The service announced Monday that the Gettysburg, Chosin, and Cape St. George will now remain in service up until fiscal year 2029, rather than 2026.

These cruisers have received modernization updates including “extensive hull,” mechanical and engineering, and combat system upgrades, according to the Navy. The Gettysburg and Chosin wrapped up these modifications in fiscal years 2023 and 2025, and the Cape. St. George is slated to conclude its modernization this year.

The Navy’s announcement comes as the Navy and Congress have been at odds over how fast cruisers should be phased out of the fleet. The Navy has sought to decommission more cruisers to free up money for new ships and maintenance, while lawmakers have urged to keep them around longer to satisfy capability gaps.

Meanwhile, the service decommissioned three cruisers in recent months: the Leyte Gulf, the Cowpens, and the Antietam.

“As a former cruiser Sailor, I know the incredible value these highly-capable warships bring to the Fleet and I am proud of their many decades of service,” Del Toro said in a statement. “After learning hard lessons from the cruiser modernization program, we are only extending ships that have completed modernization and have the material readiness needed to continue advancing our Navy’s mission.”

On Thursday, the Navy revealed it would keep 12 additional destroyers in service longer, from 2028 to 2035. The ships selected underwent a hull-by-hull evaluation, and the Navy is now including a service life extension update to the FY26 budget request to accommodate these modifications.

These efforts to keep more ships in service will “bolster the Fleet as new ships are built,” according to a Navy news release.

“Today’s budget constrained environment requires the Navy to make prioritized investments to keep more ready players on the field,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said in a statement. “The Navy is actively pulling the right levers to maintain and grow its Battle Force Inventory to support the United States’s global interests in peace and to win decisively in conflict.”

Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela, the CO, and Cmdr. Art Palalay, his second-in-command, were removed from their respective positions on Sunday due to a “loss of confidence in their ability to command,” according to the Navy.

Capt. Dan Lannamann, the former commanding officer of Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, is now leading the facility while Cmdr. Timothy Emge, the center’s operations officer, is filling in as executive officer until a permanent replacement is identified.

“The Navy holds commanding officers and others in authority to the highest standards,” the Navy said in a statement. “Naval leaders are entrusted with significant responsibilities to their Sailors and commands.”

The Navy rarely shares any rationale behind firing commanding officers aside from the “loss of confidence” statement, and no additional details were provided on Valenzuela and Palalay’s reliefs.

Valenzuela’s previous assignments include ship superintendent and carrier type desk officer at SRF-JRMC, electrical division officer aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, and the combat and communications officer aboard the amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.

Palalay, who enlisted in the Navy in 1993 and commissioned in 2006, previously served as the readiness officer at Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific before becoming the XO of SRF-JRMC in 2023.

The maintenance center, equipped with six dry docks, conducts intermediate and depot-level maintenance and repairs for Navy ships across the 7th Fleet.

The cruiser Chosin and its sailors employed the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method device, known as TRAM, to load the ship’s MK 41 Vertical Launching System off the coast of San Diego on Friday.

The TRAM prototype allows warships to rearm during the underway replenishment process when supply ships deliver fuel, food, and other critical supplies. This ability to reload at sea, rather than at shore, saves time for combatant ships and keeps them in the fight, instead of having to go into port to reload, according to the service.

For the at-sea demonstration, the Chosin teamed up with the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship Washington Chambers to connect and transfer the missile canister to the cruiser. The team then utilized TRAM to transport the missile canister along rails connected to the cruiser’s VLS modules to successfully place it into a VLS cell, the Navy said.

The Navy plans to field TRAM in the next two to three years.

“Today, we proved just how game-changing TRAM truly is — and what a powerful deterrent it will be to our competitors,” Del Toro said in a statement. “This demonstration marks a key milestone on the path to perfecting this capability and fielding it for sustained operations at sea.”

He first outlined TRAM as one of his top priorities in 2022 during a speech at Columbia University, calling it a “sustained, persistent forward-strike capacity during wartime.”

