War on the Rocks – Last November, a Royal Australian Navy base near Perth was the port of call for an unusual patrol composed of two French ships, the nuclear-powered attack submarine Emeraude and the support and assistance vessel Seine. The French patrol trained with the Australian navy before sailing to the South China Sea, where it served as part of France’s efforts to challenge China’s sweeping maritime claims in the region. In addition to serving as another example of France’s ambition to be a real player in the Indo-Pacific, this long-distance and long-duration deployment demonstrated the growing importance of French-Australian cooperation.
Pier Competitor: Testimony on China’s Global Ports
US Naval War College Review – The United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission convened a daylong hearing on the global power-projection capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on 20 February 2020. What follows is a version of the testimony with which the author responded to the commission’s questions on Chinese bases and access points, drawing on an original data set of the ninety-five overseas port terminals that Chinese firms—primarily three entities, two of which are central state–owned enterprises—own, operate, or both.
War Studies Primer
We invite you to try War Studies Primer – an introductory course on the study of war and military history. Its purpose is to provide an introduction to the study of war.
War Studies Primer is presented as a lecture curriculum at the university level. It is a free, non-credit, self-study course that consists of 28 topics and over 1,900 slides and is updated on a yearly basis.
Look at slides 2 and 3 in the War Studies Primer for its Table of Contents, and then choose a lecture to read and enjoy.
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The Enduring Legacy of the War of Jiawu
Naval History – The Beiyang Fleet’s resounding defeat in the 1894 Battle of the Yalu River left its mark on Chinese naval thinking to this day.
American Special Ops Forces Are Everywhere
The Atlantic – They’ve become a major military player—and maybe a substitute for strategic thinking.
This Is The Early Warning Radar Helicopter The Royal Navy Could Have Had
War Zone – Her Majesty’s Navy turned down a Merlin equipped with an active electronically scanned radar for a far less cutting-edge solution.
Japan To Introduce 3 New Transport Vessels By 2024
Naval News – On February 16, 2021, Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi announced that the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) will establish a unit equipped with three new transport ships by 2024.
A Future Chinese Indian Ocean Fleet?
War on the Rocks – Both Chinese and outside naval experts speculate that the PLAN may have an Indian Ocean fleet in the near future.
Trustable AI: A Critical Challenge For Naval Intelligence
CIMSEC – Even the best performing AI/ML technologies are moot if the analyst or downstream decision maker cannot trust the outputs.
Canadian warship transits South China Sea as diplomatic tensions remain high
CBC – A Canadian warship sailed through sensitive waters near China this week amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The Unique Intelligence Challenges of Countering Naval Asymmetric Warfare
CIMSEC – Naval intelligence organizations seeking to understand asymmetrical naval forces must promote a culture of creativity, daring, pluralism, and deep cultural knowledge in order to best understand how the asymmetric adversary behaves and operates.
PLA’s largest near-Taiwan exercise features bombers to island’s east, ‘blocks foreign interventions’
Global Times – The warplane exercise by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) near the island of Taiwan on Friday is not only the largest since the PLA started routine exercises in the region last year, but also a rare one that saw bombers flying to the eastern side of the island.
Philippine fighter aircraft’s flybys over Chinese fishing boats in South China Sea ‘risky’
Global Times – The daily flybys by Philippine fighter aircraft over Chinese fishing boats taking shelter from the weather near a Chinese reef in the South China Sea are inappropriate, and might inflame tensions and risk accidents, Chinese experts said on Sunday.
The Coastwatchers: Intelligence Lessons Learned For the Future Single Naval Battle
CIMSEC – The historic success of the Coastwatchers provides valuable insight for naval intelligence in the future single naval battle. Proactive intelligence, multi-domain intelligence, and local access and support remain necessary for an effective naval intelligence operation. Naval forces will grow stronger through these lessons as the world’s security environment becomes more complex and dynamic. The future challenge is to harmonize these lessons into a single integrated naval force. As the naval force tackles this and other challenges, remember the Coastwatchers.
