The 2nd Fleet wants to “decentralize decision making and allow the on-scene commander to take the initiative,” Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis says.

An old Cold War base in Iceland has seen over $80 million in US investments in recent years as the Pentagon flies more surveillance missions in the high north — and plans to do more.

The Navy has created a new fleet, and is sending it straight into the Baltic Sea to test new ways of doing business.

The Coast Guard wants to operate more consistently in the Arctic, but has a fraction of the icebreakers that Moscow can deploy.

WASHINGTON: The Navy may begin deploying submarine-hunting P-8 Poseidon aircraft to a small airstrip hundreds of miles off the Alaskan coast, signaling a new emphasis on keeping watch over Russian and Chinese moves in the Arctic. The remote runway sits on the island of Adak in the Aleutian island chain, and it’s the westernmost airfield… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Navy readiness is “heading in the wrong direction,” the Government Accountability Office told the Senate this morning, with only 15 percent of Navy F-35Cs rated “fully mission capable.” At the same hearing, a four-star admiral acknowledged three nuclear-powered attack submarines were still stuck awaiting overhaul, with the USS Boise expected to be out of action… Keep reading →

The Arctic will become increasingly crowded in the coming years, and the US Navy’s Second Fleet is making it a priority to get up there more often.

The Russians played around at the edges of this month’s Trident Juncture exercise in Norway, but that was to be expected. New moves in the Baltic Sea, however, have some concerned.

“One of the things that we did early in my tenure was we changed (it to) Polar Security Cutter as we were trying to get the funds from the Congress, from our own department, the administration,” Coast Guard Commandant Karl Schultz told Breaking Defense.

WASHINGTON: Within the next several weeks, both Russia and NATO will kick off some of the largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War. Hundreds of thousands of troops, tens of thousands of vehicles, hundreds of aircraft, and dozens of warships will charge into action in a series of mock engagements stretching from… Keep reading →