Use it or lose it: Seagoing nations must defend embattled waterways

The Hill – Great Britain is returning to seaways “east of Suez,” decades after freeing its colonies and withdrawing, more or less, to the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. A warship from Britain’s Royal Navy demonstrated on behalf of nautical freedom in the South China Sea last September, drawing a stern rebuke from China. This month the frigate HMS Argyll joined the destroyer USS McCampbell for six days’ worth of exercises in the South China Sea.

Surface Navy Deleted Scenes & The NeverEnding Mission: The Drift XV

Defense News – For this edition of The Drift, I want to circle back to some things that I haven’t written up yet from my pre-Surface Navy Association interview with Rear Adm. Boxall, who was incredibly generous with his time, and cover some ground I haven’t made publicly available yet. I’m also going to dive into a couple Navy-related items from the Missile Defense Review.

Accusations fly between South Korea and Japan over ‘threatening’ maritime maneuvers

Defense News – Japan has tried to draw the line under its dispute with South Korea over allegations one of the latter’s Navy ship directed its fire control radar against a Japanese patrol aircraft, but the regional allies of the U.S. have almost immediately become embroiled in a fresh controversy, with South Korea accusing another Japanese aircraft at making a “threatening” low-altitude pass over its ships.