– CIMSEC – What if world circumstances or political decisions forced the U.S. to look at achieving a 355-ship Navy far sooner than in 11 to 30 years? Possibilities range from how to stretch or improve what already exists, to more radical notions of foreign warship procurement, armed merchantmen, and development of a U.S. Navy foreign legion type force.

– National Interest – Are periodic cruises through waters where a coastal state claims rights and prerogatives beyond those codified by treaty enough to safeguard maritime freedom?

– Breaking Defense – If the Navy ever hopes to reach its goal of a 355-ship fleet, it won’t be by simply building new hulls and launching them. Instead, the admirals have long recognized they’ll have to extend the lives of dozens of ships already long in the tooth — and do so at a time when shipyard space is already stretched and less than half of its ships are able to complete scheduled maintenance on time.

– USNI News – The Navy is rethinking how it will employ its emerging MQ-8C Fire Scout rotary-wing unmanned vehicles to help Littoral Combat Ships take on tougher targets in a new age of great power competition.

– War Zone – The 30mm Bushmasters don’t come without controversy. The ship was originally slated to get much more capable 57mm guns housed in stealthy enclosures.

– USNI Naval History – The ballistic-missile development programs of the 1950s proved that processes are only as good as the people who manage them.

– War Zone – The new drone submarines will help lay the groundwork for the service’s ambitious future unmanned undersea vehicle plans.

– Breaking Defense – “We’ve spent a lot of time over the past years playing defense,” Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, director of surface warfare, said at the West 2019 conference here. “The best defense is a good offense, and the idea that we will go after the threat — at range — is something that we have to be able to do.”

– 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.