Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela, the CO, and Cmdr. Art Palalay, his second-in-command, were removed from their respective positions on Sunday due to a “loss of confidence in their ability to command,” according to the Navy.

Capt. Dan Lannamann, the former commanding officer of Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, is now leading the facility while Cmdr. Timothy Emge, the center’s operations officer, is filling in as executive officer until a permanent replacement is identified.

“The Navy holds commanding officers and others in authority to the highest standards,” the Navy said in a statement. “Naval leaders are entrusted with significant responsibilities to their Sailors and commands.”

Navy ousts CO of Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams amid soft grounding probe

The Navy rarely shares any rationale behind firing commanding officers aside from the “loss of confidence” statement, and no additional details were provided on Valenzuela and Palalay’s reliefs.

Valenzuela’s previous assignments include ship superintendent and carrier type desk officer at SRF-JRMC, electrical division officer aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, and the combat and communications officer aboard the amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.

Palalay, who enlisted in the Navy in 1993 and commissioned in 2006, previously served as the readiness officer at Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific before becoming the XO of SRF-JRMC in 2023.

The maintenance center, equipped with six dry docks, conducts intermediate and depot-level maintenance and repairs for Navy ships across the 7th Fleet.

But that day heralded the start of a great upending for the U.S. Navy, after Hamas militants streamed into Israel and murdered more than 1,200 people, sparking a war that continues to threaten to engulf the Middle East to this day.

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

The moment that would change the Navy forever actually took place aboard the Carney 12 days later, on Oct. 19, when it became the first American warship to take out a barrage of Iran-backed Houthi rebel missiles and drones fired from Yemen.

Such intercepts have since become a harrowing, near-daily occurrence for destroyers in those waters, and the year that followed Oct. 19, 2023, has irrevocably changed the Navy for the foreseeable future, Navy leaders and outside analysts say.

On this day one year ago, starting around 4 p.m. local time, Carney took out a Houthi attack the Pentagon later said was headed for Israel, downing 15 drones and four land-attack cruise missiles over 10 hours.

While their pre-deployment training prepared them for anything, the Carney was not expecting to find itself taking on the Houthis in a near-daily battle to keep the claustrophobic Red Sea lanes open for commerce, Cmdr. Jeremy Robertson, the ship’s commanding officer for that cruise, told Navy Times this week.

“None of us really could have known what we were going to get into once Oct. 7 happened,” he said.

Since those fateful 10 hours a year ago, the Red Sea has become the arena for the longest sustained “direct and deliberate attacks at sea” that the fleet has faced since World War II, Fleet Forces Command head Adm. Daryl Caudle said in a statement to Navy Times.

“While I could not have predicted the complexity and interrelationships of all that has transpired since [Oct. 19, 2023], I am not surprised,” said Caudle, who commands the Navy East Coast-based fleet.

Inside the USS Carney’s harrowing and unprecedented deployment

“The world is a very tense place right now given the vast range of power-seeking agendas between peer competitors and opportunistic regional proxies. Any small spark can have serious consequences, which is why we take every situation so seriously.”

Since Carney’s first victory, the surface fleet has subsequently honed its tactics and tuned its radars for such a fight, instances when a ship’s Combat Information Center sometimes has mere seconds to ascertain and take out a Houthi attack.

Combat lessons are being routed back to schoolhouses and training centers, giving the Navy real-time knowledge on its combat systems and how to best use them.

Skippers also report that their crews have been galvanized by such experiences, finding meaning to their seemingly endless training in the life-and-death minutes they endure in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

“This really gave our sailors the why,” Robertson said. “Why do we train so hard, why do we do all the reps and sets.”

“The stage was not too big, the lights were not too bright. They were able to draw a connection.”

These successes at sea “validate our readiness to respond, our Sailors’ warfighting spirit and the technological superiority of our exquisite combat systems,” Caudle said.

But despite the tactical successes and demonstrated proficiencies, some question how fast the Navy is burning through munitions, sometimes to take out cheap Houthi drones, and whether a drawdown of missiles could one day impact a long-feared war with China in the West Pacific.

The Houthi menace in the Middle East has also caused the Navy’s aircraft carriers to be run hard, and some have been scrambled to the region when others weren’t ready to go, further raising readiness alarms in some corners.

And while tactical battles have been won, strategic wars have not, according to James Holmes, a retired Navy gunnery officer and professor of maritime strategy at the Naval War College.

“The tacticians have done their work magnificently … and the combination of sensors, fire control and weaponry has performed as advertised against an array of threats similar to what [Iran, Russia and China] field,” Holmes told Navy Times. “Bringing down anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles is no easy feat, but they have done it.”

What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea

And while such successes will reverberate on other maritime battlefields, the Navy to date has been unable to stop the Houthis from attacking merchant vessels traveling through the vital economic waterway that is the Red Sea, he said.

“The failure part is that the mission has fallen short of its strategic goal, namely allowing merchant shipping through the Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and Red Sea to resume unmolested,” Holmes said. “We can flip strategic failure to success when shipping firms — and the all-important maritime insurance companies — feel comfortable enough to start using that route again.”

A year in, the Navy is getting more judicious about how it fights Houthi attacks, according to Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst at the Hudson Institute think tank.

Navy ships threw the “kitchen sink” at incoming drones and missiles after the Carney’s first intercept a year ago, but the fleet is becoming more adept at using electronic warfare, guns and less-expensive interceptors to counter such Houthi attacks, Clark said.

Questions of sustainability of effort are now arising, he said, noting that the Navy has in some instances used carrier-based fighter jets to shoot down Houthi drones and missiles, an expensive and inefficient approach.

“The challenge going forward will be how to sustain this level of presence in the region,” Clark said. “The Pentagon may need to consider putting missile defense systems on barges or ashore so [destroyers] can deploy elsewhere or return home for maintenance.”

Robertson left the Carney after it returned to Mayport, Florida, in May, and is now the Navy’s Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training, or SWATT, director, passing on his hard-earned knowledge.

“It’s certainly surreal,” he said of his time commanding Carney. “I love every one of the sailors and officers and chiefs I worked with. Just a great crew. They’ll remember this for the rest of their lives.”

As the one-year anniversary of Oct. 19 comes and goes with no end in sight for the Navy’s Red Sea fight against the Houthis, Caudle noted that it’s difficult to forecast how the conflict will end.

“While I won’t speculate on how our involvement with the Houthis will culminate, I can tell you that I’m laser-focused on readiness, sustainment and lethality,” he said. “We’re ready for this fight, no matter how long it lasts.”

The cruiser Chosin and its sailors employed the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method device, known as TRAM, to load the ship’s MK 41 Vertical Launching System off the coast of San Diego on Friday.

The TRAM prototype allows warships to rearm during the underway replenishment process when supply ships deliver fuel, food, and other critical supplies. This ability to reload at sea, rather than at shore, saves time for combatant ships and keeps them in the fight, instead of having to go into port to reload, according to the service.

For the at-sea demonstration, the Chosin teamed up with the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship Washington Chambers to connect and transfer the missile canister to the cruiser. The team then utilized TRAM to transport the missile canister along rails connected to the cruiser’s VLS modules to successfully place it into a VLS cell, the Navy said.

The Navy plans to field TRAM in the next two to three years.

“Today, we proved just how game-changing TRAM truly is — and what a powerful deterrent it will be to our competitors,” Del Toro said in a statement. “This demonstration marks a key milestone on the path to perfecting this capability and fielding it for sustained operations at sea.”

He first outlined TRAM as one of his top priorities in 2022 during a speech at Columbia University, calling it a “sustained, persistent forward-strike capacity during wartime.”

