– CIMSEC – While much of the news surrounding ships and their growing price tags focuses on aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines, there is another class of ship that likewise threatens to break the Navy’s bank – amphibious ships.

– Defense News – Recent delays and a shakeup in the Virginia-class buying profile, along with a high-profile quality control issue right out of the gate on the missile tubes destined for Columbia have raised red flags and concerns about the submarine building enterprise and its ability to handle the mammoth $115 billion program without delays and major overruns.

– USNI News – Based on the Navy’s current vision of its future fleet, the service will be too top-heavy in the coming years, having more large combatants than it says it needs and not enough small combatants. But many attractive options exist today to add lethal capabilities to these large combatants and to extend their lives, and fewer options exist to speed the growth of the small combatant fleet, leaving the Navy pondering how best to invest in its surface force.

– Washington Times – An internal Navy study has faulted the sea service’s failure to prevent the leaking of secrets and technology to foreign adversaries, including China and Russia.

– USNI News – The Navy has more questions than answers on how it will use unmanned warships in the future, but it knows now is the time to get unmanned surface vehicles into the water and start learning.

– Forbes – As the U.S. Navy buys more and more modern ships, it is overlooking a cheap and mundane force multiplier, the humble training fleet. With the overtasked American surface fleet desperately looking to shed duties that distract from warfighting-oriented missions, a training fleet offers an ideal solution.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is shaking up its plan for acquiring a new, much larger and more deadly version of its Virginia-class attack submarine it aims to start buying this year.

– Breaking Defense – The Army’s experimental Multi-Domain Task Force is a “game changer” that’s turned the tide in “at least 10 wargames,” the commander of US Army Pacific says. “Plans are already changing at the combatant command level because of this.” The key: the unit cracked the Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2/AD) conundrum, Russia and China’s dense layered defenses of long-range missiles, sensors, and networks to coordinate them. “Before, we couldn’t penetrate A2/AD. With it, we could,” Gen. Robert Brown said of the task force’s performance in “at least 10 exercises and wargames.”

– 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.