In March 2026, Britain failed to adopt its own definition of maritime nationhood, sea power, and naval strength—a framework ironically crafted by its intellectuals based on centuries of accumulated cultural, political, strategic, and operational experience.

The outcome was stark. The central question became whether the subsequent criticism—from media, politicians, academics, and veterans—would alert, or more crucially, educate the state to revise its plans. Some warnings had been too little, too late, as if their proponents had suddenly realized Britain was an island and they existed on planet mostly made of oceans. A nation that had long been educated to understand the necessity of their own seapower to assert order over everything they were vulnerable to: supply chains for energy, food, goods, and capital; the very mechanisms of global interaction had vanished at an alarming rate over the past four decades.

What remained unsettling was this: many of those who had engineered seapower’s collapse—civilians, politicians, even veterans—now raged about a ‘course correction’ precisely when resistance had already been futile. The rot had been deepening for generations, their active choices and actions merely accelerating the outcome, it was more for some covering their tracks they had played a part in this eventual downfall. They seemed to now be complaining for frantic off-ramps from an endpoint already unavoidable: national seablindness and flowing from that, an irreversible fading of the Royal Navy into irrelevancy.

Of course this could have been avoided. Warnings about the Royal Navy’s precarious position had persisted since the 1950s, through the 1980s. More importantly, the Admiralty—home to centuries of Britain’s seagoing expertise and strategic experience—had explicitly predicted how the Royal Navy could be neutralized by political choice or misguided military advice.

This foresight was largely superseded in the 1960s by those who sought their own agendas. The creation of the Ministry of Defence, adherence to the Treasury, and elimination of professional discourse that had advised the political body on why Britain’s national strategy remained as it had, and even—amid the pressures of running a nation—why defense must be funded through long-term planning.

The problem wasn’t sudden abandonment but systematic devaluation. The Admiralty had traditionally educated the state about the maritime core of national strategy—a function naval officers, once Britain’s seagoing experts, were neither trained nor interested in continuing. When the Navy was reduced to staffing rather than leading its own destiny, this knowledge atrophy became an institutional blindspot: one of the pillars of its eventual downfall. Naval and marine personnel left to execute professional tasks at sea or on station deliveveref for Britain because that is where they were best place, they rarely wasted time networking in Whitehall. The British Army and its subsidiary service, the Royal Air Force, by contrast, were highly proficient in networking. Their capacity to articulate excuses—against hundreds of years of strategic, tactical and operational experience for Britain—enabled a gradual yet determined shift away from maritime strength toward land and air dominance in Europe.

The arguments here extend from decades of research that culminated in a PhD on organization and national strategy. Over several years, I’ve shared findings through papers, lectures, and articles—nothing I’ll repeat now. Consistently, I’ve argued that language like “terminal decline” or “rise and fall” distorts what’s happening or how things got from ‘A to B to C’. The collapse of British national strategy and the Royal Navy’s shift from relevance to failure aren’t sudden—not tragedies waiting for acknowledgment. They’ve been unfolding against a longer trajectory.

When I wrote in March 2026, I noted one final pathway remained before having to concede that organisational terminal decline was more than speculation: the relationship between sea, navy and nation must be addressed as the number one priority, in short, education. That threshold has now been crossed because that priority was not addressed.

With evidence established and reversal highly improbable, I think it’s time to accept that the Royal Navy is becoming history—and the moniker: ‘1546-2026’ is a live point of debate. It’s not the point of this article to write the pathway of how the Royal Navy, or more importantly, British defences, got to this point, I explore this fully in my forthcoming book based on the PhD, but why the threshold has been met to consider that moniker.

The reality is that terminal decline was avoidable. Others and I warned were ignored if not ridiculed over recent years for pointing out a change of course was required. This is, unfortunately, somewhat a ‘I told you so’ moment. It equally serves as encouragement to those engaged in research to keep plodding on, irrelevant of head winds you may face.

For some, the Royal Navy has become merely a metric of material power. But even there, presence and strategic reach matter more than ship numbers—unless meaningfully integrated with broader national strategy. Ultimately, the question persists: What is this service intended to accomplish, and how should it do so?

The challenges resonate across many militaries, particularly around funding. But funding is hardly a new issue, financial concerns have been its defining characteristic since Henry VIII’s codification of naval power to the state in the 1500s, with other countries following suit. What demands greater examination is something different: the culture and attitudes toward the Navy within the unified defence framework [the MoD], and critically, who ultimately shapes policy and makes final decision—Cabinet, or more precisely the axis of Treasury and Prime Minister.

It’s evident that efforts to educate the nation—and particularly decision-makers—about seapower have long been absent. Decades of issues in defence that Parliament and public were promised were solved by reform, have not been. Again, something the Admiralty predicated would happen because the roots of the MoD were not sound, so matters like interservice rivalry, generic bland civil servants, and collapse in proffesinoal expertise are now playing out with a compound effect.

In the British characterises, Generals and their evolution, Air Marshals, think in tactical, land-narrow terms. This becomes critical when a military leader trained primarily in these frameworks leads the Royal Navy as it does now. During Middle East events in early 2026, the head of the naval service was conspicuously absent from defence planning, leaving professionals like the Chief of Defence Staff to make statements like “the land is an aircraft carrier”, so forget seapower.1^[1] Consider this irony: The CDS, an RAF officer, employed language from 1960s RN-RAF disputes—specifically, the contested sea versus land air power. If the MoD and Joint Services College Shrivenham genuinely believe in jointness, how is it that an RAF officer used this narrow framework in the 21st century? How did he learn that? A hint that defence unification that controls service education was never about unifying anything.

The Admiralty in the early 1960s warned of something real: as defence thinking grows more ‘purple’—bruted through with the reasonable point of operational jointness—it becomes a front for army-RAF land-think. This shift matters because it fundamentally contradicts centuries of practical understanding about Britain’s strategic position and limited capability to influence events near and far. Remember: British power achieved great things through surgical application of that power, the relationship of army and navy, and based on experience—not on following the thinking of alien concepts that went against an island nation’s experience. Note that the CDS later claimed it was time to abandon historical understanding altogether.2Consider this: the greatest military operators from the classic period to 21^stcentury conflicts and civilian strategists consider the study of history as indispensable—precisely because it’s all we have over theory and guesswork. That is because theory and guesswork remains the clearest and most rapid path to defeat. Again, this raises questions about professional military education in Britain, Perhaps Shrivenham deserves more than academic scrutiny. Military personnel need to develop expertise and grow the forum to evolve the art of war into something that will operate, not just get a pass in some classroom exercise with a nice certificate attached.

Again, as the Admiralty warned, this attitude, is exactly what the structure of the MoD would end up creating. Grabbing, experience: cultural, political, strategic, tactical, operational, technological, the art and science of warfare, everything Britain had hard learned and threw it to the wind. The price would be the Royal Navy. The level of arrogance that today's generations know better than centuries of experience arguably makes them worthy of learning the hard lesson of defeat or disaster at painful cost.

Where was the professional head of the naval service promoting seapower options to government advisors in 2026? Note that this occurs even as the same leader celebrates remarkable achievements in his first 100 days—only for Britain’s maritime identity, naval force, and seapower to crumble around him.3Ships take weeks to deploy. Ammunition stocks deteriorate. Sailors leave in droves, bored and demoralized by leadership’s apparent indifference to morale while dark fleets go unchallenged in UK waters and Russian warships feel emboldened due to the weakness of the Royal Navy to do as they please in English Channel: the channel that defined English culture, identity and defences for over half a millennia which previous generations saw as the last line of British defences else the nation has fallen. Perhaps there is a message in that.

