Posts tagged as:

Pacific

If the Navy is going to spend time thinking about new frigates or pondering “up-gunning” the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), then America should also be thinking about developing a low-mix, austere DDG-51. Look, if the U.S. Navy is looking for a low-end Destroyer, then why not use the excellent high-end DDG-51 as a starting point? […]

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As Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel heads off to Asia to urge resolution of some of Asia’s island disputes, many Americans will continue to scratch their heads in wonder as to why several Asian countries are at loggerheads over some small, seemingly useless and unpopulated islands. It’s a hopeless case of nationalism gone amok, signal […]

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When former TOPGUN trainer and emergent LCS-killer Christine Fox, the Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense, demanded a “more capable [small] surface combatant“–namely one with innate air-defense capability–she did more than merely lay out a plan to kill a wayward surface-ship program. She offered a glimpse of what the Department of Defense (DOD) envisions as the […]

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The fallout from the Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA) scandal is wide-ranging…but just how wide-ranging is it? We don’t know yet, but I worry that the strategic impact of this scandal may well be greater than the arrests and sensational headlines suggest. Even worse, the SECNAV told us last month that this scandal is not […]

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Mulling the Glenn Defense Marine Asia Fiasco

by admin on December 13, 2013

With Glenn Defense Marine Asia, the Navy is getting some overdue graduate-level training in how harbors—harbors everywhere–do business. The results aren’t pretty, and, as we are discovering with Inchcape, this episode will not be the first time harried American bureaucrats discover that loose-and-fast waterfront business culture (a culture not just confined to Asia, but Africa, […]

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Marine Corps Week: Look to your LCUs

by admin on November 3, 2013

There is a certain rigidity to Marine Corps thinking on amphibious warfare that is exasperating. It’s ironic–Their decades-long pursuit of tools to enable “Operational Maneuver From the Sea” (an inherently adaptable approach to the amphibious battlefield) has spawned far too many rigid doctrinarians.  And that crowd is either unable–or unwilling–to break away from their OMFTS […]

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U.S. ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) have done a great job maintaining America’s second-strike nuclear capability–lurking at sea, undetected, every day. But their era of invulnerability is coming to a close; once SSBNs lose their ability to hide in the oceans, these single-purpose arsenal ships are finished. The sea is already a crowded place, and hiding […]

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The USN And Long-Term Strategy Part II:

by admin on October 3, 2013

Please indulge me as I continue the strategy discussion from earlier this week…where I tally a few concerns about the Navy’s lack of a defined strategy beyond an anodyne rehash of “uh, we just do stuff…from the sea!”.  To sum up my position so far–my hope is that the U.S. Navy starts to fix upon […]

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China’s Navy: Threat or Not…Yet?

by admin on August 14, 2013

As Japan and China teeter on the brink of another confrontation (this time over how to appropriately recall war dead), it is time to offer a reality-check of Chinese Navy capabilities (you know, for policymakers!). To do that, one of the best public resources I know of is a late-2010 Institute for National Strategic Studies […]

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Over the course of my naval blogging, nothing has worried me more than the Pacific. I worry that American policymakers have taken their eyes off the ball, distracted by impulsive, poorly justified national security choices (i.e. Iraq and Libya). As resources dwindle, the margin for error and or ability to absorb/compensate/fix strategic mistakes dwindle too. […]

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