The Navy previously tested a land-based demonstration of TRAM in July at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division in California.

A submarine designed and built for both genders has been a long time coming. The New Jersey is entering the fleet roughly 14 years after then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended the ban on women serving on subs in 2010.

Female officers did not join the submarine force until 2011, and such roles only opened up to enlisted sailors in 2015.

A commissioning ceremony for the submarine will occur in Leonardo, New Jersey, according to the Navy. It is the third Navy vessel bearing the name of the Garden State.

HII-Newport News Shipbuilding delivered the New Jersey to the Navy in April.

Female trailblazers in the submarine community include Lt. Cmdr. Amber Cowan, who became the first woman to serve as the executive officer of a submarine in 2022 aboard the ballistic missile submarine Kentucky.

Master Chief Information Systems Technician (Submarine) Angela Koogler also became the first woman to serve as a chief of the boat, the senior enlisted adviser to the commanding and executive officers, aboard the nuclear ballistic missile submarine Louisiana that same year.

Plans are underway to expand the number of submarine vessels with women.

Adm. William Houston, then-commander of Naval Submarine Forces, said last year that he signed a “major revision” to the Navy’s plan to integrate women into the submarine fleet. The new guidance calls for women officers to serve on 40 submarines – up from the original 30.

Sixty-three percent of executive officers — a ship’s second-in-command — surveyed reported that insufficient manning made it “moderately to extremely difficult to complete repairs while underway,” according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

At-sea basic maintenance and repairs are critical to ensuring a ship can carry out its mission, according to the GAO.

But Monday’s report, based on interviews of sailors and leaders across the fleet, reveals that basic maintenance duties and repairs are hindered not only by manning shortages, but also by inaccurate Navy guidelines and substandard training.

As of late last year, the Navy was lacking nearly 14,000 enlisted sailors to keep its aircraft carriers, surface ships and attack submarines properly manned, according to the GAO.

The watchdog also found that aircraft carriers, cruisers and amphibious assault ships did not have enough enlisted sailors assigned to them to meet requirements for safe operations as laid out by the Navy Manpower Analysis Center.

“The Navy has not provided crew levels sufficient to meet the ship maintenance workload,” one sailor told GAO investigators.

This results in a smaller crew having to do more work, compounding the stressors of ship life.

“More capable sailors that perform a lot of maintenance get burned out and tired of taking up the slack for other sailors and leave the Navy to do the same work for better pay and working conditions,” another sailor said in the report.

Exacerbating the manning shortages are sailors assigned to a specific ship who may not always be on hand for duty, due to illness or temporary assignments to another ship.

“Navy executive officers and sailors told GAO there were widespread concerns about sailor training,” the report states.

Sailors also aren’t always prepared for their jobs aboard ships, and those serving in maintenance-heavy roles “may be less experienced than other sailors on that same ship,” according to the GAO.

Training for sailor-led maintenance is also insufficient, sailors told the watchdog.

Sailors attend A school after boot camp to get initial training with instructors and computers, but some interviewed by GAO questioned how well A school prepared them for their shipboard duties.

“Specifically, sailors expressed dissatisfaction with both the quality of training — whether it prepares them to perform maintenance aboard ship — and the format in which training is delivered,” the report said.

The Navy is working to enhance sailor-led maintenance training through its Ready Relevant Learning initiative, which involves distributing videos of sailor-led maintenance to schoolhouses, according to the report.

The Navy is also aiming to share these videos with sailors via cloud based services and remote support.

Still, videos for certain maintenance specialties like electrical repair are not yet available, and some sailors noted that video training is not always reliable on the ship, given limited bandwidth.

“More (maintenance) training should be conducted before a sailor arrives at their ship and while they are transitioning between commands,” one sailor told the GAO.

The GAO offered several recommendations, including that the service improve the “quality of information on the number of ship’s crew available for duty” and guarantee that personnel numbers and skill levels for certain kinds of maintenance are tailored for specific ships and classes.

