Navy

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

What today’s navalists can learn from the Allied success at sea in WWII.

"Where do we get such people?" That's a question generally posed when we are witness to astonishing military skill and courage. The question is often intended to be rhetorical, and that's a mistake. With military heroism, we are dealing with emotionally charged, life-and-death matters, and they…

The Battle of Jutland reverberates powerfully in the history of naval combat, and it does so with a resonance that equals or exceeds that of such history-shaping sea struggles as Salamis in 480 b.c., Lepanto in 1571, Trafalgar in 1805, and Leyte Gulf in 1944. Now, in Jutland, Nicholas Jellicoe…

The Battle of Jutland reverberates powerfully in the history of naval combat, and it does so with a resonance that equals or exceeds that of such history-shaping sea struggles as Salamis in 480 b.c., Lepanto in 1571, Trafalgar in 1805, and Leyte Gulf in 1944. Now, in Jutland, Nicholas Jellicoe…

Reports that President Trump revealed sensitive information to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, mentioning on a phone call that the Unites States had nuclear submarines near North Korea last month, drove a fresh round of media hysteria on Wednesday. But days before Trump even spoke to Duterte…

There was news a couple of weeks ago that a U.S. Navy cruiser—the Lake Champlain— collided with a South Korean fishing boat in the Sea of Japan. I remembered reading a few years ago that one our Navy destroyers had collided with a Japanese oil tanker—in 2012, in the Strait of Hormuz. Two collisions…

A senior U.S. official says the United States has concluded that Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack last week.

Pensacola, Fla.

CNN reports:

Something to remember 75 years after Pearl Harbor: The United States Navy is the best in the world, by an order of magnitude. No other navy is remotely as powerful. There are 40 in-service aircraft carriers in the world; 19 of them are ours. (Russia has just one, and it's in bad shape.) By a…

TWS has a special affinity for the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels, as the son of one staff member flew with the team a decade ago and the friend of another is flying with it now. Yesterday, the Angels lost USMC Captain Jeff Kuss in an accident in Smyrna, Tennessee.

It would have been a magnificent sight a century ago, the kind that fills one with awe and dread. A fleet of great battleships, in which a nation had invested a great deal of its wealth and virtually all of its trust, making steam, weighing anchor, and putting to sea. They were leaving Scapa Flow…

Retired Navy Admiral and Senate hopeful Joe Sestak was asked recently at the Pennsylvania Press Club Luncheon about the recent catpure of 10 U.S. Navy sailors by the government of Iran.

The WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, on the recent capture of two U.S. Navy vessels by Iran.

If there were any remaining doubts that a grudge is motivating Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s policies dictating gender integration in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Times has dispelled them, revealing that Mabus sent the Marines a memo on New Year's Day ordering them to make their famously…

The United States Navy, like its sister services, is first and foremost a war-fighting organization. Its reason for being, boiled down beyond recent recruiting slogans touting it as "a global force for good" or highlighting the Navy's important work in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance,…

Key West

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Wednesday at a Department of Energy event at the U.S. Navy Heritage Center in Washington, D.C., where he noted the official implementation of the nuclear deal reached with Iran this summer. Throughout the negotiations with Iran, that country's religious leader,…

For several years now, PolitiFact has been waging war on anyone who points out that America has the smallest Navy it's had in nearly a century. Mitt Romney pointed out this fact in a presidential debate in 2012 and PolitiFact rated his statement "pants on fire" even though the number of ships in…

The Army and the Navy cannot do what they once could and might soon be required to do again.  They don’t have enough soldiers and enough ships.  Even reduced to the lowest force levels in years, the Army, as USA Today reports:

The Iranian organ Farsnews claims that Iran has seized a U.S. ship. Thirty-four are on board, the outlet claims. Fars claims: 

The A-10 may now have all the supporters it needs to stay operational.  As Stephen Losey of Air Force Times reports, Chuck Norris:

In the middle of March, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard published a revised version of their 2007 paper, A Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century. The 2007 edition reflected the strong influence of 9/11, U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the global campaign against Islamist…

The Scrapbook was thrilled to learn that the U.S. Navy finally has a fully operational laser—and, no, not the kind we’ve been using for years with guidance systems, but rather an actual laser weapon.

Vice Adm. Ted Branch, the director of naval intelligence, is denied access to classified material because, as David Lartner of Navy Times reports, he:

The Chinese want a modern and formidable blue-water Navy.  Hard to be a serious global player without one.  Equally difficult, it seems, to create one. Especially the aviation component, where the United State has no equals and, in fact, no other nation even comes close.  

The brief military career of 44-year-old Hunter Biden, Vice President Joseph Biden's younger son, seems to have ended after one month in the naval reserve. Biden is reported to have tested positive for cocaine use, and was immediately discharged. It was "the honor of my life to serve in the U.S.…

Vice President Joe Biden's son was kicked out of the Navy after a drug test "after testing positive for cocaine." The Wall Street Journal reported the news.

The U.S. Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan would see its attack submarine fleet diminish from 55 to 41 boats in the next decade and a half. That decision, confirmed in August, was eclipsed by the advance of ISIL, war in Gaza, and sedition in Ukraine. But the Navy’s announcement—the single-largest…

The U.S. Navy released this video of airstrikes being launched against ISIS in Syria:

The Obama administration very much wants a diplomatic success somewhere in the world. So when the president orders the head of the U.S. Navy to meet with his Chinese counterpart and find areas of cooperation, it is neither surprising nor inappropriate. But the possibility that the Chinese Navy will…

A book event on May 22 for the book Brothers Forver at the American Enterprise Institute, featuring retired Gen. John Allen:

The first question that national security types, including the president, supposedly ask in an international crisis is, “Where are the carriers?” Soon, that opening line will be rephrased to something like, “Where are the … oh, never mind.”

