– Wired – No one really understands the Navy and the Air Force’s new blueprint for dominating Earth’s seas and skies. But what’s increasingly clear, even to the heads of both the Navy and the Air Force, is that there’s a big challenge ahead for it, one that doesn’t have anything to do with an adversary like China: getting U.S. ships, subs, planes and drones to actually talk to one another.

– Reuters – U.S. forces said they had destroyed a target in the first successful test of the Navy’s newest anti-missile interceptor, designed to protect allies from attacks by countries like North Korea and Iran.

– Associated Press – The U.S. Navy may hurt more dolphins and whales by using sonar and explosives in Hawaii and California under a more thorough analysis that reflects new research and covers naval activities in a wider area than previous studies.

– Associated Press – Top defense leaders argued Wednesday for the U.S. to ratify a long-debated treaty governing ocean rights in order to bolster the nation’s national security interests in the Asia-Pacific region and other key global waters.

– Reuters – The first of a new class of U.S. coastal warships will be sent to Singapore next spring for a roughly 10-month deployment, spotlighting a move that may stir China’s fears of U.S. involvement in South China Sea disputes.

– Aviation Week – The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom is plagued by extensive corrosion and manufacturing issues more recent and serious than anything the Pentagon or prime contractor Lockheed Martin has publicly acknowledged thus far. This is based on a guided tour of the ship in dry dock, as well as sources intimately familiar with Freedom’s design, repairs and operations, U.S. Navy documents and defense analysts.

– Foreign Policy – Does the U.S. military have the resources for an Asian century?

– Defense Technology International – Most aircraft slated to go onto aircraft carries have to go through an electronic magnetic interference test that bathes the design in about 200 volts per meter. But the test platform for the Navy’s unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (Uclass) aircraft program, will have to endure 10 times the electronic stress. Undoubtedly that means the Navy wants a design for its unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) aircraft program that would be able to fire a permanently installed, rechargeable, anti-electronics weapon.

– Defense Technology International – The U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX strike fighter, the EA-18G Growler, an unmanned combat aircraft (currently exemplified by two X-47B test platforms) and a nascent arsenal of specialized air-launched standoff weapons are all part of a new emphasis on exploiting the electro-magnetic spectrum.