– USNI News – The Navy awarded Boeing a $43-million contract to build four Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs) that will become multi-mission for the service.

– CIMSEC – Aircraft carriers have been the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy since they came to prominence during the Second World War. Their mobility and firepower were essential to winning the Pacific Campaign during that conflict, and carriers’ adaptability enabled them to remain the fleet’s primary means of power projection through the Cold War and in multiple smaller conflicts thereafter. Unless the Navy dramatically transforms its carrier air wings (CVW), however, the carrier’s preeminence will soon come to an end.

– Washington Free Beacon – Pacific commander calls China ‘greatest long-term threat’

– USNI Proceedings – The LPD-17 design requires unique shiphandling considerations.

– Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments – This report examines trends in U.S. strategy, capabilities, and threats between now and 2040 to describe the operational concepts the carrier aircraft will likely need to use in the future, and the implications for how carrier air wings should evolve during the next 20 years.

– CIMSEC – From 1998 to 2016, the CNO Strategic Studies Group (SSG) consistently recognized and accounted for the challenge of cross-domain maritime warfare, including the deep ocean. The Group generated several operational concepts that would give the Navy significant capabilities for the deep ocean part of the maritime battle.

– USNI Proceedings – The America-class amphibious assault ships possess big decks, making them also suitable as conventionally powered light aircraft carriers (CVLs)—a potentially dramatic design shift over more expensive, ever-larger nuclear-powered ones. Forthcoming ships in the class, including the future Bougainville (LHA-8), incorporate a small well deck, giving them flexibility to employ a variety of unmanned aerial, surface, and undersea vehicles—but at significant cost to the baseline aviation-centric design.

– Defense News – David Larter’s insights into the USS Fitzgerald incident, from his experiences as a former Navy surface watch supervisor.

– Pro Publica – How the Navy failed its sailors – another insightful investigative report on the USS Fitzgerald incident.

– War Zone – The new weapon will give the service’s fighter jets important extra stand-off firepower in the face of increasing threats.

– War Zone – The service blew over a billion dollars on choppers it might never have a use for and is spending even more to keep them sitting in storage.

– War on the Rocks – The American people should understand that while there were clear and present systemic issues with how the Navy trained and maintained its Japan-based ships, the Fitzgerald tragedy was the result of profound professional negligence perpetrated by people who either should have known better or did know better and chose to act otherwise.

– ProPublica – Death and valor on the USS Fitzgerald, a warship doomed by its own Navy.

– USNI News – After pulling out of a competition to outfit the Navy’s small surface combatants with anti-ship missiles, Boeing is seeing a warmer embrace of its 40-year-old Harpoon missile from the U.S. Navy’s aviation and surface fleets and from foreign military sales.

– Defense News – The Navy announced today that its buying two carriers simultaneously. It’s a nearly $15 billion contract. Here is the nitty-gritty…

– War Zone – The Nimitz class aircraft carrier has had some notable alternations that will allow it to serve through the second half of its 50-year service life.

– War Zone – After more than five years of testing, the system still hasn’t proven it can reliably spot incoming threats or destroy them.

– CIMSEC – Given recent activities by the PLA(N) and the Russian Navy, the matters of seabed warfare and the defense of undersea infrastructure have emerged as topics of interest to the U. S. Navy. Part One of this paper presents several significant considerations, arguably contrary to common thinking, that highlight the challenges of bringing the deep sea and benthic realm into cross-domain warfighting in the maritime environment.

– USNI News – The Navy held a sundown ceremony on Friday for its last operational F-18 Hornet squadron, with the “Blue Blasters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 34 taking their last flight over Naval Air Station Oceana before transitioning to newer jets.

– War Zone – The U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter unmanned surface vessel has become the first ship of any description to ever sail from San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and back without the need of a crew for navigation and steering. It’s a significant milestone for this particular vessel and its future cousins, which the service has primarily been developing as anti-submarine warfare platforms, but could also provide electronic warfare support and acting as decoys to help shield friendly forces.

– National Interest – Tallying up ship numbers makes poor shorthand for U.S. naval power. Bean counting yields one datapoint, albeit an important one. There is some bare minimum of assets needed to concentrate strength at scenes of battle. But bean counting not only disregards the enemy, the surroundings, and the goals set by the navy’s overseers, it doesn’t differentiate among ship types.

– Business Insider – Some nagging problems are affecting the Navy’s P-8As, according to a recent Pentagon report.

– Navy Times – A scathing internal Navy probe into the 2017 collision that drowned seven sailors on the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald details a far longer list of problems plaguing the vessel, its crew and superior commands than the service has publicly admitted.

– Navy Times – The watchstanders on the bridge of the USS Fitzgerald had succumbed to “confusion, indecision, and ultimately panic,” according to an internal Navy investigation into the Fitzgerald disaster obtained by Navy Times.

– USNI Proceedings – The rise of the Chinese Navy and the return of the Russian Navy have created serious challenges to U.S. command of the sea.