– CIMSEC – Professor John Kuehn’s new book, America’s First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the U.S. Navy, 1900-1950, is a detailed and fascinating look at how the U.S. Navy’s General Board began at the turn of the 20th century and evolved into what would become the core of U.S. naval planning and strategy.

– War Zone – The Navy talks big surface fleet dreams but it is going to take some serious planning and tough decision making to realize those dreams.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy will test a new laser weapon aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious ship Portland as early as this fall.

– Defense News – Two lawmakers who oversee defense policy took aim at a years-long walk-back of U.S. Navy transparency, calling on the Navy to declassify ship inspection results and end an information chill spurred by U.S. Navy and Defense Department memos over the past year.

– USNI News – The Navy is working on adding a number of anti-surface weapons to an unmanned surface vehicle that so far has been used as a passive platform for mine countermeasures.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s top surface warfare officer has said the military must ease the burden on the service if it’s to fix issues that came to light after a pair of collisions that took the lives of 17 sailors last summer.

– Breaking Defense – Despite collisions this summer that killed 17 sailors and called into question basic seamanship skills, the Navy is undergoing a ‘renaissance’ in high-end warfighting capabilities, the commander of Naval Surface Forces says. New weapons, improved training, and a growing cadre of surface warfare specialists — veritable “Jedis” — are making the fleet more lethal more quickly than he’d expected, Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden told reporters ahead of the Surface Navy Association conference here.

– Defense News – The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet is developing a new class of ship that will replace the cruisers — but it’s not another cruiser.

– Breaking Defense – By the end of March, the Navy will award four to six contracts for “conceptual” designs of a future frigate. That ship that must cost under $950 million, have “Grade A shock hardening” on key systems to survive blasts, and carry at least 16 Vertical Launch System cells to defend itself and nearby vessels.

– War Zone – The images give us our first view of the entire aircraft, as well as a sense of its overall scale.

– Defense News – The fact that USS Mobile Bay at 30 is one of the most advanced ships in the fleet speaks volumes about the care the Navy puts into its ships, but the good times are only going to last for so long. Mobile Bay is rapidly approaching its 35-year service life and it needs work.

– Defense News – After a turbulent 2017, the United States’ surface Navy sails into 2018 with a mountain of challenges but also opportunities to fix long-standing issues and build for the future.

– Defense News – Defense News sat down with the Navy’s top surface warfare officer, Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden, at his Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters in San Diego, California, to discuss the past year and look ahead to 2018.