– 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– US Naval War College Review – Following World War I, the USN fleet was outdated and undersized, but a time of naval resurgence began in 1933, adding modern ships to the U.S. fleet and revitalizing the American shipbuilding industry.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.

– CIMSEC – Freedom of seas has been and remains essential for all Americans. However, maritime order is increasingly at risk and from both traditional and nontraditional threats. A critical question is whether we can sustain freedom of the seas into the future.

– USNI Proceedings – Directed-energy weapons could provide the U.S. military with its biggest technological advantage ever. It is time to make the big bets that will put them in the hands of war-fighters.

– USNI Proceedings – A force that can harness AI to make decisions faster than the adversary will have the advantage. But what specific tasks should these technologies help warfighters perform?

– CIMSEC – To achieve success, the Navy must enable public affairs to function as a tool of credibility versus persuasion and spin, it must embody the principles of transparency, and it must better synchronize public affairs with other elements of U.S. information power such as information operations and public diplomacy.

– USNI News – There is a Littoral Combat Ship operating forward on deployment for the first time in 19 months, with USS Montgomery (LCS-8) arriving in the Philippines over the weekend on its maiden deployment.

– Breaking Defense – Increasingly concerned over technological problems plaguing its new $13 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Navy has dispatched a unique team of civilian and government experts to the USS Gerald R. Ford in a new attempt to understand what is happening.

– Defense News – With the Navy looking to keeps its surface combatants such as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for 40-to-45 years each, sailors and maintainers must do everything they can to keep corrosion under control.

– Defense News – With bigger, faster missiles in development and bound for the fleet, the Navy’s engineers are eyeing back-fitting upgraded launchers on its stalwart Arleigh Burke destroyers.

– CIMSEC – As discussed in Part I, it is clear that NAVSEA needs to undertake a project now to completely re-engineer the next generation of SSNs. The old bloated SSN(X) (now “New SSN”) concept should be rejected entirely because it is more of the same, but bigger and more expensive. Instead, the Navy should go for a new class of SSN that is far smaller and cheaper than the current Block 5 Virginias.

– USNI News – Amphibious forces in BALTOPS 2019 tested out new, high-end tactics for the first time in a live exercise, working in a less-rigid structure that allows enablers like air-defense or anti-submarine ships, mine clearance teams and artillery units to flow through the operating area to where they can do the most good.

– CIMSEC – SEAD has evolved over the past 70 years. The DoD and Navy do not have 70 years to organize and prepare for conflict against a nation with near-peer ISR and target acquisition capabilities. The SEISR mission will require an institutional focus, the rapid evolution of concepts and tactics, focused intelligence and target study support, and the development of personnel with a tailored commitment to the Counter-ISR missions.