The Navy previously tested a land-based demonstration of TRAM in July at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division in California.

The upgrades come as naval threats in the region have proliferated, turbo-charged by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeting commercial shipping vessels in the Read Sea and the Gulf of Aden with weapons technology old and new. Supported by Iran, the group has deployed missiles and drones in addition to unmanned surface vessel, damaging cargo ships and disrupting global trade dependent on the sea route.

Saudi Arabia, which borders the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, has attempted to bolster its underwater surveillance capabilities in part by acquiring a handful of Combined Active Passive Towed Array Sonars from Thales.

The order, which company officials here told Defense News was placed earlier this year, is for five Captas-1 sonars that will equip Saudi’s Avante 2200 corvettes manufactured by the Spanish company Navantia.

The system is the first variant of the Captas family of sonars and is designed to detect conventional submarines operating in shallow-water environments, with a range between 20 to 30 kilometers.

Other Gulf countries have chosen to invest in different technologies. For instance, in 2021, Qatar signed a contract with the low-profile Italian company M23 worth €190 million ($208 million) for the production of two small submarines.

One of the mini-submarines, destined for the Qatari Emiri Navy, was tested over the summer in Northern Italy.

“The Qataris may have chosen Italy not only because of its renowned tradition in this niche capability segment, but also because of the strong relationship that exists between Rome and Doha in the defense sector,” Federico Borsari, resident fellow at the U.S. Center for European Policy Analysis said.

He highlighted that between 2019-2023, the Gulf country was the main recipient of Italian weapons and that the two countries’ navies train together on a regular basis.

Mini-subs offer capabilities that will cater specifically to Qatar’s operational environment, Borsari explained, as they are designed to perform missions in difficult-to-access waters.

“They can act as asymmetric disrupters even against superior adversaries– they are also designed to follow the seabed’s contours and easily infiltrate harbors for covert operations, and can typically also lay minefields,” he said.

The craft, measuring just under 10 meters in length, is named the Seaquest S and has an endurance of 24 hours. Sirehna plans to offer the vessel optimized for surveillance, electronic-warfare, strike and anti-submarine missions, executives said here during a press trip ahead of the Euronaval naval confab in Paris next month.

Speaking about some lessons Naval Group has taken from Ukraine’s widespread use of naval drones, Pierre-Antoine Fliche, head of drones and autonomous systems product lines, highlighted the speed at which these types of systems need to be upgraded.

“One of the things we’ve learned is the cycle of development in Ukraine, where they go from one version to another every six months, and it’s not only because they are super fast but also because the adversary puts up defenses,” Fliche told Defense News. “That is one of the reasons we purposely built the SeaQuest as a highly modular platform and that we want to develop machine tactics with end-users because we know they will evolve on a six- to nine-month cycle.”

USV technologies have grown increasingly sophisticated, and Ukrainian forces have used a multitude of different systems, most recently arming them with multiple-launch rocket systems, to strike a greater number of small surface, air and coastal targets.

In May, the Ukrainian intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, said that the country has relied on them to a greater extent recently due to their consistent effectiveness.

“This equipment works — that’s the important thing, it gives results ... a third of the destroyed combat potential of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is the most decent indicator,” Budanov said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

According to Naval Group, SeaQuest is currently the only small USV designed to be able to embark onboard frigates and warships.

While the naval drone, which is undergoing sea trials in France, does not yet possess swarming capabilities, Fliche said those could be added later.

Ukrainian officials have predicted that as these types of robotic maritime platforms undergo improvements, they are poised to dominate conventional combat vessels in the future, at least in closed or semi-closed water bodies.

Navy leaders this week identified an aircraft carrier and two submarines affected by faulty weld issues during work at the Newport News Shipyard in Virginia, but say that the substandard work did not take place on components that affect ship safety or operations.

In a letter to House and Senate armed services committee members Thursday, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said impacted ships include the recently-revamped aircraft carrier George Washington and the brand-new attack submarines Hyman G. Rickover and New Jersey.

Citing shipyard officials, Del Toro wrote that the issue involved “welders who did not follow welding procedures properly.”

“Importantly, the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has assessed that the welds were not on components or systems that affect ship safety or operations,” he wrote. “NAVSEA, as the technical warrant holder, has determined the ships are safe to operate.”

Del Toro wrote that he first became aware of the issue on Sept. 24.

The Navy had identified those three vessels as having been impacted as of Thursday, and Del Toro’s memo states that the sea service is examining welds on 23 ships under construction or in maintenance to see if faulty welds there may impact future operations.

Lawmakers demand answers over reports of faulty Navy ship welding

Last week, officials with HII, the company that owns Newport News Shipbuilding, acknowledged that “some welders knowingly circumvented certain welding procedures” while working on military vessels.

“Malicious intent” was ruled out as a the source of the problem, HII said in a statement.

“Upon discovery of some welders not consistently following procedures, we followed our protocol, took action to communicate with our customers and regulators in a timely manner and began working the issue with the Navy,” the company said in an additional statement Friday.

The Department of Justice is investigating the matter, lawmakers confirmed this week.

Del Toro promised to cooperate with that probe and wrote Thursday that the Navy “is evaluating all legal options, and reserving our rights accordingly.”

Congressional leaders have pushed the Navy this week for more answers on the scope of the problem and how it was allowed to happen.

“These vessels are critical to U.S. defense,” House Armed Services Committee members wrote to Del Toro this week. “We must ensure that these vessels are protected against any bad actors seeking to put U.S. national security or our service members at risk.”

The Newport News yard is one of two in the United States focused on the nuclear fleet. The yard constructs parts of several submarine classes, as well as Ford-class aircraft carriers.

While the timeframe of the faulty welds has not been disclosed, George Washington left the Newport News yard in May 2023 following its midlife maintenance overhaul that began in 2017 and was originally supposed to wrap in 2021. Officials blamed the delays on extra unanticipated work during the so-called refueling and complex overhaul, or RCOH.

The carrier is currently underway in the Pacific Ocean and on its way to its new home port in Japan.

The submarine Hyman G. Rickover was commissioned in October 2023, while New Jersey was just commissioned on Sept. 14.

In the memo, Del Toro promised a full review of operations at the shipyard to ensure the welding problems do not occur again.

“The safety of our sailors and ships is of paramount importance,” he wrote. “We have given top priority to the task of defining and examining the scope of improper welds conducted on operational in-service ships, and I have directed my Navy technical experts to co-locate with the shipyard immediately to support a thorough review.”

The architecture of the new drone will be based on the firm’s Ulyx, a vehicle co-developed with Ifremer, the national institute for ocean science and technology. The platform will primarily be used to carry out reconnaissance operations across the seabed, covering sensitive infrastructure like submarine cables, many of which lie at a depth of 6,000 meters.

Ensuring the protection of those assets has proven increasingly difficult, even for major navies. NATO officials have warned that Russia could target undersea cables to disrupt Western activities.

A number of countries have followed closely the development of Moscow’s submarine fleet, as the country possesses the ability to cut cables on the ocean floor.

During a media visit to the FREMM Normandie frigate of the French Navy, organized here ahead of the Euronaval trade show in Paris next month, officers touched on the increased activity seen in recents years in the waters surrounding the Brest naval base, where the ship was stationed.

Last December, two French frigates, the Normandie and the Auvergne, followed closely a Russian submarine that was transiting off the coast of the Brittany town, according to French media.

The transit route is one that Russian submarines are reported to have taken in recent months to reach areas nearby Ireland.

France has identified the safeguard of its sovereignty of the seabed as a key priority in the French investment plan for 2030.

