- Aviation Week – Now DARPA wants to enable small ships such as the 2,800-ton Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship to launch and recover Predator-class medium-altitude, long-endurance UAVs. The Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) program seeks to demonstrate a MALE UAV, and associated automated launch and recovery system, that can carry a 600lb payload 600-900nm from its host vessel.
Royal Australian Navy – Australia’s Biggest-Ever Warships Still On Track
- Aviation Week – Five years after contract signature, work on Australia’s largest-ever warships, the landing helicopter dockships HMAS Canberra and Adelaide, is going better than for previous large defense programs, according to the Australian government and prime contractor BAE Systems. “The project expects to successfully deliver the LHDs on time, on budget and to the contracted capability,” says an Australian defense department official.
Geopolitics / Syria – The Syria Question
- Air Force – An air war would likely be tougher there than what the US saw in Serbia or Libya.
US Navy – Pentagon Bloat Will Sink Ship Programs, Warn Former Navy Officials
- National Defense – John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, had more tough words for the Pentagon’s civilian and military bureaucracies during a Feb. 26 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces subcommittee.
Nuclear Warfare – Bombing the Syrian Reactor: The Untold Story
- Commentary – As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regime’s chemical weapons and whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after Assad’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on Syria’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not.
Geopolitics / Africa – Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance
- Time – Very interesting essay by Chuck Spinney on the complexity of the terrorism situation in Africa, and how the US underestimates it…to our strategic disadvantage.
US Navy – US naval workers all at sea as sequester looms
- BBC – It is an overcast day, and the skies are brooding over the Virginia coast, where two great grey US Navy ships are in dock.
Chinese Navy – China navy launches new stealth frigate
- BBC – China’s navy has taken delivery of the first of a new kind of stealth frigate, as tension continues with neighbouring countries over maritime borders.
Royal Navy – Trident spending to account for one third of defence budget within a decade
- Daily Telegraph – Spending on the successor to Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent will take up to a third of the defence budget within the next decade, defence experts are warning.
US Navy – A Fleet out of Balance
- US Naval Institute Proceedings – While naval strike capacity has grown since the Cold War, it’s come at a cost to the amphibious capabilities vital to U.S. power projection.
US Navy – ‘Shipbuilding Is a Priority’
- US Naval Institute Proceedings – An interview with Sean J. Stackley – The Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition.
US Navy – Sequestration More Than A Fleeting Concern For U.S. Navy
- Aviation Week – You would have to cast a net far, wide and deep to find anyone of U.S. Navy rank who doubts sequestration will happen. Instead of dealing with “what-if” scenarios, the brass is talking more about “this will happen when … “ And the first big thing that will happen is that the Navy will find itself in quite a quandary.
US Navy – Budget cuts would force Navy to shut down four active aircraft carriers
- Washington Times – The Navy plans to shut down four of its active aircraft carriers in one of the worst-case scenarios presented to Congress by the service since the debate on budget cuts heated up this winter.
Chinese Navy – China’s 14th escort fleet sails for Somali
- Xinhua – The 14th naval squad, sent by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy, departed Saturday from China to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters for escort missions. The fleet comprises three ships — the missile destroyer Harbin, the frigate Mianyang and the supply ship Weishanhu — carrying two helicopters and a 730-strong troop.
Royal Navy – Royal Navy sends warship to Libya to showcase defence equipment
- The Guardian – Undeclared arms race among European defence contractors to re-equip Libya’s armed forces causes concern among locals.
Ground Warfare – Last Marine Standing: A Life Tormented by Survival
- Wall Street Journal – Many troops have lost a close friend in combat. Travis Williams lost them all. Marine Lance Cpl. Williams is the sole survivor of his 12-man squad. His comrades were wiped out by a roadside bomb in Iraq, leaving him physically unharmed but with psychological wounds that remain unhealed seven years later…Cases like that of Lance Cpl. Williams might constitute a different kind of mental injury from war, some clinicians are concluding, one that falls into less-understood categories of “traumatic loss” and “moral injury.”
Geopolitics / China – China wages a quiet war of maps with its neighbors
- Washington Post – Bitter maritime disputes between China and its neighbors have recently sent fighter jets scrambling, ignited violent protests, and seen angry fishermen thrown in jail. But beneath all the bellicose rhetoric and threatening posture, China also has been waging a quiet campaign, using ancient documents, academic research, maps and technical data to bolster its territorial claims.
US Coast Guard – Amid cuts, Coast Guard holds steady, for now
- San Diego Union Tribune – While the Pentagon complains about massive budget cuts, the U.S. Coast Guard — the smallest and sometimes overlooked arm of the armed forces — has been faring fairly well, moneywise.
US Navy – Inside the Navy’s Big Aircraft-Carrier Budget Gamble
- Wired – The Navy is dealing with the military’s impending budget fiasco by putting its premier hardware — aircraft carriers — on the firing line. It’s unexpected, but it might actually be a smart move — if Congress cancels the deepest budget cuts. But if Congress keeps the cuts, then the Navy’s readiness to handle the security threats of the next several years will seriously decline — in many ways because of how the Navy buys stuff.
US Navy – The Accidental Combat Ship
- Aviation Week – U.S. Navy Undersecretary Robert Work created some waves with the recent posting of his draft U.S. Naval War College white paper, “The Littoral Combat Ship: How We Got Here, and Why.”
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