US Navy – Gates Says Navy Needs to Ask Itself Hard Questions

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Defense Technology International – Gates Says Navy Needs to Ask Itself Hard Questions

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a roomful of Navy officers and Naval industry types choke on their lunch yesterday afternoon at the Air Sea Space convention when he flat out told them that the Navy budget is going to remain flat in the near-term, and that the service has to ask itself “whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers.”

Afghanistan – Toggling Between Fighting and Outreach in Afghanistan

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New York Times – Toggling Between Fighting and Outreach in Afghanistan

CJ Chivers writes that however the Afghan war is faring over all, across the wide and varied expanse of Afghanistan, with all of its political and cultural complexity, one thing is abundantly clear: toggling between fighting and outreach can create head-spinning scenes. Some of these scenes underline the difficulties inherent in a counterinsurgency doctrine that mixes lopsided violence with attempts to make nice. But they also simultaneously demonstrate that the efforts to follow the doctrine far from Kabul, out on remote ground, have become a central part of how the war is waged, even as the merits of the doctrine are quietly debated.

Royal Navy – Serpent's Tale

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Defense Technology International – Serpent’s Tale

“The Type 45 with its Principal Anti-Air Missile System, Sea Viper, and the Samson Radar is arguably the most effective anti-air warfare platform in the world,” proclaims the British government in a recent response to the Defense Committee. Unfortunately, of course, at the moment the argument is hypothetical, since the ship’s main armament has yet to function fully correctly.

US Navy – Plans to allow women and gays, ban smoking shake world of Navy submarines

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Washington Post – Plans to allow women and gays, ban smoking shake world of Navy submarines

Imagine 150 fraternity brothers packed into a container the size of a three-bedroom house. Announce you are breaking hallowed traditions by taking away their cigarettes and admitting women. Then lock the doors and push the container deep into the sea, for months at a time. That’s what the Navy, after decades of contemplation and controversy, has decided to do with its Submarine Force, an elite fraternity of 13,000 active-duty sailors that has been patrolling the oceans for 110 years.

Geopolitics / China – The Geography of Chinese Power

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New York Times – The Geography of Chinese Power

Robert D. Kaplan writes that China’s blessed geography is so obvious a point that it tends to get overlooked in discussions of the country’s economic dynamism and national assertiveness. Yet it is essential: It means that China will stand at the hub of geopolitics even if the country’s path toward global power is not necessarily linear.