The White Ensign’s prestige fades with each naval or political decision. Elsewhere, no one questions why the Royal Naval College consistently appears on protégé-cut lists while RAF Cranwell and Royal Academy Sandhurst escape scrutiny. Many have tried to silence British navalists, it’s a form of gaslighting when the evidence is laid bare, anti-naval sentiment is alive and kicking because simply put, the combination of agenda with poor-education has resulted in this sentiment. Elsewhere, Junior and mid -grade naval officers with senior ratings despair as they realise the organisation they serve in, fulfils the definition of an organisation in terminal decline: every time a problem is solved, two more pop up. They have also watched with concern as senior leadership also turned its back on the civilians, veterans and academics who could help them restore education about the service and maritime strategy. In short, an organisation cannot generate a response because other issues pile up continually. To use a nautical analogy: every time water breaches a bulkhead, the pumps can’t keep pace, and another compartment fills, accelerating the sinking process. The Royal Navy is dysfunctional, disorganised and barely functioning where standards, qualities and uniqueness that made the naval service what it was have been discarded. This is where things stand.

Equally troubling: senior naval officers reports allies reject British ‘hard seapower.’ 4But the United States rejected this framing, and Middle Eastern partners also dismissed it, clearly there maybe something wrong with the naval staff to be not only out of touch with allies but also the fundamentals of defence and warfare where hard power talks and the presence to protect citizens and shipping, the life line of Britain is a must. One might argue this was a cover to hide that Britain was in a position to shape events in the Middle East to at least protect merchant shipping, something Britain depends on, but again it was land-think that removed those assets even though they were aware they maybe needed there, because ultimately, the complete distortion of British strategy by land-think to be about fighting Russia was more important than national security where the sea comes first?5 So, what is ‘soft power’? Seamanship? Naval and military training? How can this claim hold when expertise has atrophied due to a fleet rarely at sea, submarines alongside, and resources so constrained that sailors gain little practical skill—once a defining characteristic that delivered countless victories for the Royal Navy.

You cannot advise on something you cannot do yourself. The nation that defined seapower and maritime strategy remains clearly on the backfoot, even compared to continental powers. That in itself is shocking for not just British taxpayers but allies around the world. For example, Italy and Spain, along with other nations with less naval experience or less inherent need for sea power are attending RIMPAC,6 while the Royal Navy is absent.

So what is the government’s plan for the Royal Navy? Plans seems perhaps an award too far for the British government and MoD because if you analyse their defence decision-making at least since 2001, it would fit the definition of chaos. Why break a habit? So, by scrapping future frigates and destroyers, they show they have learned absolutely zero from decades of mismanaged programmes, wasteful exhumation of money and that any commitment to the navy is unthinkable. That would require an understanding of strategy: something seemingly so far out of grasp of those who apparently hold so many University degrees, but degrees does not mean well-read or understanding which may explain some of the MoD’s approaches.

So instead, championed by General in Chief of the Naval Staff, the so called ‘hybrid navy’ concept is the snake oil of the day. In other words, AI and autonomous maritime craft taking the place of warships. Let’s call it what it actually is: the Treasury does not want to commit to spending money on warships and long-term financial commitments and because land-think has hijacked British defence, misguided knee jerk analysis of the Russia-Ukraine War has drove a new technologist mafia to do what they have always done for hundreds of years: try to claim one weapon system as the next best thing since sliced bread. We’ve seen this before, strategic bombing, the big gun, tanks, stealth, cyber, space, nuclear weapons, some false prophet always lurks in the shadows to try and push something using dodgy data. Fortunately, history offers guidance. Naval technology has always evolved, even when the character and objectives of war remain relatively stable. The evolution of navies suggests a meaningful pattern: radical transformation often leads to disaster, whereas phased introduction, development, and perfection have allowed platforms like submarines and seaborne aircraft carriers to become indispensable over decades. The critical point is that these advancements have augmented—not replaced—naval power and seapower’s influence from seabed to space. To rephrase: the navy’s core has remained constant. A backbone of hard power, firepower, presence, reach, resilience, people, the best training and capability have always been primary considerations, ready and able before anything else. A hybrid approach—AI and autonomy—is no panacea: the core backbone of fleet must exist, augmented by new technologies. Throwing away centuries of proven platforms in frigates and destroyers, even submarines to some degree of no replacement or such low numbers to be of no major force, is boldly stupid. The Royal Navy has the hybrid fleet the wrong way around because the core fleet will not exist in sufficient form to be the enabler of national strategy and defender of security it should be. Either way, the rhetoric around hybrid navies it is dangerous. This must be accepted alongside the understanding that the sea is a complex environment, tough on equipment, and what works in test environments may not translate into the diverse geographic environments around the world.

This raises the point that the combination of government cost-saving measures and poor analysis of select events in Eastern Europe—then actually a naval technological revolution like that of propulsion or weapons from past eras—is now happening. Pinning the entire fate of the Royal Navy on it is reckless. What should concern us is that the naval staff and government have lost the expertise in seapower they once possessed. A good example relates to the hybrid navy: the Black Sea has seen drones used effectively by Ukraine against a substandard, poorly trained, and ill-defended Russian Navy. These successes occur on calm days in the Black sea and weather shielded ports, a far fetch from the Atlantic, High North, Pacific and the coastal turmoil of territorial waters. Yet the Atlantic—and by extension the high Atlantic—the area the MoD has informed government is the core focus of the navy, and therefore its hybrid approach. Here, the sea state differs radically: the Atlantic produces 15-25 times more waves and perilous conditions than a typical Black Sea day.

Yet the MoD wants to bet the entire Royal Navy on autonomy and unproven technology? Any sailor knows the sea—a cruel mistress—imposes real strain on equipment that requires human intervention often. Under the hybrid navy guise, vulnerabilities become obvious: systems can be hacked; defences will be built against them; connectivity may vanish; there is an acute shelf-life constraint. These technologies also deliver fewer capabilities than crewed warships: less reach, less time on station, less presence. Warships give nations capability and governments choices. They are platforms that, when built right, run right, and its people trained to the best they can be, become one of defence’s most potent tools and assets and not just war fighting, diplomacy, disaster relief, and vast range of other tasks. One-trick wonders cannot and will not provide what warships offer and knee-jerk responses to the sinking of Russian ships tells us little bar defend your ships, as its always been, and have enough of them because just like tanks and planes, they can be destroyed. Some of the childish thinking in defence commissariat demonstrated reactionary thinking for clicks then pausing to think while the reality of ‘having a fleet’ is now dissolving as existing fleet structure faces no replacement and only less capable hulls in fewer numbers.

Drones and AI will not make warships irrelevant, just like aircraft, torpedoes and missiles, they instead encourage reform of the offensive and defensive capabilities of warships.

The likelihood of the Royal Navy projecting any serious power is now unlikely as it will never be able to bring power to bear with the resources it has. This demonstrates that the fleet originally designed around the aircraft carriers should have been built, as planned in the 1990s. It has never emerged because it has been endlessly tinkered by pressured naval staff who are unable to generate naval answers to contemporary security questions quick enough, coupled with the fact that numerous governments saw the Royal Navy as a funding source to prop up other sectors of nations spending, with questionable results.