The time for building ships is when your nation is at peace.  Once the shooting starts, it may be too late and playing catch-up is hard.  So it is disturbing that, as Christopher Bodeen of the AP reports:

Earlier in March, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus revised how to count the size of the U.S.’s battle force inventory. The battle force inventory is important because it measures the size of the U.S. combat fleet. The new definition will make the U.S. combat fleet look larger than it really is. …

Princeton University is restoring ties with Navy ROTC (NROTC). Starting this fall, students will be able to participate in a cross-town program with Rutgers University, itself established only recently, in March 2012. 

In 2007 the U.S. Navy published a new maritime strategy, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” known as CS-21. The Navy had already shifted from its Cold War focus on defeating the Soviet fleet at sea to projecting power from sea to shore, as challenges in such places as Iraq, Bosnia,…

Donald Rumsfeld, the implacable ex-defense secretary, sniffled through his remarks about President Ford. Former vice president Dick Cheney recalled Ford’s kindness in hiring him despite his having dropped out of Yale twice and been arrested two times. Henry Kissinger, whom Ford inherited as…

The U.S.S. Forrestal (CVA 59) was the first of the Navy's super carriers, built from the keel up with an angled deck, hurricane bow, steam catapults and all the other refinements and improvements on carriers designed and built for World War II, before the time of jets.  It was the ship that…

The Air Force and Naval academies will play as scheduled this weekend.  However, overseas military personnel accustomed to getting their football on Armed Forces Network will not be able to watch.

The British launched the opening attack of the 3rd battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917.  The objective was to destroy a rail junction on which the German army depended for Western Front supplies.  The plan included British naval as well as amphibious assaults on the nearby Belgian coast.  The naval…

"When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it's no accident that

Is naval power back? Early in June, Russia announced that it would be permanently stationing an armada of ships in the Mediterranean, restoring a deployment that came to an end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This muscle-flexing is part of Russia’s effort to bolster the government of…

Admiral Samuel Locklear of the United States Navy identified "climate change" as the biggest security threat America faces in the Pacific.

Inside the beltway, there is a pervasive sense of impending doom. The rest of the country may not much care, but sequestration is here. According to warnings by the Obama administration, failure to avert these automatic spending cuts will lead to planes falling from the skies, bridges collapsing,…

Caribbean-based company ICSSI had seen its lucrative contract to X-ray the cargo entering the Dominican Republic languish for years when, in 2011, it began searching for an investor with political pull. Perhaps someone with the right connections would be able to pressure the Dominicans into…

America’s military presence in the Persian Gulf serves as deterrence to Iran, reassures our increasingly nervous Arab partners, maintains peace, offers stability to our ally Israel, and has many other benefits. But nevertheless, the Pentagon earlier this week quietly announced the reduction in the…

As he showed in the final presidential debate, President Obama’s understanding of the U.S. Navy—or for that matter, any navy—is suboptimal. His explanation about Navy carriers “where planes land on them,” and “ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines,” left out the largest single group of naval…

Last year, when elite universities began announcing their intentions to bring back ROTC, Jonathan E. Hillman and I cautioned that if Ivy League ROTC was to succeed, it would require a real commitment from both the schools and the military.

The White House announced today with the first female submariners that First Lady Michelle Obama will sponsor the USS Illinois. The newest submarine "is expected to join the fleet in late 2015," according to the White House.

In Annapolis today, Air Force and Navy met on “the fields of friendly strife.”  With 10:00 left in the game, Air Force led 28-10, having more or less dominated play for the first 50 minutes. With 2:09 left, the Falcons still led 28-17. Then Navy nailed a must-make 37-yard field goal, recovered the…

In today's Wall Street Journal, Dan Blumenthal and Michael Mazza note that the China's growing military might should give American leaders something to think about with regard to our defense budget:

Several weeks ago, I had the honor of visiting a Navy SEAL training facility in Virginia and spending a day with a SEAL team commanded by a former colleague from my time in government. I left that experience impressed by the bravery and commitment of these young men, who were preparing for a future…

The university senate at Columbia just passed a resolution, 51-17-1, expressing support for inviting the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps back to campus.

Columbia University’s Task Force on Military Engagement just released its full report on ROTC. As previously reported, the student survey went in favor of bringing ROTC back to campus: Sixty percent of students approved restoring the program. A quick look at some of the findings:

Great news: Harvard University will officially recognize its Naval ROTC program tomorrow. The agreement – to be signed by Harvard president Drew Faust and Navy secretary Ray Mabus – marks the end of the school’s 41-year ban against the program.

For those of us who have been arguing against cutting the U.S. defense budget and, indeed, arguing instead that it’s too low as is, we’re used to our critics saying that we never have met a defense expenditure we don’t like, that we have no ideas for how defense monies can be better utilized, or…

On September 7, a particularly aggressive Chinese fishing boat captain, Zhan Qixiong, rammed his vessel, the Minjinyu 5179, into two Japanese patrol boats after he refused to heed warnings to leave disputed waters in the East China Sea. The incident occurred around the islets and rock outcroppings…

News sources reporting that a new Chinese ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-21D (DF-21), has the capability of hitting a moving aircraft carrier (up to a range of 900 miles away) heralds the demise of the aircraft carrier as the dominant force at sea, undermining the ability of the U.S. Navy to…