As part of the capability-building process set out in the Ministerial Strategy for Seabed Warfare, adopted in 2022, the French Navy will buy autonomous as well as remote-controlled undersea vehicles

For the latter category, officials selected French vendor Travocean with its DeepSea vehicle.

The new underwater drone will incorporate several made-in-France components designed by Exail, including acoustics sensors and the Phins inertial navigation system.

An Exail representative declined to say when the delivery of the AUV would be, saying only that it would be before 2030.

Dutch State Secretary of Defence Gijs Tuinman and Naval Group CEO Pierre Eric Pommellet signed the contract for four submarines at the Royal Netherlands Navy home port of Den Helder on Monday, the ministry said in a statement.

That follows a memorandum of understanding between the Dutch and French governments on knowledge sharing and user rights, and an industrial cooperation deal that foresees around €1 billion in spending with Dutch companies as well as continued involvement of Dutch research institutes. Naval Group is 62% held by the French government, with French defense firm Thales owning 35% of the shipbuilder.

The Netherlands in March disclosed a budget of €5.65 billion to replace its aging Walrus-class submarines, including a delta to operate the future vessels over their 30-year lifespan as well as a project-risk reserve. Naval Group is set to deliver the first two of the four submarines by 2034, with the new vessel a conventionally-powered variant of its Barracuda class.

“We are going for state-of-the-art submarines that serve the Dutch security interests and those of NATO and Europe to the maximum,” Tuinman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. He said the new submarines will allow the Netherlands “to show our teeth and if necessary, bite hard.”

Dutch involvement in the new submarines will include hydraulic systems, air-conditioning systems, acoustic cladding, detection devices, sonar, composite structures and water-making equipment, according to Tuinman. The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs didn’t immediately respond to phone calls and text messages regarding the details of the offset agreement.

The submarines are a strategic capacity and will be equipped for intelligence gathering, as well as cruise missiles, the state secretary said. Tuinman said the Netherlands is investing in its underwater capacity because “credible deterrence” is the best defense, and war is prevented by preparing for the possibility of conflict.

The Netherlands plans to equip the new subs with Tomahawk cruise missiles for a land-strike capacity, something the current Walrus class lacks, in addition to torpedoes.

The deal is a “major step” for the naval cooperation between France and the Netherlands, French Ambassador to the Netherlands François Alabrune said in a post on X.

The Netherlands had requested proposals in November 2022 from Naval Group, Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems and Sweden’s Saab Kockums in cooperation with Dutch shipbuilder Damen.

France operates a nuclear-powered version of the Barracuda class, and in 2020 the country estimated the cost of the program to build and operate six submarines in the class at €10.4 billion, up from €8.6 billion in 2010.

The sinking of China’s first Zhou-class submarine represents a setback for Beijing as it continues to build out the world’s largest navy. Beijing has become increasingly assertive in pursuing its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, which is crucial to international trade.

Meanwhile, China faces longtime territorial disputes involving others in the region including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. The United States has sought to strengthen ties to its allies in the region and regularly sails through those waters in operations it says maintain the freedom of navigation for vessels there, angering Beijing.

The submarine likely sank between May and June, when satellite images showed cranes that would be necessary to lift it off the bottom of the river, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the submarine loss.

China has been building up its naval fleet at a breakneck pace, and the U.S. considers China’s rise one of its main future security concerns.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday he was not familiar with the topic and did not provide any information when asked about it at a Beijing press conference.

The U.S. official said it was “not surprising” that China's navy would conceal it. The submarine's current status is unknown.

The identification of the sunken nuclear submarine was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. Navy submariner and an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, first noticed the incident involving the submarine in July, though it wasn’t publicly known at the time that it involved the new Zhou-class vessel.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press show what appears to be a submarine docked at the Shuangliu shipyard on the Yangtze River before the incident.

An image taken June 15 appears to show the submarine either fully or partially submerged just under the river’s surface, with rescue equipment and cranes surrounding it. Booms surround it to prevent any oil or other leaks from the vessel.

A satellite image taken Aug. 25 shows a submarine back at the same dock as the submerged vessel. It's not clear if it was the same one.

It remains unclear if the affected submarine had been loaded with nuclear fuel or if its reactor was operating at the time of the incident. However, there has been no reported release of radiation in the area in the time since.

China as of last year operated six nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, six nuclear-powered attack submarines and 48 diesel-powered attack submarines, according to a U.S. military report.

News of the submarine’s sinking comes as China this week conducted a rare launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into international waters in the Pacific Ocean. Experts say it marked the first time Beijing had conducted such a test since 1980.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Lawmakers demanded answers from the U.S. Navy on Friday over news reports that faulty welds may have been knowingly made to American submarines and aircraft carriers under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

The revelations were first reported by U.S. Naval Institute News.

Few details about the matter were made public Friday, including the potential risks to sailors serving aboard the impacted ships, or whether those ships would become unavailable for operations due to the bad welds.

In a statement late Friday, HII, the company that owns the shipyard, said it had discovered “through internal reporting that some welders knowingly circumvented certain welding procedures.”

“Based on our initial investigation, there is no indication of malicious intent,” the company said. “Upon discovery, we took action to communicate with our customers and regulators, investigate, determine root causes, bound the issue, and put in place immediate corrective actions as we work through longer-term solutions.”

The company’s statement did not include further information on the corrective actions or longer-term solutions taken.

Earlier Friday, in a joint statement, the Republican and Democrat heads of the House Armed Services Committee called reports of the faulty welds “deeply concerning.”

“The Department of Defense needs to immediately provide our committee with answers and a plan for how they will protect U.S. Navy vessels against tampering,” the statement by committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., states. “Absolute transparency with Congress is essential.”

The ranking member of the committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee said in a statement that members were “already in close contact with Navy leadership to ascertain the scope and severity of the weld quality issue.”

“Anytime there is a weld defect on Navy ships and submarines, the safety of the crews that serve aboard are put at risk, and the availability of these platforms are impeded,” subcommittee ranking member Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., said. “It is imperative that Navy leadership disclose its investigation in a timely manner in the coming weeks.”

The Navy said Friday that it was “aware of the issue and a thorough evaluation is underway to determine the scope.”

“The safety of our Sailors and our ships is of paramount importance,” the sea service said. “We are working closely with industry partners to address this situation and will provide additional information when available.”

The Newport News yard is one of two in the United States focused on the nuclear fleet.

The yard constructs parts of several submarine classes, as well as Ford-class aircraft carriers.

HII did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Military Times, but USNI News reported that the company had reported the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The support vessels will also be able to provide fire support for amphibious operations using long-range loitering munitions, as well as equip underwater drones to track and identify suspicious activity in the North Sea, Dutch State Secretary for Defence Gijs Tuinman said in a letter to parliament on Tuesday.

The Royal Netherlands Navy needs to strengthen its air defenses and firepower for operations in the “higher violence spectrum,” as well as capabilities to protect critical North Sea infrastructure such as drilling platforms and data cables, according to the Ministry of Defence.

“These vessels are needed to better protect the Netherlands and allies in the event of a threat,” Tuinman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, describing the two future support vessels as “sailing toolboxes” for the lead vessel. “The ships are capable of carrying a lot of equipment, such as additional firepower and long-range anti-aircraft missiles.”

Dutch shipyard Damen will build the vessels, with Israel Aerospace Industries supplying its Barak ER surface-to-air interceptor, Harop long-range loitering munition as well as electronic-warfare equipment. Buying the missiles, long-range munitions and EW equipment from a single supplier will simplify integration work, the defense ministry said.