“The Navy’s guidelines for performing ship maintenance are sometimes inaccurate with respect to the time and personnel needed and are not written appropriately for sailors’ maintenance skills and supervisor’s experience levels,” the watchdog said. “Ensuring the Navy’s guidelines better reflect the actual number and skill level of maintenance personnel will enhance sailors’ ability to maintain ships.”

The Navy agreed with these recommendations, according to the watchdog.

The GAO surveyed executive officers from 232 ships in the fleet with a 91% response rate and met with more than 140 leaders and 200 sailors on 25 ships for the report, which began in January 2023 and ended earlier this month.

Go here to read the full report.

While civilian Defense Department employees like Del Toro are permitted to publicly back political candidates in a personal capacity, the Hatch Act bars federal officials from participating in political activities while serving in their official capacity and in their federal workplace.

The Office of Special Counsel said Thursday that Del Toro breached this policy during several interviews representing the Defense Department to garner backing for Operation Prosperity Guardian, a U.S. and international mission to safeguard shipping vessels in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden.

“When speaking in his official capacity on a taxpayer-funded trip, Secretary Del Toro encouraged electoral support for one candidate over another in the upcoming presidential election,” Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said in a statement Thursday. “By doing so, he crossed a legal line and violated the Hatch Act.”

“This is especially troubling because Secretary Del Toro has himself acknowledged that military work and partisan politics should not be mixed,” Dellinger said. “As he stated just this past July: ‘It is more important than ever for us to remember that the [Department of the Navy] is an apolitical body… Public trust and confidence depend on this.’”

During an appearance at the Royal United Services Institute on Jan. 25, Del Toro fielded a question regarding concerns the U.S. could adopt a more isolationist approach in the event of a different administration following the 2024 election. In response, Del Toro said that the U.S. and the world “need the mature leadership of President Biden.”

“I’m confident that the American people will step up to the plate come November and support President Biden for a second term as our Commander-in Chief, so that we can continue to work together as free democratic countries respect each other around the globe,” Del Toro said.

Later that day, Del Toro made similar remarks about the world deserving a second term with Biden in the White House in an interview with BBC News Sunday.

Del Toro self-reported his comments on BBC News Sunday on Feb. 1, noting that he aimed to address the significance of strong international alliances and national security issues.

“In retrospect, I believe my response should have been delivered more broadly without reference to specific candidates,” Del Toro wrote.

After opening an inquiry into the incident, the Office of Special Counsel later learned of Del Toro’s remarks at the Royal United Services Institute.

Del Toro’s lawyer defended these statements, pointing out they were not included in prepared remarks, were “fragments of answers” provided in response to questions from foreign press, and that Del Toro had no intent to influence the election. Del Toro’s attorney also said that failing to answer questions from the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg could have also portrayed a bad image and indicated a lack of support for the current administration.

“Failing to be responsive may well have suggested to her — and the BBC audience — that Secretary Del Toro was not fully supportive of the US President. That could well have proved embarrassing on the international stage to Secretary Del Toro, President Biden, and the Biden Administration,” Del Toro’s attorney, Michael Bromwich, said in a letter to the Office of Special Counsel.

Still, the Office of Special Counsel said that self-reporting the comments on BBC did not “absolve” Del Toro from misconduct and that he did back a second Biden term in the White House.

“Secretary Del Toro’s statements with overt reference to the election conveyed electoral support for one candidate and opposition to another candidate, and thus, constituted political activity,” the Office of Special Counsel said in their report on the matter.

As a result, the Office of Special Counsel referred the matter to the White House for further appropriate action. Penalties for violating the Hatch Act include removal from service, reduction in grade, a reprimand, or a civil penalty up to $1,000.

Pentagon Pentagon Spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Thursday that the Defense Department is aware of the Office of Special Counsel’s report, and noted that Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks approved a memo this year outlining political engagement processes for military and civilian Defense Department personnel.

Ahead of the presidential election in November, Del Toro released guidance in July instructing commanding officers to review limitations on political activities with their sailors, since the Department of the Navy is an “apolitical body.”

