U.S. Asymmetric Aid Program Transfers Unmanned Vessels to the Philippines, Plans Attack Drone Transfer by 2027

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USNI News – The latest tranche of American-made and funded drones were formally received by Philippine forces this week ahead of Washington’s larger plans to equip the Southeast Asian ally with asymmetric capabilities that could prove crucial in monitoring and deterring Beijing in the South China Sea.

Should the Royal Navy reconsider the Littoral Strike Ship concept?

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Navy Lookout – In 2019, the MoD set aside £35 million to develop a Littoral Strike Ship (LSS), a deliberately low-cost vessel built around commando raiding operations but the idea faded as amphibious thinking consolidated into a single large programme – the Multi-Role Strike Ship. With the Royal Navy now both RN financially constrained and more doctrinally inclined to consider smaller, more dispersed platforms, the LSS could be one solution to partially recover amphibious capability.

The Fall of Fortress Singapore: Three Lessons from the Collapse of Britain’s Great Asian Bastion

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War on the Rocks – What might be the most relevant lessons of the fall of Singapore for contemporary U.S. strategists and policymakers as they monitor the growth in might and assertiveness of a new — and arguably even more formidable — revisionist Asian power? Following a brief overview of the Malayan campaign, three critical dimensions of this melancholy chapter will emerge as the most immediately resonant to 21st-century defense planners.

Royal Navy officers warn NATO navies are struggling to absorb Ukraine’s maritime lessons

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Navy Lookout – The war at sea in the Black Sea has entered a new and more dangerous phase, even as Western navies are still debating what the previous phase means for them. Speaking at CNE in May 2026, Cdre Steve Bamfield RN and Cdre Thomas Hanssen of the Norwegian Navy, co-leaders of the Maritime Capability Coalition (MCC) for Ukraine, gave a frank assessment of where the conflict stands and why its hardest lessons have proved resistant to translation into NATO doctrine and procurement.

ScanFish trials aboard RFA Proteus mark a step forward for Royal Navy seabed warfare capability

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Navy Lookout – RN hydrographic specialists have completed a second series of at-sea trials of their new towed underwater survey system, this time aboard the Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance ship, RFA Proteus, off Portland and in Lyme Bay. The exercises mark a significant step towards integrating the ScanFish containerised Remotely Operated Towed Vehicle (ROTV) into frontline SBW operations.

China is testing underwater drones the size of submarines, 148 feet long with an estimated range of 10,000 miles, the largest ever built, and U.S. analysts say they could one day reach the West Coast

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autoNotion – For as long as anyone has war-gamed a fight with China, the Pacific Ocean has been America’s best defense. It is more than 5,000 nautical miles of open water, and the working assumption has always been that Chinese warships and submarines simply could not cross it in any numbers, which kept the West Coast a long way from any shooting. China is now building underwater drones the size of submarines, and crossing that ocean is more or less the entire point of them.

(Thanks to Alain)

A 132-pound underwater drone with no propeller can now sit on the seabed for three months listening for submarines with an AI trained on decades of ocean sound. Germany built it, and the UK just ordered a program around hundreds

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autoNotion – Finding a submarine that doesn’t want to be found is one of the most expensive problems in modern defense. Norway spent most of 2025 shopping for an answer and picked at least five British-designed Type 26 frigates, a deal Breaking Defense put at roughly $13.5 billion, which works out to about $2.7 billion per hull. A Munich company called Helsing thinks the future of the hunt looks less like a 6,900-ton warship and more like hundreds of 132-pound (60 kg) gliders drifting along at walking pace, each one running an AI that was trained the way you’d train a chatbot, except on decades of recorded ocean sound instead of internet text.

(Thanks to Alain)

Armed men on board: mercenaries deployed to protect Putin’s ghost oil tankers

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7Sur7 – While the Kremlin’s ghost oil tankers avoid the English Channel for fear of being intercepted by the British, the French or the Belgians, an investigation shows the growing presence of armed men on board. These mercenaries, often linked to the Wagner Group, could well be there to intimidate the Western Coast Guard. It is difficult to say, however, if they would dare to open fire.

(In French) (Thanks to Alain)

U.S. Navy Looks to Fleet-wide Expeditionary Mine Warfare in Wake of Operation Epic Fury

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Naval News – The U.S Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit One (EODTEU1) will evaluate a new form of mine-clearing capability after identifying a series of new requirements in the Indo-Pacific—particularly for the service’s doctrine of distributed maritime operations, according to new documents published by EODTEU1.

China is Rehearsing More Than Amphibious Landings

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CIMSEC – For years, the public debate over a possible Chinese Communist invasion of Taiwan has focused on a single question: Does the People’s Liberation Army have sufficient amphibious lift to move an invasion force across the Taiwan Strait? That question remains important. However, recent Chinese exercises suggest that the People’s Liberation Army is not simply trying to solve the problem of getting forces onto a Taiwanese beach. It is rehearsing how to move, sustain, and conceal a large amphibious campaign across multiple locations.