Navies are long term projects that no British government has committed to after the 1960s, a benchmark every government thus has kept to. Meanwhile, the 2026 Defence Investment Plan reveals the RAF receives a new stealth fighter and nuclear-armed F-35s. Irony looms large: the hybrid navy exists to prove warfare is changing and technology enables easier neutralization of existing platforms. Consider too that British air-based nuclear deterrence was identified for cuts decades ago—the submarine option emerged as the ‘best case.’ The RAF’s mission to control nuclear deterrence and all military air power, including eliminating aircraft carriers—the oceans being one of the few places today easier to protect assets from compared to land–has never ceased because it is set out in their fabric of their identity since 1918 to become the senior service.

If any military service is willing to sacrifice best choices that maybe not under its guise and instead favours ideology, nostalgia and sentimentalism–tradition is different–they are not patriots to the defence of the nation.

The UK has long demonstrated a pattern of institutional ignorance: no internal knowledge exists for these decisions, a classic ‘reinventing the wheel’ scenario. Equally the Royal Marines who have no dedicated capability to go anywhere or do anything get money to do what, they increasingly look like spare members of the ships company than a professional force with little to do by land and sea? Funding an amphibious minded fleet for that is not something the anti-naval establishment in Whitehall will do because no one can answer what the navy is for as no one wants to think intellectually about the defence and national strategy as Britain once did.

In all, this is the MoD’s legacy as military and civilians predicated between the 1920s and 1960s would happen in a generic defence department setup as the UK has today: no strategy, no thought, short-term band-aids at every turn. They cannot generate a meaningful response because of generic civil servants, poorly educated military professionals, and a government that has deconstructed the very repositories of wisdom decision-makers need to navigate complex matters and educate themselves with.

This is but a taste of some of the issues that I could talk about, these points made are not abstract theory but active choices military and political leaders have made and have done so since 1964. Since completing my PhD in 2021 on the relationship between defense organisation and UK-US strategy making, I’ve databased these decisions — recorded tens of thousands of choices across levels of governance over twenty years of study. What emerges consistently: disaster is a tale of many small choices and mistakes compounding into one major problem. It’s easy to deconstruct or destroy; regeneration and reconstruction remains difficult but the fact that the UK Gov cannot find a way out of a defence mess is the fact that no-one understands the problem because it is long in root, complex in form and few have the willingness to face reality. This is always the problem with power and centralisation, generic solutions, generic thought, loss of expertise, grey thinking, too many moving parts of anyone to grasp coupled with that UK defence reviews would never work as they designed to suit the processes of a continental nation, the United States, alien to the UK process which had a fixed strategy and if that fixed strategy was followed things would easily flow from it. This won’t happen today as it would tear down vast portions of defence, cut the size of the MoD and simplify procurement: things that have been artificially inflated and generated to support the deceit that has replaced of what British national strategy should be.

Generic mindsets, collapse in expertise and centralisation is one of the ‘pillars’ of why the Royal Navy is no longer the navy it was, it has lost its way and so has the nation on defence—the Royal Navy remains in name but in reality, does not exist as it has for the most part over centuries since 1546—but also connected to why Britain is no longer a maritime nation, nor naval power or seapower. The character of the British way of war has always depended on expertise — strategic thought, seamanship, military skill across services, a holistic understanding that now has vanished. A cohesive way of thinking about the art of war and peace that emerges from decades of shared practice, geography, and institutional learning, now lost.

The point of this article was not to dissect every decision that got to the point but show some of the pillars that have now pushed the threshold in which to consider the end of the Royal Navy, as there are complex factors spanning decades across geopolitics, foreign policy, finances, culture, technology and more. However, I’ve tried to articulate: higher organisation matters; education shapes national capability; the relationship between nation and domain understanding (geography) determines victory or defeat. Our forebears knew this, the Admiralty warned in the 1960s of what might happen and has now happened as they predicted: a navy would be made to be seen as irrelevant and subsequently impact British security and world standing for they are tied as one.

Britain did not lose its power solely because it lacked ships—it lost it because it dismantled the institutions, expertise, and strategic culture that had sustained sea power for centuries, and rebuilding ships alone will not restore what has been discarded. The British people, the taxpayer, can not ignore that older generations today were handed better defences than those they hand on, yet they continually make decisions as they have for decades that amount to this point and yet many continue to trust them, it is perhaps time for younger generations to take them to account.

But as great philosophers and historians note, all organisations fall if they are not maintained and wisdom preserved while keeping a constant eye on the future, being open minded but no so opened minded they lose their way. So, the reality that the Royal Navy has been defeated without a single shot being fired fits in the trends of history, that all great things come to an end in less then obvious means. The Royal Navy’s defeat fits historical patterns of initial quiet, non-obvious decline that grow and evolve with time into something compounding to a runaway train. Great things don’t end dramatically, Rome didn't —they erode through slow shifts that decision-makers normalise as status quo particularly when the command and control function that was equally about educating the state, through the Admiralty, has been disbanded which would challenge that status quo.

Land-think—army and airforce— thinking versus maritime, is the battle the Royal Navy has lost. It’s why everything happening to the Royal Navy falls within expected parameters, as long predicated by the Admiralty, for there is insufficient understanding of the navy and of education of national strategy, which in the case of islands, is built on maritime foundations. The navy no longer has the intellectual heft to counter the land-think that the entire weight of the MoD and Government supports.

The philosophical point holds: wisdom requires active preservation, not assumption. The Royal Navy’s story isn’t anomalous; it reflects the tension between adaptation and identity, learning and decay, and now, likely the only path back would be to restore Admiralty, or a simplified version to enable education of the state to maritime strategy and about the Royal Navy. This won’t happen because it means those accustomed to centralised power, which also created the mess of British defence as is, won’t give that power back to decentralisation. After all, the art of Admiralty–educating the state to a national strategy with a maritime core–would present a dissenting voice against a land-think continental minded MoD who does not serve the military but its masters in the Treasury.

All of this discussed here, I explore this more in my forthcoming book, where I discuss all the ‘pillars’ over centuries that shaped the relationship of defence organisation in the U.K. and U.S. with thinking about strategy and acting strategically at the national level. I examine what the future may hold and explore these questions through the insight offered by a case study: how one of the world’s most successful fighting forces—the Royal Navy—was deconstructed, to the destruction of a national strategy.

3

As directly quoted below from this speech seen here:

In the Many 2026 edition of Warships International Fleet Review, (on sale in e-version and print in the UK & abroad after 20 April 2026), I argue the surface level arguments about the state of the Royal Navy such as seen in the media and social media, does not come close to reality of the actual peril that Britain’s seapower and its national defences are in.

The full article is available in print and e-print. The publishers website is:

https://warshipsifr.com/

Please support publishing where and when you can.

BRITAIN FAILS AS A SEAPOWER

In the week of the 2nd March 2026, the Royal Navy failed the definition of a seapower, a naval power and Britain as a maritime power. Amazing to think that with British citizens, service personnel and allies under attack from the Iranian regime with shipping and mariners vulnerable, there was not, at one point, a single naval British naval presence in most, if not all the world’s oceans and seas. The following days, exposed not only what so many had warned about and feared for decades, but warnings from deep within history that the country would cease to be a power of any form at sea and the organisation of defence had failed at nearly every level from 10 Downing Street, to the MoD to naval operations and fleet planning. The subsequent public and political discussion was brutal, but equally honest, at the heart a key question: where was the Royal Navy? The beloved navy the British public–– England––had depended on for the best part of half a millennium.

