The Messenger – James Holmes writes that the Department of the Navy’s inaugural Cyber Strategy starts off with a startling claim, namely that “the next fight against our major adversary will be like no other in prior conflicts.” Why? The strategy’s framers go on to prophesy that “the use of non-kinetic effects and defense against those effects prior to and during kinetic exchanges will likely be the deciding factor in who prevails.” In other words, brute force might not make the difference.

Bloomberg – The US Navy plans to begin arming submarines next year with ship-targeting versions of the widely used Tomahawk missile, part of Washington’s push to ramp up military capabilities to challenge Chinese maritime forces, particularly around Taiwan. 

Defense News – A U.S. senator is developing legislation meant to revitalize the U.S. commercial maritime industry, which he called an economic and national security imperative.

Defense News – Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro is raising the alarm on the US ship building industry, warning that the service won’t be able to fulfill its mission without a strong commercial counterpart.

War on the Rocks – While critics have rightly focused on the program costs and timing of delivery, potential operational challenges for the Navy, and redundancy, proponents have countered that the new cruise missile will enhance deterrence and reassure allies facing adversaries with stocks of tactical nuclear weapons. This is an important claim and ultimately central to whether the program is worthy of funding. However, the deterrence and reassurance benefits of a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile are vastly overstated and may actually undermine the ability of the United States to deter adversaries by diverting scarce resources away from investments in more useful conventional platforms and munitions.  

USNI News – The U.S. is talking with other partner countries to possibly set up a maritime task force to protect ships in the Red Sea.

Defense News – Recent Vertical Launching System, or VLS, rearming experiments — including one aboard the DDG I commanded — demonstrate its promise. Additional doctrinal advances and equipment investments could help realize at-sea rearming’s operational potential even sooner.

CIMSEC – The Surface Navy needs to cut itself free of its extraneous entanglements and make concrete changes to how it improves warfighting skill. Our most urgent target for reform should not be improving individual tactics on a piecemeal level. Rather, we should be focusing on systematic changes to the personnel and training systems throughout the Surface Warfare community that will cultivate more tacticians.