David B. Larter

Spencer will be pressed from all sides to try and balance keeping the president’s campaign promise of a ship-building spree while also keeping the force ready for major combat operations in the near term.

A sailor from cruiser Shiloh went missing Friday while the ship was underway off the coast of Japan, triggering the second massive search-and-rescue effort for a missing sailor this week.

A shipyard worker discovered a hangman’s noose in an engineering space on board the Norfolk-based destroyer Ramage undergoing an overhaul in a Mississippi shipyard, but nobody knows anything more about it, Navy officials said Thursday.

The Navy has identified the sailor missing since Tuesday as a search continues off the North Carolina coast.

The Coast Guard and Navy search widened overnight for a sailor from the cruiser Normandy who is presumed overboard near Cherry Point, North Carolina, but there was no sign yet of the missing person.

A sailor from the Norfolk-based cruiser Normandy was reported overboard Tuesday afternoon off Cherry Point, North Carolina, triggering a massive search and rescue effort by the Navy and Coast Guard.

The comments from the president immediately raised the stakes for a major U.S. hub in the region at Al-Udeid, which serves as the “nerve center” for the U.S. air war in Iraq and Syria, and which bases 10,000 American troops.

Unlike during the Reagan era, the Navy’s mothballed ships probably won’t see new life in the quest for a 355-ship fleet, the head of Naval Sea Systems Command said recently.

The residents of a small North Carolina beach town were less than amused when foul-smelling plastic disks of the Navy’s trash began washing up on shore.