The vessels will have a length of about 53 meters and a beam of 9.8 meters, for a displacement of 550 tons, a MoD spokesman told Defense News. That compares to a length of around 144 meters and displacement of more than 6,000 tons for the De Zeven Provinciën-class air-defense and command frigates operated by the Dutch Navy.

The service’s air-defense frigates will continue to be equipped with RTX’s SM-2 surface-to-air missile, and the frigate’s radar and fire-control systems will handle launch and targeting for the missiles on the support vessels.

The support ships will each have a crew of at least eight sailors. While current technology isn’t sufficiently mature for fully autonomous vessels, the new ships will provide the Navy with experience in operating with small crews, as a first step toward unmanned vessels, Tuinman said.

The first iteration will be available for the North Sea in 2026, and both vessels will be fully operational in 2027. Equipment on the support vessels will be packed in containers, meaning air-defense kit can be swapped out for long-range munitions based on the specific needs of the mission, according to the letter.

The Barak ER air-defense missile that will equip the support ships has a range of up to 150 kilometers and can target anything from fighters to tactical ballistic missiles and glide bombs, with eight missiles packed in a vertical launcher, according to the company’s spec sheet.

The Netherlands also looked at MBDA’s Aster missile, which the minister said can’t be fired from a container, while Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Stunner missile didn’t entirely fit the Dutch requirements.

The Netherlands needs to be prepared for swarming tactics, with massive and simultaneous attacks of anti-ship missiles and drones, which require larger stocks of missiles, Tuinman told parliament. Additionally, RTX is halting production of the SM-2, and the successor missile SM-2 Block IIICU isn’t compatible with the fire control on the Dutch air-defense frigates, the minister said.

Adversaries in coastal areas increasingly have access to advanced sensors and long-range weapons, which is changing doctrine for amphibious operations to a larger number of simultaneous landings, according to Tuinman. The IAI loitering munitions have a range of several hundreds of kilometers, and will be able to linger in the target area for some time before use, he said.

Meanwhile the threat to Dutch infrastructure in the North Sea remains undiminished, with Russia continuing to map the infrastructure in what appear to be preparations for disruption and sabotage, the minister said. The Navy escorted a Russian research vessel in June and July that spent several days in the Dutch part of the North Sea, with intelligence services suspecting the Russians were investigating opportunities for potential future sabotage.

The Ministry of Defence plans to buy off-the-shelf underwater drones equipped with long-range sensors to spot suspicious activity, while the support vessels will also be fitted with sensors to record suspicious vessels.

Yet after more than a decade of research, lead nations Germany and the Netherlands are still years away from fitting their navies with a hard-kill torpedo countermeasure.

Germany’s navy has been toying with a product called SeaSpider, developed by Atlas Elektronik, for several years. Work on the sole technology option under consideration in Europe goes back even further, with engineers studying it for at least 15 years, according to the firm’s website.

But while Atlas has tried to market the system as ready for combat, no navy has yet taken the bait, and the Dutch Ministry of Defence has repeatedly pushed back the start of a formal purchasing program based on SeaSpider.

The German sea service did tests some years ago, but decided against adopting the system. And the Canadian navy, deemed a prospective SeaSpider launch customer due to the timing of its large-scale surface combatant program, made no mention of the capability in its initial lineup of technologies for the future fleet.

A spokesman for Atlas’ parent company, Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems, declined to discuss SeaSpider, pointing to previous requests by the German navy to keep details under wraps. A spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Defense said the technology’s classification and contractual status prohibit the disclosure of details.

Still, officials in Berlin believe that a capability to intercept torpedoes with torpedoes is a critical force-protection technology in principle, the spokeswoman told Defense News.

Torpedoes have historically been one of the main threats to surface vessels, with the weapon involved in more than half of sinkings of U.S. Navy ships during World War II, according to U.S. Coast Guard data cited by Dutch researchers at TNO, a government-linked research organization.

Defense against torpedoes remains essentially a losing proposition, according to experts, leaving surface ships relatively vulnerable once such a weapon is headed their way. The main defensive measures consist of maneuvering, or launching decoys to confuse incoming torpedoes. Yet the latter is ineffective against so-called wake-homing variants, which align their travel path to hit ships in a straight line from behind, their sonar signature buried in the acoustic noise of a ship’s own propulsion system.

The U.S. Navy experimented with an anti-torpedo interceptor installed on three of its aircraft carriers in 2017, before uninstalling the system in 2018, saying that while the hard-kill measure showed “some capability to defeat an incoming torpedo,” reliability was uncertain and lethality of the system was untested.

SeaSpider can intercept all types of torpedoes, combining data from sensors installed on the carrier ship and the interceptor torpedo to compute collision paths with the inbound weapon, the manufacturer promises on its website.

The package has been in play again since last year for further development under the auspices of a European Union program, led by Germany and the Netherlands, labeled simply “Anti-torpedo Torpedo,” or ATT.

A one-sentence description for the project on an EU website describes a desire for “bringing a developed anti-torpedo torpedo demonstrator to the production-ready design, with a qualified effector and a proven functional chain,” an apparent reference to the Atlas product that only the Dutch Ministry of Defence would confirm to Defense News.

A spokesperson there said the SeaSpider technology is still too immature to warrant setting up a formal program, though Dutch defense officials have planned to take such a step, which requires parliamentary notification, since 2022. If it all comes to pass, perhaps in 2025, budget analysts have slotted a torpedo-killing torpedo capability into a category of programs consuming anywhere between €250 million and €1 billion, according to the Dutch MOD.

That is in addition to a related effort, led by TNO and estimated at €50 million to €100 million, to sharpen the technology for torpedo detection that would go into an eventual anti-torpedo torpedo suite, a spokesperson told Defense News.

Notably, the German MOD declined to disclose even the industry team of Atlas and TNO as lead companies of the European Union program, set up under the bloc’s defense-cooperation push known as PESCO. A spokeswoman in Berlin said no contracts had been signed in the matter.

Also unanswered were questions about the shortcomings that the German navy sees in SeaSpider. Defense News has learned that the depth of the envisioned intercept sequence is at issue, with the Atlas system currently limited to hits around the water surface.

In the end, the timing of a European anti-torpedo torpedo program could line up with Dutch Navy plans for new anti-submarine warfare frigates, the first of which is expected to become operational in 2029. That is because German officials expect the PESCO program to yield a production-ready system that passes all regulatory requirements by the end of the decade, with a prototype built in 2028.

In the meantime, other European nations also have taken an interest, including Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Italy and Spain, according to issue experts.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this report.

From drones and unmanned surface vessels to the more advanced operation of ship-board guns, the Navy is expanding its combat skills and broadening training. It is also working to overcome recruiting struggles so it can have the sailors it needs to fight the next war.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti is laying out a series of goals, including several that will be highly challenging to meet, in a new navigation plan, or NAVPLAN, she described in an interview with The Associated Press. The objective is to be ready to face what the Pentagon calls its key national security challenge — China.

“I’m very focused on 2027. It’s the year that that President Xi (Jinping) told his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan,” Franchetti said. “We need to be more ready.”

The new plan includes what she considers seven priority goals, ranging from removing delays in ship depot maintenance to improving Navy infrastructure, recruiting and the use of drones and autonomous systems.

One significant challenge is to have 80% of the force be ready enough at any given time to deploy for combat if needed — something she acknowledged is a “stretch goal.” The key, she said, is to get to a level of combat readiness where “if the nation calls us, we can push the ‘go’ button and we can surge our forces to be able to meet the call.”