There is plenty of blame to go around, if the truth will out, is an open question. Many knew that national and governmental seablindness was heading to a critical moment and it arrived in March 2026. In simple terms, the metrics are clear. Britain wasn’t a seapower because it had failed to guard the lifeblood of the nation through shipping, it wasn’t a naval power because its assets could not be concentrated into a powerful influence at sea, the air and over land, instead warships languished in port. Meanwhile British maritime power all but failed, after a long painful drag over decades, the world accepted the Royal Navy and London’s influence insurance markets and political punch was no longer part of picture when it came to sea security.

Should people be angry? Absolutely. The unfolding mess created in Whitehall by those who thought they know better than to listen to centuries of experience of defending Britain and its interest, effectively trashed 480 years of naval and maritime progress. Much of our maritime and naval institutional knowledge and experience was already forgotten but this could be the nail in the coffin. Effecevitely, humiliating the White Ensign, demoralised our sailors and marines and exposing UK citizens and interests. Some of the most ancient charges for an island nation like defending shipping were thrown in the bin along with an extra punch in the gut when continental nations, rallied their naval forces to the challenge. The British response, slow like a drunkard riddled with slurred Orwellian newspeak to avoid any politician, serving military or civil servant taking the blame for the failure unfolding before the British public’s eyes.

Crisis? Disaster? Failure? The rose-tinted spectacles, nostalgia, overzealous pride for the past and taking every recent decision ‘on risk’ in defence from policy, strategy, procurement and more, rebounded in the face of government. The reality the Royal Navy had proven itself in the Middle East against drone and missile attacks in 2023/2024 and concentrated expertise like keeping shipping lanes clear of mines, to then be withdrawn, shows a fundamental breakdown occurred somewhere in Whitehall and the military command structure.

Some might say ‘good’, a good hard kick in the stomach was what British defence needed in an increasingly fragile world. It’s not the first time policy-makers in London have had a hard wake up call, 1982 or the 1930s stand out clearly. But looking at the political and public decision, it went the direction many expected: shallow, based on numbers of warships and funding when the rot is deeper and goes back decades far beyond the navy. Yes, politicians are to blame but be mindful, they must be educated and advised about defence and in that, we could probably find where this went wrong.

But objective reality over what happened is taps into something greater: that British national strategy, something learned over centuries, has been rejected. British national strategy begins not with abstract conversation but with objective reality. Britain has always had one core defensive imperative: protecting its island territory. This isn’t optional—it’s the very foundation of ‘national security’. The strategy isn’t complicated––as many would lead you to believe—it’s simply what British seapower entails: a non-negotiable all service maritime core to defence that addresses the harsh realities of being an island. Britain has no choice in its defence strategy, because it always had to address maritime commitments, near and far from home, that were directly about the security of the nation. In short: defence of the island realm come first, before any discussions about broader strategic or foreign policy objectives. Geography demands a specific kind of military approach coupled with the fact that Britain has never had meaningful choices about its defence posture—it’s been constrained by its very existence as an island.

History shows even broken and impoverished, England understood that when a foreign power threatened them or issues arose, island survival demanded more than rhetoric—defence from invasion, securing resource lines to sustain the population, and preventing subjugation or manipulation of a nation that had cherished self-government than falling into the tyranny of an foreign power. A duty for all time, renewed and refreshed to reflect the times and what technology enabled. This is the price islands must pay to protect themselves before they even think about anything else. It means having presence of warships at sea to influence the area around them, protecting shipping and bases, guarding the seabed resource lines and data cables, monitoring the GIUK gap and controlling access to the Atlantic and Mediterranean. That Britain has stepped far from this, used soft power like words to try and cover up reality is shameful. The nation ultimately sacrifices its future by not being realistic to the facts of just how delicate island economies, the cost of living and defence of a ‘Western way of life’ stands.

Looking to the future, this maybe an opportunity for the White Ensign and UK defence to consider the best approach is to go back-to-basics. Restore policy and strategy to things history shows we can have confidence in, non-relenting reform of the MoD maybe overdue if any politician will tackle that toxic topic, while restoring both national and international trust in British naval power needs to happening urgently before weakness becomes a further invitation to our enemies to test our resolve, disrupt our country, hurt our allies, or worse.

Historians generally resist speculation—yet this tendency creates a fascinating paradox. The study of past experience offers profound insight for the present and future, and historians are often the first to emphasise just because something is old that it is not neccesarily irrelevant.

The Admiralty’s structure—and how British defence was once organised: through committees rather than centralised management—likely would have prevented the situation where many claim that the Royal Navy is under strain, come [terminal] decline.

This invites an exploratory question: if Britain re-established an Admiralty independently or part of a vastly downsized and streamlined Ministry of Defence, what course might it chart for the Royal Navy? Drawing on two decades of my research into organisation and strategy—including long-term study of the Admiralty itself—I can offer some informed speculation.

For this exercise, the latest UK Defence Review will be discarded because it is unfunded, outdated and defence reviews an a foreign import to the British mindset, and the current funding model relatively maintained–although it is universally agreed, an uplift in real terms of the UK defence budget is needed. Also, the reader must be mindful, the Admiralty Board sets the overall direction. How that overall direction is resolved is handed to ‘experienced and trained professionals’ at multiple levels of the organisation. It should be understood, part of the success of the ‘White Ensign’ over centuries was that the Admiralty entrusted civilians and military execute on the tasks given to them, this is called decentralisation. This is an alternative to the approach of recent decades of micromanagement and backseat driving by centralised authority, that includes poorly educated civilian servants.

The Admiralty’s Proposed Framework:

The Admiralty Board, as the ultimate civilian authority over the Naval Staff, would likely direct through these prioritised lenses:

Immediate: Save from terminal decline; stabilise.1

Intermediate: Define actionable plans; resolve blocking issues. Understand timelines. Future planning, shape and scope of the fleet.

Long-Term: Educate against seablindness; rebuild national strategy with the other military service[s].

Direction:

The Admiralty rejects the notion of active choice by decline—both in Britain’s power status and in core strategic principles essential to national defence, prosperity and national success in the future. The navy is central to this imperative. Therefore the following immediate steps need to be take place as a cohesive whole:

The ‘back to basics plan’ for the HM Government and the Naval Staff:

• Restore ammunition stocks

  • Replenish weapons inventory to drive up shipboard combat readiness.

  • Restore frequency of live weapon firing training exercises.

• Revise equipment stocks

  • With limited warships, submarines and aircraft, the management, protection and survivability of those assets is vital.

  • Fit naval assets with defensive and offensive weaponry to protect survivability. Eliminate culture of ‘fitted for but not with’.

  • Investigate logistic chains for parts suppliers.

• Reestablish Greater Asset Presence at Sea

  • Reduction in maintenance times and issues must happen, failure should result in severe penalties.

  • Availability of all naval and maritime assets must be driven up, ensuring a mission capable fleet posture.

  • Restoration of time for sailors in the fleet to engage in training, data gathering on performance analysis by being at sea to reduce gaps in deployable readiness.

  • There is to be emphasis placed on seatime. His Majesty’s ships, submarines and aircraft of the fleet, need to be at sea more, driving the important of ‘experience’ in the suitably qualified and experience personnel of the fleet.

