- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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 [...]

- 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.

- AOL Defense – What homemade roadside bombs could do to Army and Marine ground vehicles was the ugly surprise of the last decade. What sophisticated long-range missiles could do to Navy aircraft carriers could be the ugly surprise of the next.

- Aviation Week – For years now, the discussion revolving around the U.S. Navy’s vaunted proposed air-and-missile-defense radar (AMDR) – as it related to the Navy’s even-more vaunted, and proven, Aegis combat system – has been how much better and even different AMDR would be than the existing ship shield. But now, Navy officials are [...]

- Virginian Pilot – Tens of thousands of sailors in Hampton Roads would deploy more often – but also, defense officials say, on a more predictable schedule – under a plan the Navy hopes to launch by the end of next year.

- Reuters – The computer network on the US Navy’s newest class of coastal warships showed vulnerabilities in cybersecurity tests, but the issues were not severe enough to prevent deployment.

- Aviation Week – For all of the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the impacts of sequestration and continuing resolutions, it is interesting to point out that the Navy shipbuilding plan, especially for the immediate future, remains pretty intact.

- Aviation Week – The MV-22 Osprey is preparing to take a major step in the program’s quest to garner more customers outside the U.S. Marine Corps and the Air Force special operations community. The aircraft is onboard the deck of the carrier USS Harry S. Truman in preparation for trials to validate whether it [...]

- Washington Post – The F-35 has features that make pilots drool. It is shaped to avoid detection by enemy radar. It can accelerate to supersonic speeds. One model can take off and land vertically. Onboard electronic sensors and computers provide a 360-degree view of the battlefield on flat-panel screens, allowing pilots to quickly identify [...]

- BBC – A US Navy ship has arrived in Singapore as part of US plans to increase its military presence in the region.

- Defense News – Yet, water-going robots bring unforeseen challenges — technological ones, to be sure, but also legal, regulatory and ethical tangles. Drones that fly or crawl on the ground are controlled by radio waves, but it is difficult — often impossible — to communicate with underwater vehicles. The answer, it seems, is autonomy [...]

- US Navy – Gulf Deployment for US Navy’s Laser Weapon – The US Navy is going to deploy a high-power laser ship self-defense system to the Gulf of Arabia early next year. The Laser Weapon System (LaWS) prototype will installed on the amphibious transport dock USS Ponce and, in addition to undergoing tests in [...]

- Flight International – Boeing is unveiling an updated version of its F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter concept at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Washington DC.

- Flight International – Lockheed Martin is taking the wraps off its submission for the US Navy’s prospective unmanned carrier launched surveillance and strike (UCLASS) aircraft at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Washington DC.

- Washington Times – Life aboard a fast-attack submarine can be rough: Quarters are cramped, operations are hectic and privacy is just a memory, veteran submariners say. But as the Navy prepares to assign women to fast-attack subs, one of its first female submariners is relishing the challenge of serving in the “dolphin brotherhood.”

- Aviation Week – There must be a typo. That’s the understandable first thought that could pass through anyone’s mind upon seeing the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) new cost estimates for the Navy’s proposed Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), which is meant to combine S- and X-band radars for simultaneous and unmatched air [...]

- Aviation Week – As the rhetoric boils and simmers over North Korea’s increasingly capable ballistic missiles, it might be wise to consider a thought posed recently by Vice Adm. Richard Hunt, the U.S. Navy director of staff, during an interview with Aviation Week. “Preventing conflict is as important as prevailing in conflict,” Hunt says.