What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea

The announcement of the goals comes as U.S. leaders are treading a fine line, pledging a commitment to the defense of Taiwan while also working to keep communication open with Beijing to deter greater conflict.

Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that split from communist China in 1949, has rejected Beijing’s demands that it accept unification. China says it will do so by force if necessary. The United States is obligated under domestic law to help defend Taiwan and give it weapons and technology to deter invasion.

An important element in any Asia-Pacific conflict will be the need to control the seas. Franchetti said the U.S. can learn from how the Ukrainians have used drones, airstrikes and long-range unmanned vessels to limit Russian ship activity in the western Black Sea and keep access open to critical ports.

“If you look at the Ukrainian success in really keeping the Russian Black Sea fleet pushed all the way over into the east, that’s all about sea denial and that’s very important,” Franchetti said.

She added that Ukraine has been innovating on the battlefield by using existing systems, such as drones, in different ways.

The Navy’s monthslong battle with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has provided other lessons.

“I think probably no one is learning more than the Navy, because really, this is the first time we’ve been in a weapons engagement zone for this sustained period,” she said.

She said sailors are watching their attacks and analyzing the data as ships respond.

Earlier this year, the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower was stationed in the Red Sea to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from Houthi attacks. The carrier returned home after an eight-month-plus deployment that the Navy said was the most intense running sea battle since World War II.

F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets routinely launched off the carrier’s deck to take out Houthi weapons, and Navy destroyers persistently fired rounds of missiles and used on-board guns to shoot down incoming strikes and drones.

On board the destroyer Mason, which was stationed with the Eisenhower, Franchetti in August met and promoted one of the destroyer’s fire control sailors who worked on its large, fully automatic artillery gun. Unlike missiles, many of the drones launched by the Houthis were more complicated and challenging to target and shoot down, and he was able to adjust the gun to better defeat them.

“He could see how it was performing against the Houthi threat,” Franchetti said, “and he came up with a different way to use the gun to make it more effective in these engagements.”

She did not identify the sailor and declined to provide details on the exact changes he recommended. But it resulted in new formal military tactics and procedures that were distributed to all other ships.

Another key effort will be to improve Navy development of unmanned and autonomous systems and weapons and integrate them into training and combat. As the military brings on new technologies, including unmanned surface vessels, the Navy needs to ensure it has trained sailors who can use and repair them.

The new navigation plan notes that the Navy is now working on concepts and requirements for larger robotic systems and the artificial intelligence applications they could use to understand and control the battlespace.

Navy leaders also understand the financial restraints they will likely face from Congress — limits that rivals such as China do not have. China outpaces the U.S. in the number of ships and is expected to do so into the future.

Navy officials said that while they would like a bigger naval force, they need to offset that by working more effectively with the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Marines, which is something the U.S. has historically done very well.

A challenge will be eliminating the maintenance overruns that often prevent ships from being able to deploy on time. Getting ships in and out of depots on time, Franchetti said, is critical to having a combat-ready Navy.

“These are the things that we know that we need to be able to do to have the force that’s going to be more ready every single day,” she said.

The Canadian government has requested submarine builders submit information on their boats by Nov. 18 in what is seen as a first step in the eventual purchase.

Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair issued a statement Sept. 16 noting that submarines are crucial to maintaining the country’s sovereignty. “As an Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific nation with the world’s longest coastline, Canada needs a new fleet of submarines,” Blair said.

The current fleet of Victoria-class submarines operated by the Royal Canadian Navy will be decommissioned in the mid-2030s, he added.

“To avoid any gap in Canadian submarine capabilities, Canada anticipates a contract award by 2028 with the delivery of the first replacement submarine no later than 2035,” Blair noted in his message.

In a statement also released Sept. 16 on X, Blair said the purchase would involve acquiring up to 12 conventionally-powered, under-ice capable submarines. No cost figures were released at this time.

Canada is open to submarines that are currently in service or in production.

The submarines would be capable of conducting “precision attacks” and would equipped with heavyweight torpedoes, anti-ship missiles and long-range precision land attack missiles, according to the initial information provided to industry.

Blair said the request for information will also open the door for Canadian industry on in-service support, training and infrastructure for the new fleet. Canada does not build its own submarines so any boats will be constructed in another nation.

Blair originally highlighted Canada’s interest in new submarines on July 10 at the NATO summit in Washington but did not provide specific details at that time. Canadian government officials, however, have suggested that the submarine purchase could help Canada meet its goal of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense as required by NATO. Canada has been under increasing pressure from its allies to do more on defense.

To prepare for the acquisition the Royal Canadian Navy had already created the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP), which was gathering information, and conducting an analysis of potential submarines capable of meeting the service’s requirements.

In 2023 the CPSP project team conducted initial engagements and fact finding with countries, companies, and navies that currently have or are in the process of building submarines that meet Canada’s needs. The team has engaged with France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Sweden.

The request for information will allow Canada to receive specific information it needs to put together a bid package and supporting documents for the future purchase.

The four Victoria-class boats, originally known as the Upholder-class, were purchased second-hand from the U.K. Royal Navy. The first three Victoria-class submarines were accepted into Royal Canadian Navy service between 2000 and 2003. The fourth submarine suffered a fire in transit to Canada in 2004, which delayed its acceptance into RCN service until 2015.

The submarines are currently undergoing various improvements and upgrades to keep them operating until the mid to late 2030s.

Kongsberg announced earlier this year that it plans to expand production for missiles in Norway and open a new missile factory in Australia.

The James City County, Virginia, location will “provide additional production capacity, sustainment and in-country tech refresh capabilities for Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) and Joint Strike Missiles (JSM),” the company release states.

NSM is an anti-ship missile and JSM is an air-launched missile used on the U.S. Air Force’s F-35A fighter jet for complex missions like anti-surface warfare and land attack.

Kongsberg already has a U.S. production facility in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

“The new missile production facilities in the US, Australia and Norway address the strong and long-term demand for our unique technology and the critical need to strengthen collective defence capabilities,” Geir Håøy, Kongsberg’s CEO, said. “Kongsberg has a proud history in the U.S. and we are delighted to continue to invest in the country to support American interests while creating jobs locally,” he added.

The company noted the decision to open the new U.S. facility “was heavily influenced by the possibility that the Department of Defense could award a multiyear procurement contract to Kongsberg.”

The Pentagon has pursued a number of new multiyear procurement contracts not usually awarded to missile programs. Earlier this year, the Army awarded a multiyear contract to Lockheed Martin for the Patriot Advanced Capability Increment 3 Missile Segment Enhancement missile and plans to soon award a similar contract for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missile.

“The US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force are important customers for Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile,” Eirik Lie, Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace president, said. “Their demand signals gave us the predictability we needed to make this investment in the United States.”

The new missile factory, focused on assembly, upgrades and repairs for NSM and JSM, will include hiring more than 180 people. The company will invest more than $100 million into Virginia in the next few years “in terms of property, plant and equipment,” Heather Armentrout, president of Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace, Inc., the company’s U.S. subsidiary, said.

Kongsberg isn’t the only Nordic country expanding missile production in the U.S. Saab announced earlier this year that it would be growing its footprint stateside with a new facility that will manufacture ground combat weapons and missile systems.

The new site is part of a global manufacturing push from the Swedish company to quadruple its global capacity to produce its ground combat weapons. The new facility will support production of programs like the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb.

A submarine designed and built for both genders has been a long time coming. The New Jersey is entering the fleet roughly 14 years after then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended the ban on women serving on subs in 2010.

Female officers did not join the submarine force until 2011, and such roles only opened up to enlisted sailors in 2015.