    • History informs us that experience has often been the determining factor or difference in the performance of one navy over another, which cannot be gained anywhere but being at sea.

• Accelerate Naval Asset Delivery

  • Admiralty would work with HMG/Treasury to enable a ‘one for one’ swap, of assets: warships, submarines and aircraft.

  • Delivery of new warships and retirement of old accelerated.

• Abolish, Pause or Reform the ‘Hybrid Navy’ plan:

  • Faceless and untested technology, including faith in that technology to take the place of more powerful and capable assets is misguided. That less assets but more technologically can counter balance numbers of proven assets, like warships, is out of touch. Technology has always been a factor in warfare.

  • Until core issues are addressed, future fleet composition ,which is currently guesswork or untested technology, is too risky. It is not to say that autonomous or AI has a role to play in the future of naval warfare but getting the basics right, must the priority.

    • Note: warnings from history about technological utopias and false prophets are numerous.

    • Beholden to lessons of one theatre or war, is misguided.

    • Rates of attrition of equipment are too high, considering core equipment like warships and the fleet in being concept is vital.

    • Defences against drones and AI will emerge.

    • Environments are harsh, as is the sea on equipment, that often require human oversight or involvement.

  • Numbers and availability of warships, submarines and aircraft matter, enable options for HM Government simultaneously near home and further abroad. Rising threat levels demand responses, it should not be left to ‘risk’ where a choice is forced of ‘one threat or another’ where plausible.

  • Those the navy serves, such as the protection of the merchant mariner, wish to see sailors and the White Ensign present, not technology. This is additionally a powerful deterrent to foes and diplomatic power for Britain.

• Eliminate Redundant Planning:

  • Scrapping conceptual waste like ‘Atlantic Bastion’ would yield improvements. Britain’s strategic reality and naval role have changed little; unnecessary academic exercises must give way to practical strategy. History provides the answers, whereas rebrands and new concepts that are a redress of once known things are wasteful. Nor is the naval service a job creation scheme for experimentation when more important matters must be addressed, like the size, reach and scope of the fleet.

  • Operationally, restoring trust with the British public, even if choices are made by HMG, should result in a firm policy of the interception, deterrence or removal of an aggressor, irrelevant of the asset they are using, from British waters [from seabed to space, in partnership with other services].

• Reform of Naval Staff Structure and Naval Personnel:

  • Redistribute focus from theory and management back to focus on the fleet.

  • Value retention of experienced personnel over recruitment of new personnel.

  • Emphasise seagoing/frontline experienced officers and personnel in the upper-echelons of the service.

  • Remove underperforming civil servants and those who made promises who can’t deliver.

  • Permit early retirement for a small group of senior naval/marine officers and civilians who contributed to recent setbacks. Bringing new talent and experience, preferably sea experienced, up from lower levels and providing opportunity for new sailors and marines to gain experience at lower levels.

  • Reassert naval command and control by reallocating Royal Marine talent to investigate the future shape and scope of amphibious capability and ensuring the Commando standard remains world-leading.

    • Should Royal Marines believe they are a land-force than a maritime force they should be removed from the navy’s budget and handed to the army, if not disbanded.

  • Streamline decision-making, a natural process in the restoration of Admiralty.

  • Decentralise command and control to local authorities and those at sea.

  • Significant workload reductions for naval personnel by abolishing schemes, initiatives and programmes that distract them from their main tasks. That being getting ships, submarines and naval aviation at sea, training and gaining experience. Anything else is secondary or deemed irrelevant.

• Admiralty actions or investigations:

  • Admiralty-controlled PR/Comms office to counter misinformation and enable education without straining civil-military trust.

  • There should be no inhibition on valuing pride, heritage and tradition while equally moving with the times but the latter should not undermine the former. Restoration of fighting spirit.

  • Advice to HM Government about various matters such as the protection of shipping, protection of strategic chokepoints, risk adversity, use of naval service outside of NATO and allied frameworks. Realigning the Royal Navy to a British security profile first, followed by strategic alliances second. Reassess threat models and priorities including doctrine and wargaming.

  • Examine PME (Professional Military Education) effectiveness for naval personnel.

  • Investigate integration of other services and their experiences with the naval service and the effectiveness of so called ‘jointness’ at various levels.

  • Examination on the funding model of the nuclear deterrent.

  • Probe joint command integration mechanisms, placement and effectiveness for naval personnel particularly in operations and strategic level decision-making to avoid repeats of recent setbacks.

  • Explore academic relationships and advisory practices including use of institutional knowledge [the study of history, maritime strategy, national strategy and experience] and protection of corporate memory and recent tactical and operational experience. Reassess who has in the past counselled the navy and now who should.

  • Engage with other stakeholders, such as insurance and merchant mariners to assess their concerns and needs. Reassess international law and the impact of AUKUS.

END.

Losing seapower isn’t gradual decline—it’s active abandonment. This analysis examines how Britain systematically relinquished five centuries of maritime defense capability, dislocating national strategy from its geographic core. I challenge prevailing narratives of “managed decline” or simple “fall,” arguing that Britain’s post-2026 reality represents deliberate deconstruction of its seapower. The case study reveals how organizational inertia, technocratic bias, and political indifference can utterly undermine foundational defence principles—proving that geography offers neither safety nor ease, only non-negotiable survival demands. For scholars of national security, maritime strategy, or post-imperial defense, this examination exposes the sharp tension between historical reality and contemporary policy rhetoric.

In my 2021 PhD, ‘Deconstructing the Seapower State: Britain, America and Unified Defence’ I predicted the end of Britain as an seapower, stating:

“Over the best part of five centuries, it was understood by some that seablindness is like a weed which needed to be pruned else could grow into a fatal cancer. If it was let out of control or the right circumstances aligned; they knew the eventual end of British strategy & seapower was inevitable for both are one and the same.”

The foretold end of Britain as a seapower began to emerge some time ago: with plenty warnings and ‘off ramps’ available. Since then, some have wrongly labelled it ‘fall and decline,’ while others call it ‘managed decline.’ Increasingly after the 1960s, understanding of seapower was purposefully reconfigured away from an understanding of the experience of how Britain developed the only national strategy it could. But Britain being a seapower is no more about foreign policy, the role of Britain in the world, defence asset numbers, or even resources than it is about anything else. It begins with geography and five centuries of how Britain [England] has defended itself.

More fundamentally, British national strategy begins not with abstract conversation but with objective reality. Britain has always had one core defensive imperative: protecting its island home. This isn’t optional—it’s the very foundation of ‘national security’.

British national defence strategy isn’t complicated––as many would lead you to believe for various nefarious reasons—it’s simply what British seapower entails: a non-negotiable maritime core to defence that addresses the harsh realities of being an island. Britain has no choice in its national defence strategy, because it always had to address maritime commitments, near and far from home, that were directly about the security of the nation. This has and should always be the charter of the island lands.

The real story is often reversed but the truth is conversations about defence of the island realm come first, before any discussions about broader strategic or foreign policy objectives. Geography demands a specific kind of military approach coupled with the fact that Britain has never had meaningful choices about its defence posture—it’s been constrained by its very existence as an island nation.

Since King Henry VIII founded the Royal Navy, few moments have seen decision-makers so consciously struggle with national defence: sometimes their hand forced, other times not so, equally, defence is not shielded from domestic issues. Domestic politics often forced hands, yet even when not, defence remained vulnerable to political neglect. What emerges is a consistent pattern: island security requires constant attention, never taken for granted. Yet through these trials, one truth persisted: when a foreign power threatened Britain, or issues arose or even internal crises emerged, island survival demanded more than rhetoric and was acted on.

