Today naval grandees, administration officials, and lawmakers discern grave dangers gathering along the East Asian rimland and are saying the right things about rebuilding American maritime might to manage them.

– USNI News – Family and friends said goodbye on Friday to more than 6,000 sailors with the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, which is leaving for a scheduled deployment to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command region.

– USNI Blog – While the composition of the surface combatant force is frequently discussed, the composition of Marine air wings and land-based Navy platforms remains relatively unexamined. This is partly due to the success of the P-8A and the tri-service initial operating capability of F-35s. However, both Marine Corps air wings and Navy Tactical Air have glaring capability holes, which could be filled by repurposing Air Force platforms. The U.S. Navy should acquire B-1s and Marine Corps A-10s. This acquisition is both tactically and operationally advantageous, is fiscally sound, and logistically achievable in the near term.

– Fox News – The Navy’s newest destroyer may fire a not-yet-to-be fielded Conventional Prompt Strike conventionally-armed missile engineered to hit anywhere on earth within an hour.

– USNI News – The U.S. should absorb lessons from the recent ballistic missile strikes against troops in Iraq and Kenya and put a new emphasis on fielding mobile and dispersed forces, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and former Marine said on Wednesday.

Read the speech here

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is preparing to give its Flight IIA Arleigh Burke-class destroyers a major radar upgrade, trading in the AN/SPY-1D for a scaled-down version of the SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III destroyers.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s littoral combat ship is less one ship as it is two completely different ships with a common mission set. The Navy is trying to walk some of that back.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s yearlong fight to convince lawmakers it needed a significant investment in unmanned ships the size of offshore patrol vessels resulted in a kind of half-victory.

– USNI News – The Navy will put a laser weapon on a Littoral Combat Ship for the first time this year, amid efforts to boost the LCS’s lethality and to develop and field a family of laser systems.

– Defense News – The push to grow the U.S. Navy by about 20 percent was given a new lease on life, politically speaking, with a renewed push from the White House and acting secretary of the Navy. But the fundamental issue applies: The Navy can’t tack on a significant number of extra ships without more funding.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that the German Army of 1918 offers a cautionary tale about the perils of being too slow to develop new hardware to put new concepts into effect. Let’s not risk a German fate.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s plans for unleashing robot warships on the world’s oceans may need some work, according to a new study.