A commissioning ceremony for the submarine will occur in Leonardo, New Jersey, according to the Navy. It is the third Navy vessel bearing the name of the Garden State.

This officer is the first woman to serve as XO of a submarine

HII-Newport News Shipbuilding delivered the New Jersey to the Navy in April.

Female trailblazers in the submarine community include Lt. Cmdr. Amber Cowan, who became the first woman to serve as the executive officer of a submarine in 2022 aboard the ballistic missile submarine Kentucky.

Master Chief Information Systems Technician (Submarine) Angela Koogler also became the first woman to serve as a chief of the boat, the senior enlisted adviser to the commanding and executive officers, aboard the nuclear ballistic missile submarine Louisiana that same year.

Plans are underway to expand the number of submarine vessels with women.

Adm. William Houston, then-commander of Naval Submarine Forces, said last year that he signed a “major revision” to the Navy’s plan to integrate women into the submarine fleet. The new guidance calls for women officers to serve on 40 submarines – up from the original 30.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the TR to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly.

The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there last month to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the region.

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as the war in Gaza has dragged on for 11 months, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after a more than eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the destroyer Daniel Inouye are expected to be in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday. The other destroyer in the strike group, the Russell, had already left the Middle East and has been operating in the South China Sea.

The Lincoln, which is now in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships, arrived in the Middle East about three weeks ago, allowing it to overlap with the Roosevelt until now.

There also are a number of U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and two destroyers and the guided missile submarine Georgia are in the Red Sea.

Sixty-three percent of executive officers — a ship’s second-in-command — surveyed reported that insufficient manning made it “moderately to extremely difficult to complete repairs while underway,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

At-sea basic maintenance and repairs are critical to ensuring a ship can carry out its mission, according to the GAO.

But Monday’s report, based on interviews of sailors and leaders across the fleet, reveals that basic maintenance duties and repairs are hindered not only by manning shortages, but also by inaccurate Navy guidelines and substandard training.

As of late last year, the Navy was lacking nearly 14,000 enlisted sailors to keep its aircraft carriers, surface ships and attack submarines properly manned, according to the GAO.

The watchdog also found that aircraft carriers, cruisers and amphibious assault ships did not have enough enlisted sailors assigned to them to meet requirements for safe operations as laid out by the Navy Manpower Analysis Center.

Navy should be ‘offended’ by its own maintenance and manning faults, admiral says

“The Navy has not provided crew levels sufficient to meet the ship maintenance workload,” one sailor told GAO investigators.

This results in a smaller crew having to do more work, compounding the stressors of ship life.

“More capable sailors that perform a lot of maintenance get burned out and tired of taking up the slack for other sailors and leave the Navy to do the same work for better pay and working conditions,” another sailor said in the report.

Exacerbating the manning shortages are sailors assigned to a specific ship who may not always be on hand for duty, due to illness or temporary assignments to another ship.

“Navy executive officers and sailors told GAO there were widespread concerns about sailor training,” the report states.

Sailors also aren’t always prepared for their jobs aboard ships, and those serving in maintenance-heavy roles “may be less experienced than other sailors on that same ship,” according to the GAO.

Training for sailor-led maintenance is also insufficient, sailors told the watchdog.

Sailors attend A school after boot camp to get initial training with instructors and computers, but some interviewed by GAO questioned how well A school prepared them for their shipboard duties.

“Specifically, sailors expressed dissatisfaction with both the quality of training — whether it prepares them to perform maintenance aboard ship — and the format in which training is delivered,” the report said.

The Navy is working to enhance sailor-led maintenance training through its Ready Relevant Learning initiative, which involves distributing videos of sailor-led maintenance to schoolhouses, according to the report.

The Navy is also aiming to share these videos with sailors via cloud based services and remote support.

Still, videos for certain maintenance specialties like electrical repair are not yet available, and some sailors noted that video training is not always reliable on the ship, given limited bandwidth.

“More (maintenance) training should be conducted before a sailor arrives at their ship and while they are transitioning between commands,” one sailor told the GAO.

The GAO offered several recommendations, including that the service improve the “quality of information on the number of ship’s crew available for duty” and guarantee that personnel numbers and skill levels for certain kinds of maintenance are tailored for specific ships and classes.

“The Navy’s guidelines for performing ship maintenance are sometimes inaccurate with respect to the time and personnel needed and are not written appropriately for sailors’ maintenance skills and supervisor’s experience levels,” the watchdog said. “Ensuring the Navy’s guidelines better reflect the actual number and skill level of maintenance personnel will enhance sailors’ ability to maintain ships.”

The Navy agreed with these recommendations, according to the watchdog.

The GAO surveyed executive officers from 232 ships in the fleet with a 91% response rate and met with more than 140 leaders and 200 sailors on 25 ships for the report, which began in January 2023 and ended earlier this month.

Go here to read the full report.

The “Ocean-24” exercise spans the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas and involves over 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, more than 120 planes and helicopters and over 90,000 troops, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The maneuvers will continue through Sept. 16, the ministry said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments to military officials that the war games are the largest of their kind in three decades, and that China’s warships and planes were taking part. China confirmed that on Monday, saying the two countries’ navies would cruise together in Pacific, but gave no details.

A total of 15 countries have been invited to observe the drills, Putin said, without naming them.

“We pay special attention to strengthening military cooperation with friendly states. Today, in the context of growing geopolitical tensions in the world, this is especially important,” Putin said.

The Russian leader accused the United States of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost," seeking “to inflict a strategic defeat” on Russia in its war with Ukraine and to “break the established security architecture and balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“Under the pretext of countering the allegedly existing Russian threat and containing the People’s Republic of China, the United States and its satellites are increasing their military presence near Russia’s western borders, in the Arctic and in the Asia-Pacific region,” Putin said, stressing that “Russia must be prepared for any development of the situation.”

Russia and China, along with other U.S. critics such as Iran, have aligned their foreign policies to challenge and potentially overturn the Western-led liberal democratic order.

With joint exercises, Russia has sought Chinese help in achieving its long-cherished aim of becoming a Pacific power, while Moscow has backed China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said the drills are aimed to train “repelling large-scale aggression of a potential enemy from ocean directions, combating unmanned boats, unmanned aerial vehicles, defending naval bases, conducting amphibious operations and escorting transports.”

The Common Hypersonic Glide Body, which is the all-up round developed jointly with the U.S. Navy, conducted a key successful test earlier this year. The Navy will integrate the round into a ship-launched capability, while the Army will integrate it into a ground launcher.

The Army has worked with Leidos’ Dynetics for years to build the industrial base for the Common Hypersonic Glide Body that will be used by both the ground service and the Navy, as the domestic private sector has never built a hypersonic weapon.

On the heels of the Navy test, “what we’ve got to do is make sure we have a full end-to-end test as close to an operational test that is successful,” Bush told reporters in a Pentagon briefing.

The Army needs to have confidence “it’s safe and effective to actually put in a unit that might have to go to war,” he said. “We haven’t had that test event yet where it’s fully succeeded, but we’re going to have, hopefully have, it this year.”

If the service is able to pull off a successful test, then it will be on track to field it to the first unit as an initial operational capability, according to Bush.

The Army completed its delivery of the first hypersonic weapon capability — minus the all-up rounds — to the 1st Multidomain Task Force 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, two days ahead of its end-of-fiscal 2021 fielding deadline.

Hypersonic weapons are capable of flying faster than Mach 5 — or more than 3,836 miles per hour — and can maneuver between varying altitudes, making them difficult to detect. The C-HGB is made up of the weapon’s warhead, guidance system, cabling and thermal protection shield.

