Doubts linger as US Navy preps to order 10 more Flight III destroyers

Defense News – Both Huntington Ingalls Industries and Bath Iron Works have signed on to build Flight III DDGs — DDG 125 will be the first one, built at Ingalls in Mississippi, followed by DDG 126 at Bath Iron Works — but questions linger about whether entering into a multiyear contract on what is almost a new class of ship invites delays and cost overruns.

Does the US Navy have a strategy beyond hope?

Defense News – Chris Cavas opines that the U.S. Navy begins the new year in crisis. By its own admission many of its ships and aircraft are in poor condition. Training is not where it should be, its ships can’t maneuver properly around other ships, and Navy leaders for years have complained the service is overstretched, constantly struggling to meet requirements and falling short in any number of areas. It is by no means clear that new ideas and concepts are being implemented to counter ever-growing military rivals.

Sheffield’s Ghost Provides Lessons

US Naval Institute Proceedings – Analysis of the Falklands Campaign was a substantial section of the Joint Professional Military Education Phase I curriculum of the 1990s. It was even part of the Phase II course of instruction a decade later. Rather than the resounding and brilliant British victory portrayed in the limited 1982 news cycle, decades of independent analysis after the campaign have shown that the British forces were unprepared for the full range of Argentine military responses.