- Breaking Defense – Just nine months after hosting the biggest multinational mine-warfare exercises “ever” to be held in and around the Persian Gulf, the Navy’s 5th Fleet and its foreign partners outdid themselves with a second, even larger wargame. More than 20 nations participated in September’s International Mine Counter-Measures Exercise 2012, collaborating against fictional ecoterrorists whose capabilities were suspiciously similar to the real-world arsenal of Iran. This month, 41 nations and some private-sector companies participated in IMCMEX 2013, which despite the name expanded beyond minesweeping to practice protecting civilian oil tankers, oil rigs, ports, and even desalinization plants as well.
US Navy – Will the Navy’s New Killer Drones Hunt Terrorists or Fight China?
- Wired – America’s ship-launched X-47B killer drone prototype took off for the first time from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush sailing near the Maryland coast on Tuesday morning — the first step in proving that a high-performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is compatible with the Navy’s fleet of 10 gigantic nuclear-powered flattops. But that doesn’t mean the sailing branch will definitely be purchasing similar jet-powered drones for frontline use. According to Bob Work, until recently the Navy undersecretary and a big supporter of armed UAVs, the sea service must choose between X-47B-style ‘bots and a simpler, propeller-driven drone similar to the Air Force’s Predator.
US Navy – Navy Drone’s Next Test: X-47B Will Land, Sort Of; China Unveils Similar Drone
- Breaking Defense – Unmanned aircraft are relatively easy to fly. Landing one without crashing is hard. Getting one to take off from the narrow, pitching deck of an aircraft carrier is harder still. Landing on a carrier? That’s hard enough to give human pilots nervous breakdowns. Soon, it will be the final test of the Navy’s prototype carrier-based drone, the X-47B.
US Navy – Navy’s Historic Drone Launch From an Aircraft Carrier Has an Asterisk
- Wired – At 11:19 a.m. today, for the first time in history, a plane without a pilot in it executed one of the most complex missions in aviation: launching off an aircraft carrier at sea. Only the Navy can’t yet land that drone aboard the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, an even harder but necessary maneuver if large drones are really going to operate off carriers.
Iranian Navy – Iran dispatches warship to shadow Gulf exercises
- Daily Telegraph – Iran has dispatched one of its newest warships to shadow the world’s biggest mine-hunting exercise that has been taking place over the last few days in the Gulf.
Chinese Navy – Xi’s War Drums
- Foreign Policy – Every morning at 6 a.m., more than two dozen of the world’s leading submarine watchers, aviation experts, government specialists, imagery analysts, cryptanalysts, and linguists gather at the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. Their job is to probe the overnight intelligence reports to guide the activities and strategies of the five aircraft carrier groups, 180 ships, and nearly 2,000 aircraft that constantly patrol the Pacific and Indian oceans. The morning meetings are convened by the fleet’s top intelligence officer, Capt. James Fanell, and cover activities emanating anywhere “from Hollywood to Bollywood,” as the head of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Locklear, likes to put it. But the group never takes long before zeroing in on the country driving the United States’ military and diplomatic “pivot” to Asia. “Every day it’s about China; it’s about a China who’s at the center of virtually every activity and dispute in the maritime domain in the East Asian region,” said Fanell, reading from prepared remarks at a U.S. Naval Institute conference in San Diego on Jan. 31. Fanell, in comments that went largely unnoticed outside the small circle of China military specialists, spelled out in rare detail the reasons the United States is shifting 60 percent of its naval assets — including its most advanced capabilities — to the Pacific. He was blunt: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is focused on war, and it is expanding into the “blue waters” explicitly to counter the U.S. Pacific Fleet. “I can tell you, as the fleet intelligence officer, the PLA Navy is going to sea to learn how to do naval warfare,” he said. “My assessment is the PLA Navy has become a very capable fighting force.”
US Navy – Singapore Fling
- Aviation Week – The U.S. Navy gets set this month to essentially – if unofficially – christen its “Pacific pivot” with a coming-out party of sorts for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1) USS Freedom at the Imdex Maritime Defense Show in Singapore.
Royal Navy – Navy carrier jets ‘can’t land in hot weather’
- The Guardian – The hi-tech jets that will be flown from the Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers cannot land on the ships in “hot, humid and low pressure weather conditions”, a report warns today.
US Navy – The Navy’s Hull Game
- Time – The U.S. Navy routinely says it needs more ships. One way it makes that need more dire is by retiring existing vessels well before their planned lifespan is over. Think of it as fleethanasia.
US Navy – US Navy unveils unmanned drone squadron ‘the magicians’
- BBC – The US Navy has launched a squadron combining unmanned drones as well as manned aircraft, amid a national debate over the role of drones in warfare.
Chinese Navy – Unpacking the Riches of the Pentagon’s China Report
- Wall Street Journal – The U.S. Department of Defense annual report on Chinese military developments, released on Monday, has made a splash by putting forth the most direct official accusations so far of Chinese cyberintrusions into the U.S. government computers. But the 92-page report – much improved from its 43-page 2012 predecessor, which was widely criticized for being many days late and dollars short – offers a number of other important insights into China’s growing military capabilities.
Chinese Navy – Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2013
- US Department of Defense – The DOD’s annual update on China.
Terrorism – Our Drone Delusion
- New Yorker – An interesting look at the potential long-term consequences of using unmanned aerial vehicles for terrorist assassinations.
Geopolitics / Syria – The Thin Red Line
- New Yorker – Inside the White House debate over Syria.
US Navy – LCS Freedom Ready To Keep Peace In The Pacific
- AOL Defense – Navy Secretary Ray Mabus talked up the controversial Littoral Combat Ship days before departing for Asia to visit the first LCS, USS Freedom, which recently arrived in Singapore (sporting a sniffy camo paint job). Freedom has been bedeviled by cost overruns, delays, and manufacturing defects, with a new problem, seawater contamination in lubricant fluid, arising on its trans-Pacific trip. But the bigger picture Mabus said, is how this new class of small and nimble ship will cooperate with foreign partners to keep the peace in the volatile South China Sea and the strategic Strait of Malacca.
US Navy – Power Point
- Aviation Week – Some lawmakers would like nothing better than to see U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus unplugged – but the nation’s top naval leader will have none of that. He’s pushing for his energy-altering programs with a doggedness that would even tire out the Energizer Bunny.
US Marines – Marines Look to Return to Maritime Roots
- DODBuzz – As the Marine Corps winds down ten years of land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more fully returns to its amphibious and expeditionary origins, service planners are vigorously preparing the service for more sea basing and operations spread across wide swaths of ocean, senior Corps leaders explained.
Chinese Navy – Why Beijing Could Win the Great China-America Showdown of 2030
- Wired – Over the next 15-20 years, the U.S. and China are headed for a confrontation in the western Pacific, with Japan caught in the middle. And China, currently the underdog, could very well come out on top. That’s the unnerving conclusion of a new report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
US Marines – Helmand has become almost dull for Marines, with Afghans now leading combat
- McClatchy – One statistic about the war in Afghanistan has stood out for weeks: the single U.S. Marine killed so far in 2013.
Chinese Navy – China’s Anti-Carrier Missile Now Opposite Taiwan, Flynn Says
- Bloomberg – The Chinese military has deployed its new anti-ship ballistic missile along its southern coast facing Taiwan, the Pentagon’s top military intelligence officer said today.
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