Banned activities for active duty sailors include attending partisan political events as a service member, writing partisan political articles or letters that attempt to sway votes for a candidate or cause, and speaking before a partisan political gathering.

In addition to delivering two Naval Strike Missiles for the Corps’ anti-ship missile system, the autonomous low-profile vessel the Marine Corps is experimenting with also aims to better get critical supplies like food to forward deployed and distributed Marines, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Simon Doran said at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday.

“Truth be told, this is just a narco-boat,” Doran said. “We stole the idea from friends down south. And so this is 55 feet long, completely autonomous. It’s able to go hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s able to carry weapon systems that we have that are new. … It can carry pretty much anything you want to put in it.”

Inspired by narco-boats, which are used by traffickers to smuggle illicit substances across bodies of water, the unmanned vessel remains close to the water-surface level to cut down on the likelihood of detection as it assists with logistics capabilities.

The service tested the logistics supply drone at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone in February at Camp Pendleton, California, where the Marine Corps trained a cook in 21 days to operate the system off the islands of Japan.

The Army spearheads the Project Convergence to test out advanced technology and capabilities in modern warfare as part of a joint, multinational exercise.

The autonomous low-profile vessel is particularly important because it allows forces to resupply food, fuel and ammunition without jeopardizing the safety of Marines, Doran said.

“If you have that unit located inside a weapons engagement zone, contested logistics and the ability to maneuver in the littorals becomes key,” Doran said. “And for that, what we’re looking at is trying to acquire systems that we deem risk worthy, meaning that we don’t necessarily want to just waste them, but we’d rather put something in there that’s autonomous, that doesn’t have humans on it that can do some of these higher risk missions without having personnel put in that riskier situation.”

This system is something the Marine Corps wanted “yesterday,” but testing is ongoing, Doran said. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory received two prototypes in 2023.

The vessel is expected to join the III Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, Japan, for further evaluation this fall, he said.

The service hopes to purchase the vessels in the next several years, Marine Corps leaders said at the 2023 Defense News Conference.

Specifically, the Houthis conducted attacks against MT Bentley I, a Panama-flagged, Israel-owned, Monaco-operated tanker vessel in the Red Sea, and the MT Chios Lion, a Liberian-flagged, Marshall Islands-owned, Greek-operated crude oil tanker in the Red Sea. No injuries were reported after these events.

“This continued reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement after the attack. “The Houthis claim to be acting on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and yet they are targeting and threatening the lives of third country nationals who have nothing to do with the conflict in Gaza. USCENTCOM will continue to act with partners to hold the Houthis accountable and degrade their military capabilities.”

The attacks continue to reverberate across commercial shipping.

According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from June, container shipping through the Red Sea dropped by approximately 90 percent from December to the middle of February. The report said other shipping routes around Africa cost an additional $1 million in fuel costs – on top of extending transit time.

Additionally, at least 29 major energy and shipping companies have modified their shipping itineraries due to Houthi attacks in the region, according to the report.

All told, the ramifications of the Houthi attacks have affected at least 65 countries’ interests, the report said.

“We’re absolutely taking any Houthi threats seriously and continue to work with allies and partners to degrade and disrupt their capability to launch attacks in the Red Sea and in the region,” Pentagon press secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters July 23. “As it relates to the potential impact on U.S. forces…we’ll take all necessary measures to ensure that our forces are protected and take appropriate actions.”

Altogether, U.S. forces destroyed at least 31 Houthi air drones, 16 surface drones, and four radar sites in Yemen this month, according to a tally of incidents U.S. Central Command reported in July.

The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group, also wrapped up its historic deployment in July to the Middle East — totaling 275 days at sea. The carrier and its strike group were responsible for taking out a barrage of Houthi drones and missiles during the deployment.

“Many have described our deployment as unprecedented, but I would argue that every day for the last nine months, I’ve observed the consistent, relentless professionalism of the men and women aboard Ike, from launching and recovering aircraft to responding to engineering causalities and feeding the ship’s crew of 4,000 people,” Capt. Chris Hill, the commanding officer of the Eisenhower, said in a Navy news release. “It is that resiliency and tenacity that makes Ike the best.”

