– 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.
– National Interest – Moscow has transferred more than five hundred aircraft—large military transports, early warning aircraft, refueling aircraft, attack jets, and fighter interceptors—to Beijing since 1990.
– 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.
– National Interest – Emplaced on islands dotting the Pacific Ocean, HIMARS and kindred missile launchers could give Chinese ships of war a very bad day.
– 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.
– Defense News – The Marine Corps is all in on fielding mobile anti-ship missiles in the Pacific to challenge China’s growing Navy, declaring it in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee to be its highest ground modernization priority.
– 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.
– Global Times – A far sea joint training fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy returned to base after sailing 14,000 nautical miles and crossing the International Date Line deep into the Pacific Ocean for the first time, a move that challenges US hegemony in the open waters and will become increasingly frequent in the future.
– Global Times – Vietnamese fishing boats have been increasingly intruding into Chinese territorial waters near Hainan Island and Guangdong Province, both are home to many Chinese military bases.
– Global Times – Two recently commissioned warships of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy are now ready to do batte after passing an all-subject training examination, the Navy announced on Wednesday, as experts said the service has done well in its sailor training program while receiving more and more warships.
– Naval News – The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) commissioned its 11th Soryu-class diesel-electric attack submarine (SSK) in Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture on March 5, 2020. JS Ōryū (SS-511) joins the JMSDF’s Submarine Flotilla 1, based in Kure. It is the first-in-class boat to feature lithium-ion batteries.
– Naval News – An Indian Navy P-8I Neptune Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) visited Reunion Island to train with the French Air Force and Navy based on the island, known as “FAZSOI”.
– CIMSEC – China is modernizing every element of its military…With this new capability, China constantly intimidates its neighbors through its increasingly aggressive maritime behavior.
– War Zone – The US military sees the ability to reach out with airpower and take out enemy ships as increasingly critical to beating a major adversary.
– Naval News – The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) plans to deploy a Hyper-Velocity Gliding Projectile (HVGP) in fiscal year 2026 as a new weapon to repel enemies that invade Japan’s remote islands, from a safe distance. This HVGP could even target large surface ships such as aircraft carriers.
– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s four guided-missile destroyers in Rota, Spain, could soon get company. Senior U.S. military officials are pushing hard to get two more destroyers forward-deployed in Europe, and the move appears to have the support of top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
– USNI News – The Mediterranean Sea has a host of security challenges: Russian submarine activity in the Eastern Med, instability in Syria and Libya, as well as the flow of migrants and illicit traffic throughout the region. The Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 is tasked with addressing them all.
– Forbes – When a tourist took a photo of Havana’s picturesque harbor, they didn’t realize the intelligence value of what they were capturing. Lurking in the shadows near a pier, and behind a palm tree, was one of the world’s least photographed submarines.
– National Interest – Cuba has exactly one submarine. And we finally have a good, recent photograph of it.
(Thanks to Alain)
– USNI News – All across the Mediterranean Sea, more non-NATO countries are fielding submarines while NATO allies are increasing the size of their own undersea fleets. Those submarines are also becoming harder to find. All told, the ability for NATO to find, track and identify submarines is not just a matter of defense against Russia, but a matter of basic traffic safety on and under the Mediterranean.
NOSI - Naval Open Source Intelligence™ 
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