- Virginian Pilot – After two years, multiple breakdowns and more than $40 million in fixes, the amphibious transport dock is nearly ready for sea tests. The ship’s troubles, estimated in the thousands, included major engine problems.

- Washington Post – The deaths of a US couple, at the hands of pirates who had ostensibly entered into negotiations with commanders aboard the nearby USS Sterett, reflected the increasingly violent ways of Somali pirates who have been pushing further out to sea in search of victims.

- Aviation Week and Space Technology – The U.S. Navy is building on the successful first flight of the stealthy, tailless Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator as a pivotal step toward the long-held goal of marrying persistent, autonomous unmanned intelligence and strike aircraft with the reach of its fleet of aircraft carriers.

- Associated Press – A new “carrier killer” missile that has become a symbol of China‘s rising military might will not force the U.S. Navy to change the way it operates in the Pacific, a senior Navy commander told the Associated Press.

- Associated Press – As if life on a submarine wasn’t already stressful enough, with its cramped quarters, long work hours and weeks at sea, thousands of smokers on the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet recently got an unwelcome ultimatum from Uncle Sam. As of last month, all submarines in the U.S. Navy are officially smoke [...]

- Armed Forces Journal – Like a ship’s hull with too many barnacles, seabasing is laden with unnecessary conceptual debris that has obscured its central tenets and confused its core strengths. As the Navy ponders its roles and corresponding force structure for the coming decades, it is worth putting seabasing in dry dock and stripping [...]