Good Reading To Start the Week With

First read this morning comes from EagleOne, who actually has two items worth reading. The first is his latest Sunday Ship History which focuses in on Tank Landing Ships, a really good read. His second contribution is a bit more current, and notes the pirate activity off Somalia in total disregard to UN sanctions.

'Manoeuvre' in Maritime Asia' has a rare photo of the new ROKS King Sejong the Great (DDG-991). With 128 VLS cells, the new South Korean AEGIS ships come in as first rate battleships by our ranking system for modern surface combatants, and the largest battleships among the Pacific nations.

Thomas Barnett made an interesting comment last week regarding the naval buildup in the Pacific. Bold emphasis ours.

Emerging great powers build navies. That's history.

The Asian situation has been artificial for a very long time: the American navy dominating the region's waters. In a "flat world," it should not surprise anyone that this does not continue, nor should it.

Instead, we should be encouraging the rise of Asian navies interested in policing their own waters and securing the SLOCs between Asia and the Middle East, not to mention handling disaster relief.

But, of course, says the magazine, despite lots of opportunities for cooperation, there also exists the danger of confrontation.

So what's the answer? Let the naval developments trigger more regional security agreements. Build your East Asian NATO from the water in.

It is a safe bet we will be discussing this in more depth in the future. Interesting broader concept here that capitalizes on what we are already seeing, specifically the reduction of piracy in the Strait of Malacca primarily due to security partnership between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Over at the Unofficial Coast Guard Blog, Jim Dolbow highlights a great find called Sharpen Pens Sharpen Swords (PDF) that gives great guidance towards writing in the pol-mil debate. While these guidelines are specific towards writing in professional journals, we believe they apply very well to blogging as well. This is really a great find and worth a read.

Before going out of town, CDR Salamander emails an excellent link I've probably read three times since this morning, so much to say here. Naval Historical Center has some great data in an article called U.S. Navy Active Ship Force Levels, 1917- which is very much the historical view of the shrinking US Navy. This is almost certainly going to be one of those historical views we think will pop up on the blog many, many times in the future. If I get time, I'll try to put the chart data all into a useful table for the blog, and possibly a PDF for download from the blog because I think the historical view is one people would be interested in having a copy of their own.

Photo is the USS. Washtenaw County (LST 1166), more information available here.