– Breaking Defense – Frustrated with Pentagon-run war games that contributed to the Defense Secretary taking over the Navy’s shipbuilding plans, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly on Tuesday said be believes planners should not have added a phantom 12th aircraft carrier to the mix, an extra ship the Navy won’t have until the 2060s.

– Naval News – Lockheed Martin received an Office of Naval Research (ONR) contract to integrate a prototype Layered Laser Defense (LLD) weapon system aboard a U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

– USNI News – Manning forward-deployed ships with fewer sailors, making less carrier strike groups available to deploy and reducing the size of command staffs are moves the Navy is considering as part of its drive to reduce $40 billion from its budget, according to a February memo outlining the cuts under consideration.

– USNI Blog – Redefining what a mine is, across the services, is an important step to ensure that the wealth of creativity and expertise in the technical and operational community are taken advantage of.

– National Interest – The growing modern mine threat is so significant, that the Navy has been fast-tracking a wide range of new countermine attack and defense strategies. The approach is focused on both littoral mine fields as well as higher-tech deep water mines associated with threats posed by great powers as well, according to senior service leaders.

(Thanks to Alain)

– National Interest – As Richard Feynman might advise: make caveat emptor your motto when sizing up new concepts. If a hypothesis doesn’t undergo rigorous tests, and if it doesn’t perform well . . . it’s wrong.

– USNI News – Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly is commissioning a six-month study on the future of the aircraft carrier and carrier-based aviation, the Navy announced today.

– USNI News – The future of anti-submarine warfare for countries who can’t afford to invest in top-of-the-line submarines and maritime patrol aircraft could be a netted fleet of unmanned platforms that can create “passive acoustic barriers” at chokepoints or drag towed arrays through a country’s territorial waters.

– Defense News – In a move with sweeping consequences for the US Navy’s battle force, the service is canceling plans to add 10 years to the expected service lives of their stalwart destroyer fleet, a cost-savings measure that would almost certainly hamper plans to grow the size of the fleet.

– War Zone – The U.S. military is developing an interceptor intended to knock down hypersonic boost-glide vehicles specifically for deployment on U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke class destroyers equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system.

– CIMSEC – Mine countermeasures are actions intended to reduce the risk that mines pose to transiting vessels. Risk is defined as the probability that a transiting vessel will incur mission abort damage from a mine detonation if it travels along a predetermined route through the potentially mined area. The purpose of an MCM operation is to lower the risk so it is safer to transit. The estimation of risk is critically important to determine if the level of risk to a transiting vessel is acceptable and if the applied effort is effectively lowering the risk.

– USNI News – The Navy is evaluating with the Army and Air Force a strategy to beef up U.S. military presence and force protection in the Arctic.

– Breaking Defense – The Future Carrier 2030 Task Force, which the service will announce next week, will study how carriers stack up against new generations of stealthy submarines and long-range precision weapons being fielded by China and Russia.