The U.S. is in a race to field the capability and develop systems to defend against hypersonic missiles. China and Russia are actively developing and testing hypersonic weapons.

In August, Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office director, told Defense News in an exclusive interview at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, that the Army is “really close” to fielding the capability. But he cautioned that more testing remains before any decision is made on the future of its ground-launched hypersonic missile.

The Navy’s flight test of the industry-manufactured missile — which took place at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii in May — was highly anticipated as part of the joint development program following a series of failed or aborted tests of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body.

The Army and Navy last year had to abort flight tests in March, October and November due to challenges at the range related not to the round but the process of firing up the missile for launch.

Missile development programs typically take about 10 years, Rasch stressed, and while the plan to field hypersonic missiles to a first unit has been delayed by over a year, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon program is only at the five-year mark.

“We’ve got to make sure this capability works. If the decision is made to implement this, it’s for real, serious reasons, strategic-level reasons, and we need it to work every time,” Rasch said.

The annual exercise Northern Viking wrapped up on Sept 3. after 11 days of joint operations in the maritime transit route known as the GIUK gap, an acronym for Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom.

The area forms an important naval chokepoint, a passage that connects two stretches of open ocean to the three land masses, vital to naval and air traffic between Europe and North America.

Led by the U.S. Naval Forces Europe, the training brought together 1,200 participants from Iceland, Denmark, France, Norway, Poland and Portugal, according to an Iceland government statement.

Missions were based on a simulated threat to Iceland’s national security in order to test NATO’s ability to respond to crises threatening strategic lines of communication in the GIUK gap. It included anti-surface, anti-submarine warfare, maritime surveillance as well as search-and-rescue operations.

Allies deployed an array of drones, maritime patrol aircraft, surface vessels equipped with radars and sensors as well as ships from NATO’s Standing Maritime Group One, part of the alliance’s high readiness maritime capability.

The exercise was further aimed at “facing traditional military threats on land, at sea and in the air, but also multi-faceted threats and acts of sabotage, which will test the Icelandic authorities,” the government of Iceland said in the notice.

The GIUK gap is located at the edge of the eastern Arctic, a region that remains at the center of geopolitical tensions as many states have contended for greater ownership and control over the resources it offers.

Due to climate change, sea ice covering the Arctic ocean has melted at an alarming rate and new shipping lanes have emerged, fueling a race between Arctic states – the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden – and non-Arctic countries like China for control over them.

“In a region that is a focal point for geopolitical competition, maintaining robust surveillance capabilities is essential for early warning and rapid response to potential threats,” NATO’s Allied Maritime Command said in a statement.

Two days prior to the start of Northern Viking, the Chinese Premier Li Qiang met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss how to bolster their countries’ cooperation.

A communique released by China’s State Council following the meeting, highlighted that the Arctic is an area where the two partners want to expand their collaboration specifically related to “shipping development, navigation safety, polar ship technology and construction.”

In July, the U.S., Canada and Finland announced a new trilateral initiative, the so-called “Ice Pact,” to deepen cooperation in the manufacturing of polar icebreakers.

In addition to delivering two Naval Strike Missiles for the Corps’ anti-ship missile system, the autonomous low-profile vessel the Marine Corps is experimenting with also aims to better get critical supplies like food to forward deployed and distributed Marines, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Simon Doran said at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday.

“Truth be told, this is just a narco-boat,” Doran said. “We stole the idea from friends down south. And so this is 55 feet long, completely autonomous. It’s able to go hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s able to carry weapon systems that we have that are new. … It can carry pretty much anything you want to put in it.”

Marines expect ‘big year’ for drone, ship and logistics testing

Inspired by narco-boats, which are used by traffickers to smuggle illicit substances across bodies of water, the unmanned vessel remains close to the water-surface level to cut down on the likelihood of detection as it assists with logistics capabilities.

The service tested the logistics supply drone at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone in February at Camp Pendleton, California, where the Marine Corps trained a cook in 21 days to operate the system off the islands of Japan.

The Army spearheads the Project Convergence to test out advanced technology and capabilities in modern warfare as part of a joint, multinational exercise.

The autonomous low-profile vessel is particularly important because it allows forces to resupply food, fuel and ammunition without jeopardizing the safety of Marines, Doran said.

“If you have that unit located inside a weapons engagement zone, contested logistics and the ability to maneuver in the littorals becomes key,” Doran said. “And for that, what we’re looking at is trying to acquire systems that we deem risk worthy, meaning that we don’t necessarily want to just waste them, but we’d rather put something in there that’s autonomous, that doesn’t have humans on it that can do some of these higher risk missions without having personnel put in that riskier situation.”

This system is something the Marine Corps wanted “yesterday,” but testing is ongoing, Doran said. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory received two prototypes in 2023.

The vessel is expected to join the III Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, Japan, for further evaluation this fall, he said.

The service hopes to purchase the vessels in the next several years, Marine Corps leaders said at the 2023 Defense News Conference.

U.S. Army soldiers in the 7th Transportation Brigade had previously set up a pier during training and in exercises overseas but never had dealt with the wild combination of turbulent weather, security threats and sweeping personnel restrictions that surrounded the Gaza humanitarian aid project.

Designed as a temporary solution to get badly needed food and supplies to desperate Palestinians, the so-called Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system, or JLOTS, faced a series of setbacks over the spring and summer. It managed to send more than 20 million tons of aid ashore for people in Gaza facing famine during the Israel-Hamas war.

What did the US military’s Gaza aid pier actually accomplish?

Service members struggled with what Col. Sam Miller, who was commander during the project, called the biggest “organizational leadership challenge” he had ever experienced.

Speaking to The Associated Press after much of the unit returned home, Miller said the Army learned a number of lessons during the four-month mission. It began when President Joe Biden’s announced in his State of the Union speech in March that the pier would be built and lasted through July 17, when the Pentagon formally declared that the mission was over and the pier was being permanently dismantled.

The Army is reviewing the $230 million pier operation and what it learned from the experience. One of the takeaways, according to a senior Army official, is that the unit needs to train under more challenging conditions to be better prepared for bad weather and other security issues it faced. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because assessments of the pier project have not been publicly released.

In a report released this week, the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development said Biden ordered the pier’s construction even as USAID staffers expressed concerns that it would be difficult and undercut a push to persuade Israel to open “more efficient” land crossings to get food into Gaza.

The Defense Department said the pier “achieved its goal of providing an additive means of delivering high volumes of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza to help address the acute humanitarian crisis.” The U.S. military knew from the outset “there would be challenges as part of this in this complex emergency,” the statement added.

The Biden administration had set a goal of the U.S. sea route and pier providing food to feed 1.5 million people for 90 days. It fell short, bringing in enough to feed about 450,000 people for a month before shutting down, the USAID inspector general's report said.

The Defense Department’s watchdog also is doing an evaluation of the project.

Beefing up training

Army soldiers often must conduct their exercises under difficult conditions designed to replicate war. Learning from the Gaza project — which was the first time the Army set up a pier in actual combat conditions — leaders say they need to find ways to make the training even more challenging.

One of the biggest difficulties of the Gaza pier mission was that no U.S. troops could step ashore — a requirement set by Biden. Instead, U.S service members were scattered across a floating city of more than 20 ships and platforms miles offshore that had to have food, water, beds, medical care and communications.

Every day, said Miller, there were as many as 1,000 trips that troops and other personnel made from ship to boat to pier to port and back.

“We were moving personnel around the sea and up to the Trident pier on a constant basis,” Miller said. “And every day, there was probably about a thousand movements taking place, which is quite challenging, especially when you have sea conditions that you have to manage.”