Yet, history shows even broken and impoverished, England understood that when a foreign power threatened them or issues arose, island survival demanded more than rhetoric— It required a non-negotiable maritime core—defence from invasion, securing resource lines to sustain the population, and preventing subjugation or manipulation of a nation that had made and cherished self-government than falling into the tyranny of an foreign power [or alike]. A duty for all time, renewed and refreshed to reflect the times and what technology enabled. This is the price islands must pay to protect themselves before they even think about anything else.

2026 is truly a historical marker for the White Ensign and global military history. 2026 represents more than a date—it marks the point where Britain ceases to be a seapower. Without the ability to protect shipping lanes, choke points, fuel depots, or seabed resource areas; without control over Atlantic and Mediterranean passages; without the maritime programme that has defined British defence for five centuries—Britain is effectively declaring: “We do not care what once Kings, Queens, Parliament, Governments, and the public once understood: how Britain would be defeated”—and not necessarily directly by enemy fire. Whether through destitution or neglect, the nation ultimately sacrifices its future by not being realistic to the facts of just how delicate island economies, the cost of living and defence of a way of living stands.

The reality includes Britain’s only attack submarine based in Australia, naval assets idle while bases remain vulnerable, citizens abroad unprotected, and critical economic and security infrastructure exposed. Shipping travels unprotected; fuel lines and data pipes remain unguarded as a defence budgets prioritized imagery over substance. Warships proven capable of defending bases and civilian and military assets from air attack, protecting cargo ships, and securing food and energy processing facilities sit inert.

These are not accidents. They represent conscious choices about national security. A conscious choice to ignore centuries of experience. Hard power swapped for soft words and alliances undermined. The tradition of a navy and nation that acts, trashed. The lack of warships at sea undermines insurance, finance and trust let alone the taxpayer who asks a navy to be at sea not in port. The war with Iran, led by the United States, has exposed what many have warned about for sometime on the state of Britain’s Navy and illiteracy of British defence and security, which has been so often been more hot air then substance: the old adage talk is cheap in which to look good, but action is what matters. It should not be ignored Britain’s response to the Red Sea Houthi threat in 2023, was already a warning of the state of thought towards seas and threats to shipping, energy supplies and the global economy, all of which an island is vulnerable to.

Those wise, will not gloat at the situation but realise what this means, for the Royal Navy remains the undisputed naval fighting force by battle honours in history. Many other navies have taken inspiration, worked closely with, and grown alongside it, intellectually and practically to the benefit of global security. After all, the world should not ask one nation to bear the responsibility of all security on and from the sea. A sense of gratitude must be elevated to the steadfastness of the US Navy whose sailors, marines and intellectuals remain deeply connected with England’s, in more way than one.

Blame often falls on government. The reality, that I have researched, is there are many moving parts of how Britain got from A to B to C. But remember: civilian decision-makers can only act if educated, unless other reasons exist for them to avoid the insight of experience for after all, experience is all humans have. Instead look to advisors—both within and outside government—who hold answers of how Britain abandoned seapower. Unified defence: the UK Ministry of Defence, equally has a leading role in this failure. That is a story for another time, but few will admit accountability, hiding behind excuses. But they failed to understand the responsibility inherited from the past, by what it means to defend an island. Just because it is an old plan, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant particularly when the receipts proved that a national defence strategy with maritime at its core works in which to address the unique needs of island, ignoring the temptation of land-think that drives continental countries to defend themselves differently.

For the Royal Navy, the circle is somewhat complete: a stain on its reputation, one not of their making yet will take the political ‘flak and ire of the public’. That they have not acted, even with the limited resources they have—an active choice by successive governments to reduce—only serves to prove the point of the fools who have sought to undermine national defence strategy and seapowers centrality to the island because now when protection and action is asked for, where are thou Royal Navy? Arguably something that has not happened before in the services history to such an extent. Navies want to give decision-makers options—and be known as "doing." Because no one can see what they're doing so they have to be known to be doing else the cycle of policy blindness towards them just deepens. In short: the end of Britain as a seapower is a series of smaller problems, over a long period amounting to an end state where few can track the origins of all the issues: classic deconstruction.

The sad reality for Britain and the world, is that Britain has some of the finest military personnel and defence intellectuals on offer, but government only had to be educated, a few who only had to pick up the book and read about how an island nation can be defended and has been successfully for generations. It’s not complicated when you inherit such wisdom from forebears who learned about it the hard way, developed the strategy from that difficulty and executed it. They also knew maritime included all-service participation with a naval core, one not blindly following theories of domain power which mean’t as technology evolved that the strategy stayed the same but the tools could be refreshed.

Those nations who understand the influence of the sea on national life, and the interconnectivity of seabed to space, as Britain once did, will defend and operate at sea with confidence and determination to the benefit of their security and prosperity.

The end of British seapower remains one of the finest case studies of the difficult relationship between organisation, policy, politics, agenda, and strategy—and of how unelected technocrats, bureaucrats, elites, and lawyers either believe they know better, have a different agenda, refuse to be educated, or simply refuse to listen to the easily accessible wisdom of history.

Either way, the Royal Navy did not ‘rise and fall’, nor was it ‘managed decline’, nor was seapower’s fate tied to Britain’s place in the world, its power status or Empire, it was actively deconstructed. This is where we are today: a day of reckoning.

In short, I revisit some arguments in my PhD and forthcoming title:

The myth of an American maritime “spirit”

The notion of an organic American maritime “spirit” is largely misrepresentative. Why?

This stems from a persistent assumption—also deeply flawed in much American naval thinking—that the United States can develop maritime argumentation through naval power alone and be by default a maritime nation. The concept implies some intrinsic capacity to be and think maritime, something few nations possess. Island states have relative advantages here; continental powers are often inherently skeptical or even hostile to the sea as they can retreat to land and have core security [food and fuel] without dependency on the sea, irrelevant of the prosperity that trade and more, that the oceanic forums enable for better or worse, which is a secondary matter.

American naval ambition is reactive, not organic.

American naval ambition hasn’t been spontaneous. It followed specific impetus:

• Beating the British and not just at war.

  • These are two different navies, and although the Royal Navy became subservient to the USN in the 20th century, the USN was never going to ‘best’ the RN in culture or spiritually because they exist for different reasons.

• Securing recognition of the US as maturing global power.

• Waging total war.

• Supporting American foreign policy objectives an era of super power and great power competition.

This isn’t an organic maritime spirit. Most of the time, American sea power has been a naval response to a naval question. This is far from an integrated maritime nation where every component—legal, inland seaways, business, enterprise, shipbuilding, naval, and more—aligns with culture, to work together. Shipbuilding has to be competitive globally, maritime products edgy, mariners trained and international laws influenced, rather than blindly accepted particularly when they tilt against good order at sea, if not against the ‘West’. The age of a happy world at sea, and trust of equals at sea through legal cooperation at sea that Britain and America wanted that came out of the Second World War, is dead, if not a fallacy either nation told itself in the first place.