The Longest Telegram: A Visionary Blueprint For the Comprehensive Grand Strategy Against China We Need
War on the Rocks – In February 1946, the diplomat George Kennan — then serving as charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow — authored a 5,000-word telegram analyzing the sources of Soviet conduct and laying out the case for what would become the Cold War strategy of containment. Seventy-five years later, as the United States enters a new era of great-power competition with the People’s Republic of China, War on the Rocks is pleased to publish a landmark essay in this same tradition by acclaimed international relations strategist and renowned Sinologist C. Lea Shea, drawing on his decades of scholarship and service in Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
Calling in Thunder: Naval Intelligence Enabling Precision Long-Range Fires
CIMSEC – The Naval Information Warfare Community has been a cornerstone of every decisive point in every major naval battle in history. Despite this pedigree, GPC has placed an exciting challenge on the NIWC. To deter and win a GPC fight in 2035 and beyond, the NIWC must evolve to meet the challenge. To embrace the problems of the future, the NIWC must build a force that can integrate with the most important disruptive technologies like AI, train the force to quickly integrate and employ those technologies, and to acquire those technologies at the right pace.
NGAD Will be Family of Systems, Super Hornet Replacement Likely a Manned Fighter
USNI News – The Navy is leaning toward replacing its fleet of Super Hornets with another manned fighter that will work with emerging unmanned aircraft concepts under the umbrella of the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance program.
Navy recovers MH-60S helicopter, nearly 20,000 feet underwater, in new record
Navy Times – The Navy has recovered an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter that crashed into the Philippine Sea in January 2020 off the coast of Okinawa — and set a record while doing so.
(Thanks to Alain)
Russian Submarine Surfaced Beside Huge Hole Blown Open In The Ice Seen In Satellite Imagery
War Zone – The Russian sub might have used a torpedo to blast apart the ice during a recent exercise to prove it could launch its missiles during a time of war.
With a second frigate yard competition on the horizon, Austal USA moves to add steel shipbuilding
Defense News – Austal USA has broken ground on a steel production line in Mobile, Ala., as the Navy winds down its aluminum-hulled shipbuilding programs and plans on larger numbers of smaller ships.
Brains and Brown Shoes: Building a Better Naval Aviation Intelligence Officer
CIMSEC – Today’s naval aviation intelligence training is mediocre. In a future peer adversary fight, inadequate aviation intelligence training will spell catastrophe. A future fight may require matching US forces against an even more advanced Chinese military and an equally determined and deadly Russian bear. The problems facing the naval aviation and intelligence communities are complex, and hard decisions must be made to invest more time in naval intelligence education and training. Naval intelligence must once again return to its historic roots of providing high value actionable intelligence to enable naval aviation success and save aviators’ lives.
Iran’s New Missile Corvette Could Reshape IRGC Naval Doctrine
USNI News – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N) is building a new class of warships, as first reported in Naval News last week based on satellite imagery. The catamaran design appears relatively large, modern and capable compared to existing IRGC commercial-based designs. The sectarian arm of the Iranian military’s move to more substantial warships may be part of a wider effort by the IRGC-N to gain conventional naval capabilities more in line with the regular IRIN (Islamic Republic of Iran Navy).
Intel Owns Red: How Red Teaming Can Prepare the Fleet For the Fight Ahead
CIMSEC – The most effective way to reinvigorate NAVINTEL’s focus on owning Red comes via two main methods: deep understanding of the adversary and the application of structured contrarian analysis. We describe these combined phenomena as Red Teaming, a two-pronged analytical methodology that can and should be applied at all levels of war.
America’s Maritime Army: How The U.S. Military Would Fight China?
1945 – James Holmes writes that a couple of weeks back the U.S. Army released the latest in the family of strategy documents to issue forth from the armed services, alongside such directives as the U.S. Marines’ Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and the sea services’ Triservice Maritime Strategy. Titled Army Multi-Domain Transformation, this “Chief of Staff Paper” from General James McConville makes it official: the army is back in the sea-power business.
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