– Air Force – The surface-to-air missile that destroyed a US Navy drone in June heightened tensions with Iran and throughout the region. More importantly, however, it blew a hole in the notion that US aircraft designed to operate in permissive airspace—airspace absent advanced surface-to-air missile (SAM) threats—can operate with impunity anyplace and anytime. Let that be a wake-up call. Maybe Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps did the US a favor.

– CIMSEC – There can be no doubt that the United States lacks an actionable maritime strategy with respect to the South China Sea, nor does the maritime force exist to effectively counter Chinese expansion in this economically and politically critical space.

– CIMSEC – If the United States wants to compete, deter, and win in a potential conflict its military needs to be able to move troops around the theater in question at will. To do this will require a reallocation of acquisition priorities and investments.

– USNI Blog – Don’t be afraid of the robots.

– CIMSEC – We will explore how to synchronize information power to enable maritime strategy, along with several counter-arguments and perspectives.

– USNI News – One of two Blue Ridge-class command and control ships in the fleet, Mount Whitney serves as the U.S. 6th Fleet command ship and would be the platform from which operations would be controlled if a war were to occur in theater.

– Defense News – The Justice Department has filed corruption charges against the head of a Busan, Korea,-based husbanding services provider in a case with unmistakable echoes of the Fat Leonard scandal that has rocked the Navy since the investigation was revealed in 2013.

– War Zone – The service had controversially planned to sell off dozens of ships and other watercraft, inactivating multiple units in the process.

– War Zone – As Iran threatens commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, many are calling for convoys. Here is why they aren’t so easy to execute or maintain.

– USNI News – American forces are willing to provide allies with intelligence on potential maritime threats in the Middle East, but countries will need to bring their own escorts.

– USNI Proceedings – With the renewal of great power competition, the Navy–Marine Corps team must employ ships that can threaten adversaries in their home waters.

– Breaking Defense – An old Cold War base in Iceland has seen over $80 million in US investments in recent years as the Pentagon flies more surveillance missions in the high north — and plans to do more.

– USNI News – Amphibious warship USS Boxer (LHD-4) took down an Iranian drone that U.S. officials say threatened the ship as it entered the Persian Gulf on Thursday.

– US Naval War College Review – Following World War I, the USN fleet was outdated and undersized, but a time of naval resurgence began in 1933, adding modern ships to the U.S. fleet and revitalizing the American shipbuilding industry. In many ways, this period mirrors the post–Cold War state of the fleet, but the principal actors vary greatly in their level of coordination and commitment to building the Navy the nation needs.

– Defense News – Budget shortfalls created in part by greater-than-expected demands on maritime patrol aircraft are forcing the Navy to cut flight hours for several squadrons on the East Coast.

– National Interest – By law a chief of naval operations is limited to four years in the post—and that’s just not enough time to make any meaningful changes.

– USNI Blog – The Navy should make what is old, new again—build and deploy a 21st-century Avenger.

– USNI News – The U.S. military invests significant time and effort into conducting training exercises and patrols overseas – and while it does provide opportunities for sailors to have port calls in interesting places and build interoperability with allies and partners, it also helps build upon U.S. knowledge of what “normal” is in waterways around the world.

– Defense News – That old expression crossed my mind this week when I saw the carrier Truman was making its third deployment in four years. The Navy says doing this is about “stretching the limits of the Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan,” according to a Navy Times report. But why? Where’s the fire?

– USNI News – The Navy declared its MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter mission capable and ready to deploy aboard Littoral Combat Ships.

– CIMSEC – From March to June 2019 naval diplomacy and an underlying strategic geometry was on show as India, Australia, France, and Japan deployed across and around the Indo-Pacific. All of them were involved in operating with each other, with the U.S., and with other actors in the region like Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

– Defense News – The Mark VI patrol boat bristles with heavy automatic weapons, and that’s the way its crews like it.

– Defense News – I figured we’d think cold thoughts and dedicate this edition of The Drift to a little Arctic chat. The Senate Armed Services Committee is having the military look at what it would take to build a port up there and so I figured I’d call Bryan Clark, retired submarine officer and naval analyst extraordinaire at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and ask him what he thought.

– Defense News – This is the third and final installment of The Rust Dialogues, a series discussing the material condition of today’s fleet. The Drift is honored to welcome esteemed Naval Warfare correspondent Chris Cavas to close it out.

– USNI News – The Navy has finished the structural testing needed to confirm that the Hellfire anti-surface missile can safely operate on the Littoral Combat Ship, and the missile will go out on a ship deployment later this year.