– USNI News – The Navy has a more straightforward path to developing and fielding unmanned surface vessels than many critics realize, according to the admiral in charge of building them.

– CIMSEC – The following is adapted from remarks delivered at the annual CIMSEC Forum for Authors and Readers, covering the “How the Fleet Forgot to Fight” article series.

– National Interest – Those pesky carrier-killer missiles, new detection methods that can ‘unsteatlh submarines’ and other threats loom large. Is the age of warships, submarines and aircraft carriers over?

– USNI News – With both variants of the Littoral Combat Ship in serial production at two yards and those ships now kicking off an enduring multi-ship overseas presence, the Navy is turning its focus to increasing the lethality and survivability of the hulls.

– USNI News – Five years from now, there may be as many Littoral Combat Ships deployed as there are destroyers.

– Defense News – It can travel more than 100 nautical miles, passively detect an enemy through imaging stored in its computer brain, and can kill a target so precisely that an operator can tell it to aim for a specific point on the ship – the engine room or the bridge, for example. And it’s heading to China’s stomping grounds.

– USNI News – As the Navy continues to inject more live, virtual and constructive events to prepare ships’ crews to defeat potential threats, surface warfare training officials are looking to add more realistic adversaries and tougher scenarios via virtual training.

– USNI News – After less than two years forward-deployed, big deck amphib USS Wasp (LHD-1) has left Japan.

– USNI News – The head of the Navy’s surface force is pushing the fleet to be more ready for high-end combat, both in the skills of the crew and the material condition of the ships.

– USNI News – Aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) is experiencing a malfunction of the ship’s electrical distribution system ahead of an expected deployment this fall.

– War Zone – The mysterious modular system with a peculiar past is designated AN/SLQ-59 and has been quietly deployed on Asia-based U.S. surface combatants.

– National Interest – Over the years it’s become commonplace for writers to sex up their descriptions of guided-missile destroyer (DDG) Zumwalt, the U.S. Navy’s newest surface combatant. Commentators of such leanings depict the ultra-high-tech DDG-1000 as a battleship. Better yet, it’s a “stealth battleship”—a fit subject for sci-fi! Not so.

– National Interest – How can the U.S. Navy prolong the relevance of its big-deck aircraft carriers amid increasingly menacing surroundings?

– War on the Rocks – The Defense Department should sustain and expand its existing intermediate sealift and expeditionary logistics capability until it either has a plan to replace these vital assets — or a concept of operations that doesn’t require it — lest the fight be lost for the want of a nail.

– Defense News – Before he headed out the door, Defense News sat down with Richardson in his mostly empty office to talk about the state of the Navy, great power competition, partnerships in Europe and the submarine industrial base.

– National Interest – Lots of reasons why this will never happen.

– USNI Blog – When I was first approached about leading a multinational team on a mission to the Gulf of Guinea, I was excited. I knew it was part of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa (NAVEUR-NAVAF)’s mission to assist our partner nations in Africa, and what better way to do that than be on the ground, working side-by-side with our counterparts in the region?

– New York Times Magazine – The F-35 was once the Pentagon’s high-profile problem child. Has it finally moved past its reputation of being an overhyped and underperforming warplane?

– War Zone – A new generation of advanced and highly capable modular radar systems is going to be deployed across the Navy’s fleet in many configurations.

– Defense News – Adm. John Richardson, who was plucked from Naval Reactors to lead the service as it geared up for its number one shipbuilding priority the replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, is leaving his post with the cracks beginning to show in the U.S. submarine industrial base.

– CIMSEC – While the Iranian Armed Forces have greatly improved in recent decades and can be a serious threat to commercial and military assets transiting the Strait of Hormuz, there are many ways to counter these forces and maintain freedom of navigation. Since Iran has developed many asymmetric tactics to counter the U.S. and its allies, the best way to respond is to develop opposing asymmetric tactics and unconventional means, both military and political, to throw Iran off balance.

– USNI News – The U.S. Navy and the world it operates in are a far cry from what they were four years ago.

– National Interest – And China, Russia or Iran won’t like it one bit.

– CIMSEC – In the wake of growing tensions with Iran in the Gulf and around the Strait of Hormuz, the United States announced a push for an international coalition that would monitor activity in the area and guard against maritime security breaches. The coalition would be known as “Sentinel.” Although it is unclear as of yet which countries will make up this alliance, over 20 states are in consideration.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is short hundreds of millions of dollars for ship depot maintenance this year and is already looking at just shy of $1 billion in unfunded maintenance in 2020, shortfalls that threaten to upend progress toward improved readiness and clearing its maintenance backlog.