– Defense News – Bryan Clark, the retired submariner and brilliant naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has been saying for months now that there was a shift happening in the surface force toward more passive sensors, and that the DDG Flight III may not be best suited for that new model.

– Defense News – What the surface fleet wants is a single combat system that runs on every ship, and runs everything on the ship, and that doesn’t mind what hardware you are running so long as you have the computing power for it.

– Breaking Defense – After years of delays, budget fights, and searing debates over the role that the ship will play, three Littoral Combat Ships will head out on their first deployments this year.

– Defense News – The commander of the Naples, Italy-based U.S. 6th Fleet, Vice Adm. Lisa Franchetti, has a front-row seat for the renewed great power competition.

– Bulletin of Atomic Scientists – Owen Cote writes that the question of whether submarines are getting harder to hide depends very much on whose submarines you’re talking about, who’s hunting them, and where. To some degree, undersea geography is destiny, when it comes to hiding and finding nuclear submarines.

– War Zone – The haunting image depicts a scene that hopefully won’t ever be repeated during an operational deployment.

– CIMSEC – The recent online republication of a 1993 Proceedings article from Capt. Christopher H. Johnson, “The Surface Navy: Still in Search of Tactics,” by the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) in July 2018 can be interpreted two ways. The reprint either suggests that Capt. Johnson’s cautionary tale of 25 years ago went unheeded and the Surface Forces are substantially unchanged in our approach to the development of tactical proficiency, or it serves as an invitation to examine what has changed.1,2 As the Surface Warfare community prepares to gather for the annual national symposium of the Surface Navy Association, I choose the latter interpretation and offer that there have been significant changes, particularly in the last five years.

– USNI News – The Navy may follow up October’s carrier strike group operations in the Arctic with another foray into the icy High North, with leadership considering sending a group of ships into a trans-Arctic shipping lane this summer, the Navy secretary said.

– War Zone – The new rounds dramatically expand the ability of the guns on these ships and other platforms to engage surface targets and air and missile threats.

– CIMSEC – Whether artillery begins to rain on the Korean peninsula, or Iranian mines litter the Strait of Hormuz, or a major terrorist attack unfolds, the Navy must never again allow itself to totally do away with preparing for the high-end fight. The story of the modern American Navy is unfortunately that of an organization that was divorced from the main purpose that had long animated its spirit, and dysfunction radiated throughout its institutions as a result. A difficult transition looms ahead, its urgency underscored by the sudden naval ascendance of a great power rival.

– USNI Proceedings – Nearly ten years into its time in the Information Warfare Community (IWC), naval intelligence has not “left the beach” with a sense of urgency to acquire and field cutting-edge systems that will vault the community into the era of big data and human-machine pairing. Instead, it largely has remained complacent while watching dramatic change occur in the information domain. The past decade has witnessed the emergence of mass digitization, artificial intelligence, robotics, and rapid technological change: the big data era. Yet naval intelligence persists in using the same tools, people, and tradecraft as in 2009. In a global security environment where “margins of victory are razor thin,” this must rapidly be addressed.

– USNI News – The Navy deployed a new ship pairing – a destroyer (DDG-51) and an amphibious transport dock (LPD-17) – to test out a new concept that could supplement amphibious squadrons and surface action groups as a formation in future operations.

– War Zone – Big claims abound about mysterious objects submariners detect below the waves, so we went straight to the source and what we found out was surprising.

– Defense News – The U.S. surface fleet has a big year in store for 2019, and we’re going to start getting more details very soon on what the future has in store for surface warriors.

– USNI Proceedings – Offensive submarine operations against highly capable modern diesel boats in the littorals require new tactics.

– USNI Proceedings – Although they appear to have disappeared from carrier strike group operations, submarines still are vitally connected to defense of the fleet—but only when and as needed.

– USNI Proceedings – To counter the return of peer competitors, the Navy is taking steps to expand the fleet and make it more deadly by distributing lethality to smaller surface ships in the form of ship-killing missiles. Distributed lethality increases the effectiveness of the U.S. fleet, but it is deficient in one key respect: it does not include Coast Guard cutters.

– USNI Proceedings – The U.S. Navy faces a growing submarine threat that it soon will be unable to match numerically. It is imperative that the service find an alternate approach. One solution is to use the U.S. Navy’s newly fielded P-8 Poseidon aircraft in tandem with the unmanned surface vessel Sea Hunter to prosecute submarines cheaply and with minimal manning.

– War Zone – The life of the often overlooked “quarterback” of the air wing that goes to work in a dimly lit flying tube to coordinate chaotic air wars from above.

– CIMSEC – Faced with the specter of having to go it alone, the Navy could capitalize on two emerging concepts to tackle the Bad Day Scenario: Dynamic Force Employment (DFE) and Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). Both concepts have the potential to improve the Navy’s global responsiveness. Integrating DFE and DMO into actual operations and doctrine creates both intriguing challenges and opportunities for the Navy of the future.

– Defense News – Cuts to new ships, aircraft, maintenance and much-needed public shipyard modernization are on deck if Congress can’t come to an agreement to avert across-the-board cuts to the defense budget by January of 2020, according to a document submitted to lawmakers Dec. 12.

– Breaking Defense – It’s a major shift after decades in which submarines focused on projecting power ashore, with their only anti-ship weapons being their rarely-used torpedoes. Driving the change: increasing anxiety about China.

– USNI Blog – Revisiting the opening campaigns in the Pacific from December of 1941 through the spring of 1942 may help divine a blueprint for future wartime aircraft carrier (CV) operations. During the early days of the war, America’s CVs operated at the edge of their logistical tether, conducting long-range tactical raids to preserve a mobile striking force and effect strategic results.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s top officer released an updated version of his strategy document Monday, an expanded version heavy on goals for specific programs that extend beyond his tenure as chief of Naval Operations.

– USNI News – Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson lays out aggressive acquisition goals and overhauls in how the Navy develops new technologies and implements operating concepts in a sweeping 2.0 revision of his Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The push to field new kit and concepts is his effort to ready the Navy for not only high-end warfare but also gray-zone conflict and other challenges related to Russian and Chinese aggression that the service and joint force will have to confront.