– Defense Technology International – In numbers terms, the F-35B STOVL variant of the Joint Strike Fighter has made rapid flight-test progress since the beginning of the year, racking up 61 vertical landings compared with just 10 in 2010. Improving mechanical reliability and adding aircraft to STOVL-mode flight testing appears to be paying off.
Chinese Navy – Chinese Warship May Be Nearly Ready
– New York Times – The Chinese state news agency has posted photographs of an aircraft carrier under reconstruction that appears to show the warship near completion. Captions with the photos said that the work would end soon and that the carrier was expected to sail later this year.
Geopolitics / Yemen – After the Uprising
– New Yorker – Dexter Filkins asks can protesters find a path between dictatorship and anarchy in Yemen?
Geopolitics / Libya – Libyan Rebels Don’t Really Add Up to an Army
– New York Times – CJ Chivers assesses the state of the Libyan rebels.
US Navy – Sailors aboard Stout have a lens on conflict in Libya
– Virginian Pilot – During the three weeks that the Norfolk-based destroyer Stout spent off the coast of Libya, its crew didn’t get to talk or email much with friends and family back home. For one thing, commanders ordered tighter restrictions on communication. For another, the sailors were too busy.
Royal Navy – Aircraft carrier: A mind-boggling building job
– BBC – In a shipyard in Scotland the future of the Royal Navy is slowly taking shape. But the construction of the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is a mammoth task.
US Navy – Air Sea Battle Concept is Focused on China
– Aviation Week and Space Technology – U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it has the “potential to do for America’s military deterrent power . . . what AirLand Battle did” in the 20th century. The chief of naval operations sees it as paradigm-shifting. “I don’t want to be over the top,” Navy Adm. Gary Roughhead said at an Aviation Week conference in February, “but it’s pretty ground-breaking.” What has these men seemingly so excited? The answer: The nascent AirSea Battle concept now being hammered out by Air Force, Navy and other defense officials inside the Pentagon and elsewhere.
US Marines – Rx for Combat Stress: Comradeship
– Wall Street Journal – Faced with a wave of mental-health problems among returning troops, the Corps is training young Marines—down to corporals and sergeants—to sniff out combat stress among their peers on the front lines and tackle it directly on the field of battle.
Royal Navy – British nuclear sub forced back to base
– Guardian – HMS Vengeance had temporary ‘defect in propulsion’, a mechanical failure possibly due to ingesting sea debris.
Geopolitics / Libya – On Libya’s Revolutionary Road
– New York Times Magazine – The sudden, bloody transformation of normal citizens into rebels.
US Navy – Need To Maximize SSBN(X) Requirements
Defense Technology International – As the U.S. Navy begins to design the SSBN(X) — the next class of ballistic-missile submarines — the service needs to define requirements with a keen eye toward life-cycle costs and tube-launching options, according to former Navy officers.
Information Warfare – A Declaration of Cyber-War
– Vanity Fair – Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it. As the world now knows, the Stuxnet worm appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. And, as Michael Joseph Gross reports, while its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.
Thai Navy – Thai Navy rescues hundreds of stranded holidaymakers
– MCOT – Thailand’s sole aircraft carrier HTMS Chakri Naruebet carrying 753 tourists, including 551 foreign visitors from Tao Island in Surat Thani province to safety docked at the Sattahip naval base in the eastern province of Chonburi Thursday as Thailand’s flood crisis took its toll on the southern provinces leaving at least 20 people dead.
US Navy – Norfolk-based Barry fires missile barrage amid Libya talks
– Virginian Pilot – Stepping up attacks far from the front-line fighting, a Norfolk-based U.S. Navy ship fired 22 Tomahawk cruise missiles at weapon storage sites around Tripoli on Tuesday.
Geopolitics / Libya – Rebel Advances
– New Yorker – Jon Lee Anderson gives an excellent look at the war on the ground in Libya.
See also: Who Are The Rebels?
Geopolitics / Libya – Combat In Libya Takes Shape
– Defense Technology International – Excellent look at the war in the air in Libya.
Russian Navy – Russian Navy orders surface ships
– Defense Technology International – The Russian Defense Ministry purchased 12 new surface ships from Severnaya Verf shipyard in St. Petersburg. The new order includes 4 project 22350 frigates and 8 project 20385 corvettes and is placed in the framework of the new procurement program through 2020.
US Navy – U.S. reducing naval firepower aimed at Gadhafi
– Virginian Pilot – In a sign of U.S. confidence that the weeklong assault on Libya has tamed Moammar Gadhafi’s air defenses, the Pentagon has reduced the amount of naval firepower arrayed against him.
Vietnamese Navy – Vietnamese Navy Receives First Stealth Frigate
– Defense Technology International – On March 5 the Vietnamese Navy officially took into service the first Gepard class frigate.
US Navy – US Carrier Fought Contamination While Aiding Japan
– Associated Press – When U.S. Navy helicopters returned from a humanitarian mission on the first weekend following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, Lt. j.g. James Powell felt a slight unease.
Israeli Navy – Israeli Navy Intercepts Missile-Loaded Cargo Vessel Bound For Gaza
– Defense Technology International – Israeli naval vessels intercepted the Liberian-flagged cargo ship ‘Victoria’ about 200 miles west of the Israeli coast, after intelligence reports indicated the vessel could be carrying arms shipments destined for Gaza. An initial investigation revealed the ship was loaded with C-704 anti-ship missiles – shore-to-sea missiles with a range of 35 km that could put at risk Israeli vessels at sea as well as strategic infrastructure targets near Ashkelon.
US Navy – Problems surface for Navy amid federal budget battle
– Virginian Pilot – Congress’ inability to approve a 2011 budget is causing significant problems for the Navy, officials say, by delaying ship repairs; reducing aircraft flight hours and ship steaming hours; postponing construction projects; and disrupting the orderly moves of sailors and their families.
Geopolitics / Libya – Kaddafi Has A Killer Plan That Just Might Work
– StrategyPage – Excellent analysis of the current situation on the ground in Libya.
Royal Navy – Navy running short of Tomahawk missiles
– Daily Telegraph – The Royal Navy could run out of Tomahawk missiles after a fifth of the Navy stockpile has been used against Libya.
US Navy – The ‘blue national soil’ of China’s navy
– Washington Post – When some Chinese naval officers crossed the Pacific to visit the Naval War College here on an Atlantic-lapped island, they gazed reverently at a desk used by Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914). This compliment to America’s preeminent naval strategist has scholars here wondering whether Mahan’s Chinese readers are taking from him lessons similar to those Theodore Roosevelt derived.
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