Navy Leads with Communication & Drone Technology
Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the Internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River 
economic community. The opinions expressed here do not reflect opinions of the Leader’s owners or staff.
The Navy’s fifth MUOS spacecraft reached orbit Friday, joining the Mobile User Objective System constellation to provide global communication capabilities to combatant commanders by year’s end and throughout the US military over the next two years, Spaceflight Now reports along with the launch video. “MUOS is a revolutionary system in its infancy,” said Navy Commander Peter Sheehy, principal assistant program manager of MUOS. “Five years from now, we’ll be wondering how we ever operated without it.”
The Office of Naval Research plans an at-sea, “air show” of dozens of drones swarming in formation off the East Coast, reports Military.com. The 30 Raytheon-built drones use LOCUST, the Office of Naval Research’s Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology, and are slated to debut the end of July where they will launch in rapid succession and fly in formations.
The Pentagon is an acknowledged leader in climate change preparedness, but its climate policy plans were squashed for a second time last week by House Republicans, reports Politico and asks why. A 216-205 vote amended a defense spending bill and prevents DoD from implementing its plan. Not a single Democrat voted for the amendment, nor for a similar measure attached to the House’s defense authorization bill passed in May.
The Rim of the Pacific, the world’s largest international maritime exercise, is scheduled for June 30 through Aug. 4, reports the Times of San Diego. The biennial RIMPAC exercise will involve 26 nations, 45 ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California.
US Fleet Forces Command is pivoting to a new operations concept designed to link all deployed naval forces – surface ships, submarines, aircraft, and more – to support theater-wide needs regardless of their physical location, reports USNI.
The Air Force may consider replacing its F-35 ejection seat with the United Technologies ACES 5 model, reports Defense News, which could impact Lockheed’s supply chain for the jet fighter.
From the Associated Press, CBC News reports on yesterday’s opening of the newly mega-sized Panama Canal. The $5.25 billion expansion doubles the canal’s capacity during a sluggish shipping economy.
Military.com tells the story behind the Iwo Jimo photo and the discovery of who the misidentified Marine in the iconic photo really was.
Bloomberg reports a change of message coming from Brexit leaders who find anti-immigration expectations of many of their supporters far afield from the original Leave movement which sought a liberal, free market, low-regulation country. Leave only recently embraced immigration as a message, which drew voters who didn’t mind being poorer in exchange for reduced immigration, even sending some immigrants back.
Defense and security implications of the UK vote are small, since NATO, not the EU, handles that, reports IHS Janes 360, but concurs with others that a defense funding slowdown appears unavoidable.
