– Reuters – Japan is considering refitting the Izumo helicopter carrier so that it can land F-35B stealth fighters, as Tokyo faces China’s maritime expansion and North Korea’s missile and nuclear development.
Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers Have Woefully Inadequate Close-In Air Defense Capabilities
– The War Zone – The Ministry of Defense seems to have skimped on the carriers’ ability to fend off anti-ship cruise missile barrages.
Reviewing The Navy’s Strategic Readiness Review: What’s Right, What’s Missing
– Breaking Defense – the pros and cons of the Navy’s Strategic Readiness Review.
Military robots are getting smaller and more capable
– The Economist – Soon, they will travel in swarms.
The Slaughterbots video featured in this story is found here.
Japan Cabinet Approves Aegis Ashore Buy to Supplement DDGs In Ballistic Missile Defense
– USNI News – The cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved the purchase of two Aegis Ashore missile defense systems this week to counter the threat of ballistic missiles from North Korea.
Almost All of the UK’s Surface Combatants Are in Port While Germany Has No Working Subs
– War Zone -These already worrying developments reflect poor readiness overall and other larger issues within both of these NATO navies.
Port Automation and Cyber Risk in the Shipping Industry
– CIMSEC – To stay ahead of competing ports and technological developments, automation has been heralded as inevitable. Major transshipment hubs and aspiring ports bet their future on automation, which raises the impact cyber risks could have in the long-run.
The Chinese Dream and Beijing’s Grand Strategy
– CIMSEC – Xi has irreversibly moved China away from the legacies of Mao and Deng, and resolutely set the country on the continued path of the Chinese Dream – a strategic roadmap for national rejuvenation (grand strategy) that interlinks all ancillary strategies. The following discourse will explore the cohesive alignment of these strategies and the connected strategic themes pervasive throughout them.
Strategic Communications With Bill Harlow
– CIMSEC – A conversation with Bill Harlow, a former intelligence community spokesman, about his work in strategic communications in the armed forces. He talks about the public affairs career track in the military, his experience at all levels of government, and how that experience informs the civilian work he does today.
Chinese hospital ship Peace Ark visits Timor-Leste
– China Mail – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s hospital ship Peace Ark (Hull 866), currently on its “Harmonious Mission 2017” task, arrived in Dili, capital of Timor-Leste, on Thursday for an 8-day friendly visit and humanitarian medical services.
Navy pilot recalls encounter with UFO: ‘I think it was not from this world’
– ABC – Retired Cmdr. David Fravor spent 18 years as a Navy pilot, but nothing prepared him for what he witnessed during a routine training mission on Nov. 14, 2004. “I can tell you, I think it was not from this world,” Fravor told ABC News. “I’m not crazy, haven’t been drinking. It was — after 18 years of flying, I’ve seen pretty much about everything that I can see in that realm, and this was nothing close.”
What Putin Really Wants
– The Atlantic – Russia’s strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He’s really just a gambler who won big.
As tensions ease, China keeps building on disputed islands
– Defense News – Tensions over China’s island-building in the South China Sea may have eased in the past year, but Beijing has kept busy. New satellite imagery shows China has built infrastructure covering 72 acres (28 hectares) in the Spratly and Paracel islands during 2017 to equip its larger outposts to be air and naval bases.
The Curious Case Of Germany’s Massive New But Relatively Toothless Type 125 “Frigates”
– War Zone – These odd destroyer sized ships are built for stabilization, crisis management, conflict prevention, and international intervention operations.
Russia a ‘risk’ to undersea cables, defence chief warns
– BBC – The UK’s most senior military officer has warned of a new threat posed by Russia to communications and internet cables that run under the sea.
SecNav Spencer Seeks Goldwater-Nichols Changes After Deadly Collisions
– Breaking Defense – Navy Secretary Richard Spencer wants to change the law that’s governed the armed forces since 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, to restore more autonomy to the services.
Trump just made a 355-ship Navy national policy
– Defense News – Achieving a 355-ship Navy is now national policy, but the goal is still a long way off.
Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: The Value of OSINT for the US Navy
– CIMSEC – With the advent of the Information Age, a rapid evolution of technological innovations democratized and decentralized information, creating a digital universe and a surfeit of open source intelligence, or OSINT. In the past decade alone, the world produced more information than it had in the rest of human history. This diffusion of information holds significant promise for the Naval Intelligence community, whose own rich history is replete with examples of OSINT being an integral part of the analytic picture.
The Marine Corps Wants to Craft a Fleet of 1,000 “Itty Bitty Boats”
– War Zone – The small watercraft force could give marines more flexibility and offer up new avenues of attack.
Navy Won’t Reactivate Perry Frigates for SOUTHCOM Mission; Will Send Ships to Fight Drug War in 2018
– USNI News – The Navy won’t reactivate any Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates in support of operations in U.S. Southern Command, according to an internal service memo obtained by USNI News. Instead, the service will support SOUTHCOM’s anti-trafficking missions with Littoral Combat Ships and Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transports (T-EPF) through a commitment to support the Joint Interagency Task Force South by next year
Estonia, The Digital Republic
– The New Yorker – Its government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?
From boondoggle to ‘boring’ deployment: Has the Navy righted the littoral combat ship?
– San Diego Union Tribune – When the littoral combat ship Coronado sailed into San Diego last week after its maiden deployment to the Far East, controversy followed in its wake.
The OO Loop Problem
– View From Olympus – William Lind notes that one of the more curious aspects of the current U.S. military is its institutionalization of failure. We have lost four Fourth Generation conflicts: Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq (which is still very far from being a real state), and Afghanistan, where we are fighting but not winning. In response, we keep doing more of the same, more perfecting of our ability to put firepower on targets. If war could be reduced to that, we would be the greatest, military on earth. But it can’t.
How to Save (Or Destroy) the Royal Navy
– National Interest – James Holmes on what happens when saving money takes precedence over strategic effectiveness.
Woods Hole Research Vessel Searching Atlantic for Lost Argentine Sub
– USNI News – The international effort searching for ARA San Juan – the Argentine submarine missing for more than three weeks – is focused on a region where the continental shelf below the sea surface rapidly slopes down to the deep South Atlantic. A trio of internationally-run remotely operated undersea vehicles – including one from the United States – are regularly being sent to the sea floor to investigate possible final resting locations of the submarine.
NOSI - Naval Open Source Intelligence™ 
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