In the past, America has been a maritime nation, but it is far from it today. Simply put, the concept of America is maritime nation and always has been is disingenuous to the truth and undermines the ability to think clearly about America’s navy and a broader American maritime future let alone a strategy of how the sea is going to influence what happens next. To be blunt, those peddling this myth, are part of the problem. Equally, teaching naval personnel–midshipman to Admiral–and civilians that America is a maritime nation or ‘inherently so’, isn’t helping the situation because they are effectively being duped into a false sense of security rather than being equipped to communicate who they are and what they are for. Education on the sea is a constant task, civilian and military must always be addressing it.

Attempts are underway, but actions, not just assertions, will determine whether a return happens at all, is short lived or longer lasting and this means uncertainty. Achieving true maritime national status requires vast support and significant investment across multiple fronts. It can’t resort to island arguments. This is which why in America naval matters get priority over maritime and civilian, but to be a maritime nation, this imbalance can’t last. It is also something that has accelerated the switch back from America being a maritime nation to a nation with a vast Prussian style tactical naval force.

The shifting dynamics at sea—real competition—notably civilian and military—suggest America’s naval advantage may be retreating, though this could itself generate impetus. It’s not the first time this has happened and plenty examples exist over the 19th and 20th century. Equally, consider the US Navy’s rebuilt strength after Pearl Harbor: astonishing resilience when pressed against the figurative seawall. Could America do it again? Afterall American naval ambition and enterprise, was something a wise Japanese Admiral observed and knew Imperial Japan’s fate was sealed by pretending to be a fake land power. An irony, the Royal Navy’s post-imperial decline directly corresponds to the biggest disaster in British defence: becoming continental minded and a fake land power. For American’s this is all you need to know why the Royal Navy is as weak as it is and how Britain discarded hundreds of years of institutional memory and corporate experience in one of the best national strategy’s the world has seen.1

But returning to America, it is critical to acknowledge, the naval advantage at sea was eroded largely from within the Western framework than outside pressure. Let us not permit those responsible for much of these outcomes escape accountability and equally, all the strain for keeping the peace at sea, or worse, fall entirely on the USN’s shoulders. Where are the other navies that were once part of great and powerful seagoing alliances?

Federal coordination to be a maritime nation remains theoretically possible, but it is also an all American enterprise right across the nation, though bureaucracy—often the genuine adversary of effective maritime and national strategy—will likely sabotage implementation. The deeper reality demands more than rhetoric; it requires sustained political commitment to rethinking America’s relationship with the seas with the USN just part of a picture, not the whole. Yes American navalists, this isn’t all about you and your shopping lists for naval procurement.

This framing obscures a deeper reality. As a continental nation, America has always required deliberate, sustained effort to be both a naval power and maritime power. US historical performance suggests oscillating fall and decline isn’t speculative but somewhat inevitable—making defensive navigation far more critical than patriotic assumptions about inherent seagoing competence in the minds of decisions-makers and lawmakers, let alone the US citizen: who has to fund it.

The core problem: Refusal to accept reality

The real issue remains that Americans refuse to accept a fundamental truth: its relationship with the seas has been “rather up and down,” and the Navy’s fate has often reflected those fluctuations. This volatility is somewhat natural for a vast landmass.

But the “sentimental drivel” of claiming America is a maritime nation—let alone that ghostly spirits of the past will easily carry forth to new glorious heights? That’s nothing more than navalism and misguided pride dressing up genuine difficulty in articulating what the US Navy actually needs or should do. It’s perfectly natural for a nation like the US to struggle with this, and that’s precisely why navalism itself exists but equally why navalism won’t go far enough to address it.

Until many acknowledge this, change will be reluctant and incomplete. It’s always been hard for America to be a sea power—it’s tough, grueling work that requires constant effort on multiple fronts. Quaint ideas and patriotic views are potent, but they cannot defeat the overarching problem. For serious strategists, this means nuance trumps nostalgia. The “maritime spirit” narrative serves more than analysis; it exposes genuine difficulty in articulating what the Navy actually needs and the interconnecting ligaments across the maritime sector and how it may survive into the future. The greatest cynic could see a future of a US Coast Guard, Army and Air Force: just as CNO King and SECDEF James Forrestal feared as they were forced to walk into the army built Pentagon building at the dawn of the defence unification era just after the Second World War having narrowly avoided the Department of War totally dominating the emerging Department of Defense….As Forrestal warned: the temptation for America and its navy to be ruled by an Army War Department, was an constant threat to American maritime power and one hard for America to resist nor dressing American naval strategy as ‘maritime strategy’ in an effort to convince America it was maritime. Cold War warriors take heed from King and Forrestal if you can bring yourself to accept this reality.

Why this refusal to see reality is particularly dangerous

To tip the scales of seablindness to disaster rather than something manageable—in island and continental nations–is usually due to lacklustre performance of continental thinking applied to the sea which infects thinking, debate and conversations towards a naval paradigm then a maritime one: distorting policy, destroying strategy and creating bigger problems for later.

Confusion steams on if America is a maritime nation from the geographic realities of America, flanked by two oceans: in short to go anywhere or do anything on mass, needs the naval and maritime component. Whereas, other nations, islands or those on continental land masses can clearly see their defence priorities: land and air together, or a maritime core to their strategy. That means Army and Air Force or, for others, a navy and expeditionary army. Either way, the culture of a continent overrides sound thinking on this, how the people feel safe, as we see in America is because of the lack of sea dependency which drives a paradox on exactly what the shape and scope of naval ambition and being maritime is.

A historical pattern

Again, many of our forebears on both sides of the Atlantic knew this. What makes this conversation urgent is its historical consistency. British and American figures from Washington, Adams, Mahan, Corbett, Sims, Knox, King, Forrestal, Burke, and others recognised these tensions, reflecting the times they operated. But today, it seems many either aren’t educated to understand it, refuse to study it, or lack the objective reality to confront it.

The narrative that America possesses an innate maritime character—from cultural DNA to strategic instinct—is widely held yet fundamentally flawed. Continental impulses will always override maritime ones in a vast land mass, like the US. Face this reality and make it the first priority, or in simple terms, fighting seablindness, and there are no limits for the US navy and the maritime sector to excel, from seabed to space.

From the Red Sea’s trade routes to Whitehall’s policy frameworks and into classroom curricula, a persistent issue emerges: seablindness, and now, it is breaking the Royal Navy. Land-centric thinking in Britain has repeatedly undermined national strategy, where maritime strategy is its core, leaving tactical competence decoupled from strategic vision.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve dedicated thousands of hours, acquired academic qualifications, and invested significant financial resources to examine how organization shapes strategic thinking and action. My focus has been on understanding the relationship between structure and behaviour—essentially, whether organizations can achieve desired outcomes. In the defence context, this distinction isn’t theoretical: it determines winning from losing. At the heart of my work is a world view, one of Planet Ocean than Planet Earth. How we perceive our world drives every strategic decision. The maritime perspective leads to a specific analysis: understanding phenomena collectively called “seablindness.”

Over the past decade, I’ve been disseminating findings through multiple channels. The “Art of Admiralty”1 approach emphasizes one thing first: communicating and educating about the seas becomes paramount. More directly, I’ve explored the actual reality of “seablindness”—understanding that while it cannot be vanquished, it can be tackled systematically. Alongside this, I’ve highlighted the practical and theoretical obstacles navies routinely encounter when genuinely addressing this challenge. You can read my summary from 2024 ‘Seablindness and the Royal Navy’, elsewhere I addressed differences between Britain and America including other nations on this matter through professional publications like the UK Naval Review. More recently, I explained what the endgame for seablindness is.

