– Defense News – The U.S. Navy on Monday awarded its largest-ever shipbuilding contract to General Dynamics Electric Boat for construction of nine Virginia-class attack submarines, eight of which will have 84-foot section that boosts the boat’s strike missile capacity.

– USNI Blog – A new breed of strategic underwater weapons unmanned has the potential to re-shape not just mining but also anti-submarine and surface warfare.

– USNI News – USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) crossed into the eastern Atlantic Ocean on Sunday, entering the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility as part of a deployment widely believed to include relieving USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in the Middle East.

– Defense News – Last week’s ouster of Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer marked the latest in a string of leadership disasters for a beleaguered service, one that has seen a slew of admirals and senior captains reprimanded, fired or had their careers cut short for everything from ethics violations to poor performance on their watch.

– USNI News – The Navy pays a steep price keeping an aircraft carrier with escorts on station to deter attacks on oil tanker traffic operating in and around the Persian Gulf as part of the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy lacks the necessary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to support a force plans to operate more spread out and fight at longer ranges.

Read the full report from the Hudson Institute here.

– USNI News – Navy ship-driving skills of its junior officers have seen modest improvements over last the two years since the fatal collisions in the Western Pacific that resulted in the death of 17 sailors.

– War Zone – The four converted ballistic missile submarines are so much more than Tomahawk slingers and transports for Navy SEALs.

– BBC – US Navy chief Richard Spencer has been fired over his handling of the case of a Navy Seal demoted for misconduct.

– ProPublica – Navy Cmdr. Bryce Benson accepted responsibility for the deadly crash of the USS Fitzgerald and was told, “That’s done now.” But when another ship crashed, the Navy decided it wasn’t through with him. Its pursuit nearly destroyed him and his family.

– South China Morning Post – The US Navy is strengthening its presence in the South China Sea by deploying two Independence-class ships specialising in nearshore operations.

– USNI Proceedings – Infrared, radar, acoustic, and optical stealth are the new frontier in low-observability, and the winner of the metamaterial competition will have an enormous advantage in the next fight.

– National Interest – James Holmes writes that today the time has come to expand and deepen the transpacific relationship beyond periodic U.S. Marine deployments and air-force exercises.

– USNI News – The Navy is already making hard decisions – curtailing training for air wings not imminently deploying, canceling planned ship maintenance availabilities – as the specter of a full-year continuing resolution looms.

– Defense News – David Lartner with a dose of reality on hypersonic weapons.

– CIMSEC – The Naval Services must develop and train a naval expeditionary force that is tailored to support stand-in forces within the adversary’s weapons engagement zone…new force packages that are better aligned with future missions and force structure will make for a more preferable interim solution. One solution is a set of stand-in force constructs that are complementary to current formations and fleet tactics – the Littoral Combat Team (LCT), the Littoral Combat Group (LCG), and Littoral Strike Squadron (LSS).

– USNI News – The Navy’s explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) community is modernizing the way it mans, trains and equips its force to leverage new technology and lessons learned in nearly two decades of ground wars in the Middle East.

– CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy has perhaps the toughest problem among the U.S. armed services for planning long-term force structure. Navy ships and submarines are much more expensive and require far longer times to procure compared to the military equipment of the other services. As a result, Navy force planners must consider long-term time horizons to create the force structure the nation needs given the projected threat environment and operational conditions.

– War Zone – The system is likely the service’s new “ODIN” laser dazzler that is meant to blind enemy optics on ships, boats, aircraft, and missiles.

– USNI News – With the Columbia ballistic missile submarine program set to take up a large portion of Navy shipbuilding funds in the next two decades and flat budgets expected in the near-term, the Navy’s undersea warfare community has clearly prioritized where any available funds should go to support the National Defense Strategy.

– War Zone – The advanced electronic warfare program uses swarms in the air and sea to cooperatively fool a wide variety of sensors dispersed over a large area.

– War Zone – With thousands of hours flying naval H-60 variants, we get the bottom line on some of the unique aspects of flying the hugely popular helicopter.

– War Zone – The Navy runs on youth and it is downright amazing how hard young sailors work to make the Navy’s mission possible every single day around the globe.

– USNI News – The Navy had previously meant to replace its legacy mine countermeasures triad of helicopters, wooden-hull ships and divers with a Littoral Combat Ship mission package that could mostly do it all with unmanned systems – but unexpected success with a separate family of systems is leading to a new triad of capabilities for fleet commanders to employ.

– USNI News – The U.S. submarine community wants to preserve its ability to operate as a silent service under the seas while also contributing to the wider fleet and joint fight.