– Air Force – Mistrust, international military buildups, and competing territorial claims bring plenty of tension to a vital waterway that China considers an internal sea.
Philippine Navy – Tension Between Philippines And China Grows
– Aviation Week – Drive fast enough down the well-built coastal road in Barangay Buenavista, a stone’s throw from the waters of Ulugan Bay on the Philippine island province of Palawan, and you might miss the doorstep for a future amphibious invasion force. Were China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and marine forces ever to be tasked with teaching the Philippines a “lesson,” much as Deng Xiaoping taught such a lesson to Vietnam and its former Soviet ally during a brief 1979 war, that coastal road provides a crucial western access that would put PLA mechanized forces about an hour north of Palawan’s capital of Puerto Princesa.
US Navy – 'Deadly Serious' Navy Wrestles With Mine Warfare Modernization
– AOL Defense – Improving the Navy’s long-neglected capability to hunt mines is a top priority for the fleet — but it still gets less than 1 percent of the Navy budget.
Chinese Navy – China sends patrol ships to disputed East China Sea islands
– BBC – Two Chinese patrol ships have been sent to islands disputed with Japan, which has sealed a deal to purchase the territory, Chinese state media say.
US Navy – Coasting
– Foreign Policy – Was the U.S. Navy really better in 1917 than it is today?
Geopolitics – Geography Strikes Back
– Wall Street Journal – To understand today’s global conflicts, forget economics and technology and take a hard look at a map, writes Robert D. Kaplan.
Royal Navy – HMS Ark Royal to be sold off as scrap metal
– Daily Telegraph – Former Navy flagship HMS Ark Royal will be sold on as scrap metal for £3 million as part of a move that the Ministry of Defence has described as “difficult but necessary.
Nigerian Navy – Nigerian navy frees hijacked Singapore-owned oil tanker
– BBC – Nigeria’s navy says it has rescued a Singapore-owned oil tanker hijacked by pirates on Tuesday night with 23 Indian sailors on board.
US Navy – U.S. Navy’s Newest Ship Gets 8,000-Mile Shakedown
– Defense News – As storms go, it wasn’t a biggie. Eight-to-12-foot waves, 40 mph winds. But the ocean’s saltwater was a baptism of sorts, as the U.S. Navy’s latest littoral combat ship (LCS) left behind more than 2,000 miles of Great Lakes freshwater sailing and entered the Atlantic on Aug. 17 for the first time.
US Navy – Net-Enabled Weapons Drive Sea Warfare Change
– Aviation Week – Maritime missiles are in a period of rapid evolution. Warships and submarines are persistent platforms with deep magazines, for long-range attacks on land targets and hostile ships. But more warships now carry effective missile-defense gun and missile systems and countermeasures, while sea traffic has continued to grow rapidly worldwide—creating a major challenge in terms of collateral damage. Some of the biggest decisions in the past year involve the U.S. Navy, which is moving toward an arsenal of “net-enabled” weapons—missiles that take advantage of other sensors to find and hit targets, but can still function if communications are down. Two quick-reaction missile programs have been started recently, along with a large, expensive and remarkably low-profile airborne radar to support them.
Chinese Navy – The Master ‘PLAN’: China’s New Guided Missile Destroyer
– The Diplomat – China’s navy appears on the verge of creating a new class of warship. It could eventually alter the balance of naval power in the region.
US Navy – Zap, crackle and pop
– US Navy – Zap, crackle and pop – Energy weapons are finally moving from the laboratory to the real world. But they are hardly the super-weapons of science fiction…and the US Navy is leading the pack in terms of weaponizing them.
Chinese Navy – China’s Real Blue Water Navy
– The Diplomat – China’s navy is not poised to speed across the Pacific to threaten America the way the Soviet Union once did, if not worse.
US Navy – Futuristic Ships Anchor U.S. Navy Surface Plans
– Aviation Week – As budget-cutters swipe at major Pentagon programs and sequestration threatens to tighten the leash on expected expenses, the U.S. Navy remains focused on building its future surface warfighting fleet, and the service is pinning its hopes on futuristic ships like the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
US Navy – U.S. Plans New Asia Missile Defenses
– Wall Street Jouranl – The U.S. is planning a major expansion of missile defenses in Asia, a move American officials say is designed to contain threats from North Korea, but one that could also be used to counter China’s military. The planned buildup is part of a defensive array that could cover large swaths of Asia, with a new radar in southern Japan and possibly another in Southeast Asia tied to missile-defense ships and land-based interceptors.
US Navy – Sunk: Why was a Navy adviser stripped of her career?
– Washington Post – Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn’t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, where neoconservative hawks first began planning to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But she was not prepared a few years later in Bahrain when she encountered plans by high-ranking admirals to confront Iran, any one of which, she reckoned, could set the region on fire.
US Navy – U.S. Navy Creates LCS ‘Council’ To Guide Development
– Defense News – A new, high-powered effort to boost development of the littoral combat ship (LCS) is kicking off, intended to help implement numerous proposals and suggestions to integrate the new ship type into U.S. Navy operations.
Royal Navy – MoD Unveils Royal Navy’s Future Warships
– Defense Aerospace – The latest design of the Royal Navy’s next generation of warships has been unveiled today by the MoD. Images show the basic specification of the Type 26 Global Combat Ship (T26 GCS).
Royal Navy – Navy 'running out of sailors to man submarines’
– Daily Telegraph – Britain’s nuclear deterrent is at risk because the Navy does not have enough sailors to man its submarines, Ministry of Defence officials admit.
Russian Navy – Silent Running
– Free Beacon – Russian attack submarine sailed in Gulf of Mexico undetected for weeks, U.S. officials say.
The Pentagon denies the story.
US Navy – ACTUV – SAIC's Automated Submarine Stalker
– Aviation Week – With Senators up in arms over disputed reports that a Russian submarine cruised around the Gulf of Mexico undetected for a month, it was an opportune time for DARPA to award SAIC a contract to develop an unmanned vessel that can shadow a submerged submarine throughout its patrol.
Geopolitics / South China Sea – The South China Sea's Gathering Storm
– Wall Street Journal – James Webb on the current state of affairs in the South China Sea.
Geopolitics – Niall Ferguson: Don’t Believe the Techno-Utopian Hype
– Newsweek – Niall Ferguson does not believe our future is as bright as Silicon Valley would lead us to believe…an interesting look at a historian’s view of the future.
US Navy – U.S. Navy Officials Suppressed Bad LCS-1 Test Results
– Aviation Week – U.S. Navy emails and other documents suggest that officials muzzled bad test results for the first Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) variant, the USS Freedom, at a crucial time in the program’s development, when the service was considering which seaframe to pick for the $30 billion-plus fleet. Top program officers for the ship and at Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) told subordinates to avoid certain language in the test-result reports because of concerns over the downselect decision, the documents show. One naval officer said in an email he would delete the offensive wording of the report.
Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force – U.S., Japan said discussing missile-defense ship upgrades
– Reuters – The United States and Japan are discussing system upgrades for a pair of Japanese destroyers to boost defenses against a ballistic missile attack.
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