Ike was replaced on station by the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its strike group.

Go here for Navy Times’ up-to-date tracker of incidents between the Navy and the Houthis.

Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets from Strike Fighter Squadron 105 became the first squadron in the Navy to shoot off the AIM-9X infrared-seeking missile in combat.

The milestone came as the squadron, known as the “Gunslingers,” took out Houthi one-way-attack air drones targeting civilian merchant ships, according to the Navy.

The squadron also led the first strikes against Houthi facilities in Yemen in January. These missions allowed the squadron to launch an Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile, or AARGM, for the first time from an F/A-18E Super Hornet. The air-to-ground missile is used to suppress or destroy enemy air defenses.

The squadron also successfully employed the Joint Standoff Weapon-C Variant for the first time in combat, the Navy said. It is the Navy’s first air-to-ground network-enabled weapon that can be used against stationary land and moving maritime targets.

“Our families and friends that loved us, supported us, and sacrificed daily to enable our team to execute continuous combat operations are the true heroes,” Cmdr. Travis “Sweet T” Amerine, commanding officer of the Gunslingers, said in a Navy news release. “For nine months straight, the entire Gunslinger family, those deployed and those back home, banded together to fight evil and save innocent lives. I could not be more proud nor more humbled to have been a witness to them all.”

Additionally, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot from Strike Fighter Squadron 32 was piloted by the first American woman to engage and kill an air-to-air contact, taking down a Houthi air drone targeting civilian merchant vessels.

Other firsts for Carrier Air Wing 3 include Electronic Attack Squadron 130 becoming the first E/A-18G Growler squadron in the Navy to secure an air-to-air kill, as well as the first to fire off an Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile in combat.

“I can’t remember the last time the Navy had a more challenging deployment with a combination of multiple extensions, severely limited opportunities for R&R, and true combat,” Cmdr. Carl Ellsworth, the commanding officer of Electronic Attack Squadron 130, said in a Navy news release. “…not just for aviators, but the crew of the whole strike group as well, in the most kinetic action at sea since World War II.”

The crew of the Ike earned the Combat Action Ribbon – or the CAR – for their actions during the deployment to the Middle East. The award is for sailors and Marines who actively participated in ground or surface action, and has rarely been issued since the 1991 Gulf War.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro also approved the Air Medal for those with the “Strike/Flight” designation for conducting sustained aerial operations in the region.

The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Middle East this month to swap spots with the Ike and “to deter aggression, promote regional stability, and protect the free flow of commerce in the region,” according to U.S. Central Command.

Aircraft are traditionally painted using a masking technique, requiring painters to use tape, film and paper to outline certain markings for a particular aircraft.

The new system being tested projects insignia and markings directly on the aircraft, providing the exact placement of objects that need painting without all the masking.

So far, the laser projection system is dramatically easier to use than the old stenciling method, according to Steven Lofy, senior materials engineer for the center’s corrosion and wear team.

“It takes an extensive amount of time and labor to mask aircraft for the application of major markings and insignia during the final finish process,” Lofy said in a statement. “It’s a demanding process based on old, paper drawings that can be difficult to read, making it challenging for our artisans to mask the exact areas on each aircraft consistently.”

It’s also saving time, he said.

“With the laser projection system, we can simply come in, turn on the projectors and actually project where each marking should be on the aircraft,” Lofy said. “All we have to do from there is line each stencil up, mask and paint.”

The readiness center first utilized the system in January on a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey for the aircraft’s signature white, horizontal stripes — resulting in an 85 percent decrease in labor hours. While the process previously took roughly 16 hours, the projector brought that number down to two.

The center has used the laser projection system to paint four aircraft so far and plans are underway to use the system more broadly by uploading 2D stencils to the projection system’s software, according to the Navy.

Based out of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina, the center provides maintenance and repairs for Marine Corps aircraft — including the F-35B Lightning II. It is one of the Navy’s eight fleet readiness centers.