– 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.

– USNI News – The Pentagon requested a Fiscal Year 2020 budget that advocates changes in the way the Navy does business – pushing for lethal but “attritable” unmanned systems, artificial intelligence and hypersonics to give the Navy and Marine Corps an edge against high-end adversaries.

– Breaking Defense – An inside source explains the logic behind the 2020 budget’s most controversial call.

– War Zone – The service wants to get the first two unmanned ships quickly to help refine its requirements and craft plans for employing them in actual combat.

– Breaking Defense – The US keeps losing, hard, in simulated wars with Russia and China. Bases burn. Warships sink. But we could fix the problem for about $24 billion a year, one well-connected expert said, less than four percent of the Pentagon budget.

– USNI News – The Navy is moving fast to acquire a new class of unmanned surface vehicles and hopes to award a contract for USV designs by the end of the year.

– War on the Rocks – The aircraft carrier fleet and the amphibious fleet are typically viewed as polar opposites: the fast nuclear carrier projecting strike aircraft from the deep blue on one side, and the plodding but versatile amphibious ship projecting Marine infantry in the littoral on the other. Despite obvious dissimilarities in speed, payload, and function, they both share a critically important place in the overall fleet architecture — they are both unaffordable anachronisms of a bygone era.

– USNI News – The top American officer in Europe wants two more destroyers stationed in his area of responsibility and a “better pace” of carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups moving through the region.

– CIMSEC – While the concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) may represent the major, new thrust in the Navy’s warfighting thought, it does not arrive out of a vacuum. In order to fully understand both the concept and implications of DMO, it is essential to first understand the seminal documents and thoughts out of which it grew.

– CIMSEC – The Navy needs to look beyond the fleet for ways to increase combat power…At a minimum that mix must include Marine and Army surface fires, fast attack craft, Air Force anti-surface warfare, and whatever else is needed to distribute firepower and sustain command of the seas.

– USNI News – The Navy is investing in its explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) force, doubling the number of unmanned systems platoons in the community in the next couple years and improving the technology on their unmanned underwater vehicles.

– USNI News – A pair of expeditionary fast transport ships (EPFs) are playing a key role in this year’s multi-national Pacific Partnership 2019 exercise focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in the region.

– USNI News – The Navy has issued a draft request for proposal to design and build its planned class of 20 next-generation guided-missile frigates (FFG(X)).

– Breaking Defense – Are big, expensive vessels like amphibious ships and carriers too vulnerable in a long-range missile war with Russia or China?

– USNI News – A Pentagon budget plan to sideline an aircraft carrier, rather than refuel it, and redirect money for other defense priorities would save just $16.9 million in Fiscal Year 2020, USNI News has learned.

– USNI News – The Navy declared today that its F-35C Joint Strike Fighter was operationally ready to deploy and conduct missions around the world.

– War on the Rocks – The inability to keep up with the increasing speed of naval combat is only going to get worse. The advent of hypersonic weapons, particularly anti-ship cruise missiles, represents a grave threat to U.S. surface forces.

– Breaking Defense – The move could save more than $30 billion over 25 years to invest in high-tech weapons — but Congress is sure to explode in outrage.