All troops from Gaza pier mission expected to be home by October

Military leaders, he said, had to plan three or four days ahead to ensure they had everything they needed because the trip from the pier to their “safe haven” at Israel's port of Ashdod was about 30 nautical miles.

The trip over and back could take up to 12 hours, in part because the Army had to sail about 5 miles out to sea between Ashdod and the pier to stay a safe distance from shore as they passed Gaza City, Miller said.

Normally, Miller said, when the Army establishes a pier, the unit sets up a command onshore, making it much easier to store and access supplies and equipment or gather troops to lay out orders for the day.

Communication difficulties

While his command headquarters was on the U.S. military ship Roy P. Benavidez, Miller said he was constantly moving with his key aides to the various ships and the pier.

“I slept and ate on every platform out there,” he said.

The U.S. Army official concurred a lot of unexpected logistical issues came up that a pier operation may not usually include.

Because the ships had to use the Ashdod port and a number of civilian workers under terms of the mission, contracts had to be negotiated and written. Agreements had to be worked out so vessels could dock, and workers needed to be hired for tasks that troops couldn't do, including moving aid onto the shore.

Communications were a struggle.

“Some of our systems on the watercraft can be somewhat slower with bandwidth, and you’re not able to get up to the classified level,” Miller said.

He said he used a huge spreadsheet to keep track of all the ships and floating platforms, hundreds of personnel and the movement of millions of tons of aid from Cyprus to the Gaza shore.

When bad weather broke the pier apart, they had to set up ways to get the pieces moved to Ashdod and repaired. Over time, he said, they were able to hire more tugs to help move sections of the pier more quickly.

Some of the pier’s biggest problems — including the initial reluctance of aid agencies to distribute supplies throughout Gaza and later safety concerns from the violence — may not apply in other operations where troops may be quickly setting up a pier to get military forces ashore for an assault or disaster response.

“There’s tons of training value and experience that every one of the soldiers, sailors and others got out of this,” Miller said. "There’s going to be other places in the world that may have similar things, but they won’t be as tough as the things that we just went through.”

When the time comes, he said, “we’re going to be much better at doing this type of thing.”

One bit of information could have given the military a better heads-up about the heavy seas that would routinely hammer the pier. Turns out, said the Army official, there was a Gaza surf club, and its headquarters was near where they built the pier.

That “may be an indicator that the waves there were big,” the official said.

AP writers Tara Copp and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

The Irish government published its latest Defense Policy Review earlier this summer, which sets the posture of the national military forces in response to current security threats.

“Ireland’s security environment is undergoing a period of profound change; our geographic position and policy of military neutrality no longer minimize threats posed by malign actors,” the document stated.

The wider field of maritime security is among the listed priorities, for which the review recommends buying a naval surveillance radar and sonar capability to monitor undersea goings-on in the waters around the island.

The plan is to combine these capabilities into an integrated monitoring system for the air and land domains as well with the acquisition of a ground-based air defense system.

European navies try to keep up in cat-and-mouse game of seabed warfare

Dublin’s waters are located in a nexus of a wide network of undersea cables, the global seafloor links through which roughly approximately 97% of global communications and internet traffic travels. According to public broadcaster RTE, three-quarters of all cables in the northern hemisphere pass through or near Irish waters, most of them off the southwest coast.

Any disruption or sabotage to these cables could have significant repercussions for the international economy and services.

The new defense review also says new capability development will focus on sub-sea, littoral and critical maritime infrastructure to enhance naval defense and enable the operationalization of inshore patrol vessels acquired from New Zealand in 2022.

Meanwhile, officials are in the process of developing a new national maritime security strategy, led by the country’s Department of Defense, which likely will flesh out Dublins’s subsea ambitions.

In an attempt to grow the country’s role in securing sea communication lines, the Irish government received lawmakers’ approval in July to join the Italian-led Critical Seabed Infrastructure Protection project of the European Union.

The initiative, launched in May 2023, is part of the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO framework, where seven EU member states collaborate to improve their underwater surveillance assets and capabilities.

While the addition of Ireland to the project represents an important step in its expansion of subsea know-how, it was met by criticism from other lawmakers, who viewed the move as straying it away from the country’s longstanding policy of military neutrality.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. Samuel Paparo, who heads the biggest number of combat forces outside the U.S. mainland, refused to provide details of the contingency options.

Paparo's comments came when asked at a news conference what the longtime treaty allies could do to deal with China’s so-called gray-zone tactics in the disputed waters.

US military open to escorting Philippine ships in South China Sea

The “gray-zone tactics” refer to types of assault, like water cannon fire and the blocking and ramming of rival ships in the disputed waters, that are under the threshold of an actual armed attack and wouldn’t allow the Philippines to invoke its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S. The treaty obligates either country to help the other in case of an armed external attack.

“We certainly have prepared a range of options and USINDOPACOM stands ready, if so called, after consultations in accordance with the treaty to execute those shoulder to shoulder with our ally,” Paparo said.

Detailing those U.S. military options would allow “the potential adversary” to “build a countermeasure to those,” he said.

Paparo held a joint news conference with Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Gen. Romero Brawner Jr., after both led an annual meeting in the northern Philippine mountain city of Baguio to discuss security challenges and military plans. They include the Balikatan — Tagalog for “shoulder to shoulder” — the treaty allies’ largest combat exercises, which in April involved more than 16,000 American and Philippine forces and were partly staged in the South China Sea.

In response to a question, Paparo repeated the U.S. military is open, after treaty consultations with the Philippines, to escorting Philippine ships in the South China Sea amid a spike in hostilities between Beijing and Manila in the disputed waters. Such a prospect would risk putting U.S. Navy ships in direct collisions with those of China.

Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over China’s increasingly assertive actions to defend its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and Beijing’s stated goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.

Brawner said the Philippines could still fend for itself in the disputed waters, where hostilities with the Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships have alarmingly spiked since last year.

“If we exhaust all the options and nothing works, then that’s the time we can ask for help,” Brawner told reporters.

When Philippine forces in the disputed waters “are at the verge of dying,” because food supplies were being blocked by Chinese forces, “then that’s the time that we are going to seek the help of the United States,” Brawner said, but added that “we still have a lot of options.”

During combat exercises by U.S. and Philippine forces in April, the U.S. military transported a midrange missile system to the northern Philippines, angering China, which warned that the missile system can trigger a regional arms race and endanger regional stability. Beijing demanded the U.S. missile system, which can threaten mainland China, be pulled out of the Philippines.

Paparo and Brawner refused to say on Thursday if and when the missile system would be flown out of the Philippines. Brawner thanked the U.S. military for transporting the high-tech weaponry to the country, saying Philippine forces were being exposed to advance defense equipment that the Philippine military plan to acquire in the future.

"Just like what we did with the Stingers and with the Javelins, we start training already even if we don’t have them yet in our inventory,” Brawner said.

China has angered the Philippines by repeatedly harassing its navy and coast guard ships with powerful water cannons, a military-grade laser, blocking movements and other dangerous maneuvers in the high seas near two disputed South China Sea shoals. They have led to minor collisions that have injured several Philippine navy personnel and damaged supply boats.

China has accused the Philippines of setting off the hostilities in the disputed waters by encroaching in what it says are its offshore territories, demarcated by 10 dashes on a map. It says the Chinese coast guard and navy have been forced to take action to expel Philippine coast guard and other vessels from those areas.

The Philippines has repeatedly cited a 2016 international arbitration ruling based on the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea that invalidated China’s claim over virtually the entire South China Sea on historical grounds.

Aaron Favila contributed to this report.