– War Zone – The U.S. Navy’s first-in-class amphibious assault ship USS Wasp recently arrived in the Philippines for a major annual exercise carrying a U.S. Marine Corps contingent that includes at least 10 F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. This is a larger than average number of the combat jets than Wasp-class ships normally embark, but is a force structure that the Navy and Marines are looking to standardize. It’s also one that could help lay the groundwork for a future operating concept that could turn amphibious assault ships into light carriers, as necessary.

– USNI News – Naval forces forward-deployed in the Pacific took a big step in raising their warfighting proficiency, completing their first advanced training event hosted by the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (SMWDC).

– USNI News – The Navy’s mine countermeasures community brought all three legs of its triad together for a single experiment – aboard an allied ship – to see how well they could combine their gear and people to tackle a common threat.

– CIMSEC – Despite a lengthy pedigree of combined naval operations, the U.S. Navy must continue focusing on interoperability with allies.

– USNI News – Vice Adm. Bill Merz told the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee on Tuesday that the distributed maritime operations concept – which is appropriate when facing potential peer or near-peer adversaries – requires a different mix of ships within the fleet, as well as a different approach to logistics and medical care for the fleet.

– USNI News – Unforeseen problems in repairing USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) will push delivery of the carrier back to the fleet by three months, into October

– Defense News – The Pentagon’s decision to decommission the carrier Harry S. Truman appears to be sputtering and dying in a wave of skepticism and resistance from lawmakers.

– War on the Rocks – The past 17 years have trained navy reservists for the new global realities of small wars, land wars, irregular warfare, and insurgencies. These joint experiences have shaped reserve units collectively and individually, but not — largely — for maritime operations. The time, however, has come to recognize that what the navy reserve has done in the past two decades in land operations must fundamentally shift and take what the Navy Reserve has learned while preparing for other challenges. The culture, training, and operational opportunities must change. Every community must be made ready today for the naval war we all know is coming — a war that in some ways is already here.

– War Zone – The service will face huge challenges in meeting that goal and just sustaining those vessels will cost many billions more than it spends now.

– War Zone – The SM-6 is getting a way bigger rocket motor that will allow it to reach even farther than before and enemy ships may be its primary target.

– USNI News – The Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan outlines a path forward that includes less near-term growth in fleet size but reaches and sustains a 355-ship fleet sooner than last year’s plan.

– USNI News – The Navy released its first-ever long-range ship maintenance and modernization plan amid a growing fleet and a growing backlog of repair work, and the report highlights challenges in dealing with chronic mismatches between maintenance requirements and yards’ capacity.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is dealing with persistent delays throughout its submarine-building enterprise as it prepares to enter into a historically large contract for the complicated Block V Virginia-class attack submarine and begin heavy work on the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines.

– Defense News – Facing ever-faster missiles and increasingly complicated air threats from China and Russia, the U.S. Navy is moving toward a major upgrade to its stalwart Arleigh Burke destroyer fleet.

– War Zone – A stunning deficiency in readiness rates for Navy and Marine F-35s calls into question whether the stealth jets can fight a prolonged conflict.

– CNN – A new case of a viral infection aboard a US navy warship was reported Tuesday, which means the USS Fort McHenry will continued to be quarantined at sea in the Middle East.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is preparing to sign a contract with General Dynamics Electric Boat and subcontractor Huntington Ingalls Industries for the next tranche of Virginia-class submarines.

– CIMSEC – Parts One and Two of the Bad Day Scenario series posited a worst case-style scenario for the U.S. Navy, discussed ways the Navy might respond with current capacity and capability, and introduced emerging concepts that could help the Navy address similar scenarios in the future as a more globally responsive force. Dynamic Force Employment (DFE), the U.S. military’s latest concept for employing the joint force with agility and unpredictability, will have a significant impact on how the Navy is used as an instrument of national power. Meanwhile, Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is the Navy’s emergent concept for force development and maritime operations that will be capable of generating combat power across a broad range of platforms, domains, geographical area, and potential adversaries. The rest of the Bad Day Scenario series aims to reconcile the DFE and DMO concepts into an overall model for developing a dynamic, distributed, and lethal global force by 2020.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is eyeing canceling six planned service-life extensions on its oldest cruisers, meaning the Navy will be short six of its current 22 largest surface combatants by 2022.

– Fox – The increasing global reach of Chinese nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, armed with JL-2 weapons reportedly able to hit parts of the US, continues to inspire an ongoing Navy effort to accelerate production of attack submarines, prepare long-dwell drones for deployment to the Pacific and continue acquisition of torpedo-armed sub-hunting planes such as the P-8/A Poseidon.

– Post and Courier – Robert D. Kaplan writes that “A naval century is upon us, in keeping with an era of globalization that depends on safe and secure sea lines of communication for container shipping. But nobody should assume it will be peaceful. The United States is coming home from tragic wars, but there is little relief in sight.”

– Forbes – With global naval tensions on the rise, a grand tool of naval diplomacy, the old-fashioned international fleet review, is making a weaponized comeback. While the U.S. can easily sink the restless navies that are busy flaunting their latest ships and newest technologies, America’s maritime rivals have discovered that these maritime beauty contests offer an entirely new and low-risk axis of naval competition. Looks can kill; the stressed and tired-looking U.S. Navy is ill-prepared to compete as the genteel pageantry of ceremonial port calls and flamboyant multi-national fleet reviews become just another means to grind down an overextended U.S fleet.

– Defense News – A project birthed in the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office is getting some serious buy-in from the U.S. Navy, and could yield the world’s first large-scale armed unmanned warship.

– USNI News – The Navy’s new focus on distributed maritime operations and the incorporation of high-end weapons is prompting a re-look at the future Large Surface Combatant program and an apparent delay in the planned start of the new ship class.

– CIMSEC – This has been an attempt to capture some of the interesting thoughts, from two separate working groups, on how the U.S. Navy could achieve a 355 battle force ship Navy sooner than current plans predict.