Navy

At about 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on June 21, a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine launched over two dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles into Iran, striking targeted infrastructure sites in Isfahan.
Shortly after the Tomahawks were fired, fighter aircraft and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers swept over Iran, culminating in the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities with the force of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as “bunker busters.”
While the B-2 bombers and bunker-buster bombs are so far dominating discussions of the mission, titled Operation Midnight Hammer, the Ohio-class submarine performed a critical role in it, too.
The specific vessel that fired the missiles has not yet been identified, but Secretary of the Navy John Phelan confirmed to lawmakers in a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday that it was an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine that had “performed exceptionally, causing significant damage to Iran’s nucle..

While Silicon Valley executives like those from Palantir, Meta and OpenAI are grabbing headlines for trading their Brunello Cucinellivests for Army Reserve uniforms, a quieter transformation has been underway in the U.S. Navy.
How so? Well, the Navy’s chief technology officer, Justin Fanelli, says he has spent the last two and a half years cutting through the red tape and shrinking the protracted procurement cycles that once made working with the military a nightmare for startups.
The efforts represent a less visible but potentially more meaningful remaking that aims to see the government move faster and be smarter about where it’s committing dollars.
“We’re more open for business and partnerships than we’ve ever been before,” Fanelli told TechCrunch in a recent Zoom interview. “We’re humble and listening more than before, and we recognize that if an organization shows us how we can do business differently, we want that to be a partnersh..

WARSAW, Poland — Poland and the Baltic states are accelerating efforts to acquire new submarines and vessels that will broaden their capabilities suitable for the sea’s shallow waters.
In Poland, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the country’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, has said his ministry aims to order between three and four new submarines for the Polish Navy until the end of this year. The planned procurement, which is pursued under the Orka (Orca) program, is deemed urgent, as the country’s naval forces rely on a single Soviet-designed submarine, the Kilo-class ORP Orzel, whose outdated technology and equipment makes it incompatible with the requirements of modern naval warfare.
While a number of countries are competing to secure the potential order from Warsaw, the ministry has disclosed that its experts assigned the highest scores to the offers placed by Germany, Sweden and Italy.
In 2023, Poland unveiled that 11 entities took part in a market c..

Construction has officially begun on the new Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Quentin Walsh (DDG 132), named after a World War II hero and Navy Cross recipient.
The vessel’s keel was laid May 20 during a ceremony at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Maine, during which Walsh’s great-granddaughter, Madison Ann Zolper, welded her initials into the keel plate as is customary for a ship’s sponsor.
Walsh, a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard, helped plan the capture of Cherbourg in the days leading up to the invasion of Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944. He earned his place in history when, in a series of daring enterprises, he captured about 750 German soldiers with a force of 53 men and liberated 52 U.S. paratroopers in the wake of the D-Day landings. He continued to lead a life of military and community service after the war.
“We are honored to mark the beginning of the construction for the future USS Quentin Walsh and celebrate his legacy with h..

SINGAPORE — Governments and militaries in Southeast Asia are turning to autonomous underwater tech to monitor subsea cables after a series of damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, and recently, in sea lanes surrounding Taiwan.
“We are getting a lot of interest for monitoring underwater infrastructure,” Verineia Codrean, Strategic Alliances and Civilian Affairs officer for German firm Euroatlas, told Defense News.
“It seems that a lot of operators want to have this awareness of what is happening — they want to be aware of what actors are in the water, what type of infrastructure you have underwater, and is something happening near that infrastructure,” Codrean explained.
In a region where military modernization is still playing catch up amid increasing geopolitical tension, militaries want cost-efficient ways to keep an eye on vast underwater domains, ensure the safety of sailors, and resolve decreasing numbers in end strength.
And as maritime AI ..

PARIS — The French Navy is stepping up drone use in the air and in the water, relying almost entirely on unmanned systems to recapture a beach in southern France in an amphibious operation during an exercise in March, according to the commander of the force.
In the exercise to retake a stretch of shore in the Bay of Hyères on France’s Mediterranean coast, the Navy used aerial drones and underwater gliders for maritime surveillance, drones to assault enemies targeting the beach, and to counterattack hostile drones, Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Nicolas Vaujour told a parliamentary hearing last week.
“We did it almost entirely with drones,” Vaujour told the National Assembly’s defense committee. “We are in the experimental phase to see exactly how far we want to go with each of these things.”
In the exercise called Dragoon Fury, the French Navy used its amphibious helicopter carrier Tonnerre as a drone platform. Vaujour said drones don’t fully ..

PARIS — Europe has too many naval shipyards competing for business, and the industry needs to consolidate to a handful of players that can win export contracts, French Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Nicolas Vaujour said in a parliamentary hearing last week.
The Naviris joint venture between Italy’s Fincantieri and France’s Naval Group, created in 2020 and meant as a first step in wider European naval consolidation, “unfortunately didn‘t quite live up to expectations,” Vaujour told the National Assembly’s defense committee on Wednesday.
“Today in Europe, we have around 14 shipyards that are competing with each other pretty much everywhere,” Vaujour said. “In an ideal world, we would have three or four that challenge each other, but would above all be winning export market share abroad.”
Europe lacks a single naval strategy, with countries having their national strategies and struggling to converge, the French Navy commander sai..

The Navy is working with the Defense Innovation Unit to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to process the vast quantity of data it receives and make sense of it for commanders.
In a May 22 notice, DIU said it is looking for AI and machine learning applications that can speed up data processing times at the Navy’s Marine Operations Centers, which take in information gathered by platforms in space, at sea, in the air and through intelligence reports and other means.
“Currently, Maritime Operations Centers (MOCs) must manage and analyze large volumes of multi-source data generated across the fleet to make critical resource allocation decisions for geographically dispersed fleet and national assets,” DIU said.
Proposals for the program, dubbed Situational Awareness by Intelligent Learning Systems, or SAILS, are due June 6.
Marine Operations Centers serve as logistics hubs for maritime systems — providing everything from engineering to maintenance support. N..

The Navy this month undertook two groundbreaking weapons systems tests, which were followed by an announcement for a planned Future Unmanned Surface Vessel Industry Day in June to “to accelerate the development and procurement of future USVs.”
The Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs on May 2 conducted the first sea-based cold-gas launch approach of its Conventional Prompt Strike, or CPS, hypersonic missile.
Unlike in hot launch methods, in which the projectile motor ignites in the launch silo before flying towards its target, the cold-gas technique sees the missile launch first before the first stage of ignition.
This method, according to the Navy, will become the standard for launching hypersonic missiles from ships at sea.
“The cold-gas approach allows the Navy to eject the missile from the platform and achieve a safe distance above the ship prior to first stage ignition,” said Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, director of Strategic Systems Programs.
The test of the CPS mi..

MILAN — Russia’s detention of a Greek-owned ship that departed from Estonia – days after Estonian forces tried to intercept a Russia-bound tanker – signals Moscow’s willingness to deploy military power more overtly to protect its shadow-fleet, a vital pillar of its war economy, experts say.
Russia temporarily stopped the oil tanker in its territorial waters on Sunday following the Estonian navy’s attempt last week to stop the unflagged and unresponsive Jaguar tanker in its exclusive economic zone.
The apparent retaliation was interpreted by analysts as a signal of Russia’s readiness to defend its clandestine maritime operations by force, if needed, to deter possible interference.
“Russia is more overt in using military force to protect its shadow fleet — using a jet in what appears to be a case of reckless and unsafe flying is a clear indication that it wants no interference with the ships that are increasingly instrumental to its ..