– CIMSEC – The stand-up of a new NATO Maritime headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, the re-establishment of the U.S. Navy’s East Coast-based Second Fleet and the prospect for a new NATO Maritime Strategy this year have again fueled interest in naval warfare in the wider Atlantic Ocean.

– Breaking Defense – America’s nuclear deterrent is aging, with a half-dozen replacement programs on the horizon. But the young men and women who serve, Gen. John Hyten said, are better than ever: “They love this country. They want to defend this country. They go to work every day. They’re amazing — they’re smarter than we were, by far. They get motivated differently so you have to lead them differently, but their passion is just the same.”

– Defense News – The Harry S. Truman carrier strike group is returning to Norfolk after just three months on deployment, a dramatic shift from the Navy’s standard seven-month deployment and a move that has been signaled at the highest levels of the military as the Navy moves to rebuild readiness and surge capacity.

– National Interest – A “ship” is more than a hunk of steel that rides the bounding main. It is an expression of human ideas and history in steel. It’s a composite of materiel, human beings, and history. Therein lies its allure.

– USNI News – The three-ship Essex Amphibious Ready Group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit left San Diego, Calif., on Tuesday with little fanfare for an expected Western Pacific and Middle East deployment.

– Defense News – The new head of U.S. Pacific Fleet is walking back from a throw-back command structure championed by his predecessor that had the San Diego-based head of U.S. 3rd Fleet take tactical control of ships in the Asia Pacific region, a role usually taken over by the Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet once ships sail west of Hawaii.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is steadily rolling out a new phase of work-ups for carrier strike group and amphibious ready group deployments aimed at boosting its surface warfare skills.

– Breaking Defense – The Navy has crammed as much electronics as it can into its new DDG-51 Flight III destroyers now beginning construction, Rear Adm. William Galinis said this morning. That drives the service towards a new Large Surface Combatant that can comfortably accommodate the same high-powered radars, as well as future weapons such as lasers, on either a modified DDG-51 hull or an entirely new design.

– USNI News – Command ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC-20) and guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG-78) entered the Black Sea over the weekend, crossing through the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea in support of the Sea Breeze 2018 exercise.

– CIMSEC – Where have tactics gone in the modern surface Navy? Whatever the cause, the loss of tactics – and the subsequent appearance of hundreds of publications which masquerade as tactics – is a problem that reaches the very heart of our profession. Tactics must be resurrected.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy is rapidly moving toward procuring the first hull in its new class of frigate in 2020, but a new report is raising questions about whether the Navy has done detailed analysis about what it needs out of the ship before barging ahead.

– USNI News – The Navy continues to expand its uses for the Expeditionary Fast Transport class of ships, as USNS Carson City (T-EPF-7) last month conducted the first high-latitude operations and the first mine countermeasures mission for the ship class.

– USNI News – NATO partners are teaming up for a high-end anti-submarine warfare exercise that will test the ability of surface ships and ASW aircraft to find attack boats in deep water.