This article looks ahead to 2025 and beyond, examining urgent concerns about the Royal Navy and its persistent struggle with seablindness. I recommend you read at least the 2024 article as a primer before this one. However, what emerges is a genuinely grim assessment—one that must be told.2^[1]

What Naval Message?

“Silent Service” was always more than a nickname—it belonged to the submarines branch culture of secrecy. Yet it would be appropriate to extend the label to the whole naval service. Making visibility central to tackling ‘seablindness’ means acknowledging that navies work away from Whitehall and the public. This drives the need to exploit every opportunity to remind them they exist.

The 2025 Cenotaph service—complete with senior naval absence alongside Royal Household presence none of which were in naval uniform—represents a deliberate choice. Across events ranging from religious holidays to national public gatherings, the navy has retreated from visibility. For sailors and marines already battered by average 30% more deployment time, with the same pay, than Army or Royal Air Force [RAF] counterparts, this eroded representation sends a clear message: either the service has fundamentally diminished worth to the nation, or there’s a quiet omission — the navy is now so stretched it can’t afford things other services seemingly can. Visibility serves as a critical weapon against seablindness—especially for forces operating over the horizon. Yet those who claim to be rebuilding the Royal Navy seem still to have failed to grasp this fundamental truth.

This is a genuine chicken-and-egg dynamic emerges: declining conditions and resources affect the service’s ability to operate and do public relations and engagement, which in turn drives further decline. When a service cannot visibly demonstrate its value, political bodies unaware of the real cost become reluctant to fund it. And since beneficiaries cannot immediately perceive tangible benefits, they rarely feel the urgency to protect what matters most.

Royal Marine take over?

With no active four-star Admiral—for the first time in Royal Navy history—alone with the lack of a naval officer holding serious joint command across British defence, the service has broken centuries of tradition: a General leads.

Some might argue that should be the epitaph, the final curtain call. Their cynicism would be well grounded: if ever an analogy of the rejection of maritime strategic thought could be encapsulated, it could be in calling the head of the naval service “general.”

But the Royal Marines are no fools; that’s why they’ve often been given some of the toughest tasks in conventional British and special forces warfare. Yet if the recent cuts to Britain’s amphibious capability—reduced to pretty much zero—have left a chip on the shoulders of Royal Marine officers who now attempt to take over the navy, helping to give the boot to a previous ‘pro fighting seablindness’ First Sea Lord––for various reasons––then they have gone astray. It’s fair to ask, even if the marines reform themselves, how are they going to get into a fight when they are more limited than ever? Most Royal Marines, having been under threat of extinction for some time understand the value of public relations, and therefore should be sensitive to seablindness and naval needs, but these must be mindful of their traditional role, not one of a land force, from influencing their actions with the navy. However, if the marines seek comfort among the other services while the navy continues its own work, they should recall that the British Army has attempted to have the Royal Marines disbanded more than once. More importantly, since 1945 the Admiralty and senior naval leadership in the MoD era have time and again gone out of their way—often at real material cost—to protect Britain’s amphibious fleet and maintain Royal Marine Commando training quality. Institutions like Britannia Naval College, specialised equipment training and more broadly rating (sailor) training have suffered as a result. The charge that naval personnel have not taken marines, or what they uniquely bring as a fundamental part of the navy and broader defence seriously, would be a fundamental lie and stain on the reputation of corps if they believe it. Either way, for right or wrong, there is a theme emerging one of land-centricity that degrades the criticality of events at sea, and the seabed in favour of land operations, something out of step with events past and present on the oceans over the past few years and are now emerging.

Presence and Operational Matters: Land Centricity

This land-centricity in government was already apparent by the lacklustre response to attacks on shipping in the Red Sea in 2023. Educated Governments in the past, understood not just the importance of shipping to Britain as an island nation but also the impact it could have on global security such as through the economic markets. Letting Shipping being unsafe would have been anti-thetical once to Admiralty and government alike. Elsewhere while America3 and France4 openly seize, tankers operating under false flags for Russia, Britain has been reluctant to directly act [seize] bar then to try and ‘shoo away like a bad smell’ hostile actor ships from its waters.5 Power responds to power, and a gentle nudge from a service once versed in making tough choices, is hardly in the tradition of the habit of victory. If enemies at sea are smelling weakness in the White Ensign, the mythos and respect the RN once carried is all but dead. This is something further compounded as its fleet has withdrawn permeant presence entirely from ‘East of Suez’ while struggling to maintain presence in the Atlantic and Mediterranean: anyone who has bothered to study 500 years of British history, knows is vital for the RN to keep these secure. It’s hardly a global presence: ambition, reality and warship maintenance programmes seem to have been all disconnected in the minds of some.

In response to sustained attacks on merchant shipping, the Royal Navy deployed HMS DIAMOND, a Type 45 destroyer, to the southern Red Sea in late December 2023. The ship arrived formally in early January 2024 and immediately integrated with United States Naval Command and allied forces. Over subsequent weeks, DIAMOND achieved multiple engagements, successfully shooting down hostile Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The operation generated significant morale enhancement within the Royal Navy and reinforced confidence in the Type 45 air-defence systems. Recognizing the need for expanded protection, the navy ordered rapid augmentation. With no other immediately available Type 45 ships, HMS RICHMOND, a Type 23 frigate, underwent expedited re-tasking. Originally assigned to anti-submarine warfare operations in the North Atlantic and scheduled to join Britain’s Carrier Strike Group 25’s deployment, RICHMOND transitioned in short to open-ocean merchant ship escort. A useful reminder of the flexibility of well configured frigates––take note America. Differential performance emerged between the two vessels’ air-defence systems which was useful information. Either way, both ships spent months operating within high-threat environments. Prolonged periods at elevated readiness states: constant defense watches and action station became normal practice, granting ships companies with essential practice time, insight, data which is worth its weight in gold, when navies often fall short of having such experience: arguably some of the last times this type of experience was granted was in the 1982 Falklands War. This enabled changes across the fleet, honing experience into useful, practice improvements to systems, training and more. However instead of Britain maintain its presence, RICHMOND completed its tour and returned to UK waters by early May 2024. DIAMOND followed later.

No Royal Navy frigate or destroyer subsequently replaced these vessels in the region. The next meaningful RN presence materialized with Carrier Strike Group 25’s transit in summer 2025—a full calendar year later. The deployments remained notable for their rapid deployment characteristics, operational flexibility, and the practical insights gained through direct engagement with modern aerial threats. By comparison: The United States maintain a continuous, multi ship presence across the region. American surface ships view the southern Red Sea through a dual lens: as both a mission zone for merchant ship protection and as a deliberate training environment. Since the establishment of sustained Houthi threats, the US Navy has systematically cycled its ships through regional deployments. These missions expose sailors to real-environment operations. A distinctive feature of US Navy operations is the deliberate spreading of combat experience. By rotating ships through engagements, the service creates a distributed but credible experience base. This approach could yield significant value for potential conflicts in the South China Sea or around Taiwan within the next five years.

Other European navies demonstrate different approaches to regional presence. French, Italian, and Greek forces maintain consistent frigate and destroyer deployments. While their engagements remain less frequent to US operations, ships companies develop substantial practical expertise through prolonged, intensive interactions with adversaries.

A question remained: if this was a chance to test new systems and for sailors to gain experience that could contain great value for the future, why did the White Ensign essentially retreat?

The morale impact on the rest of the RN cannot be discounted. The work of DIAMOND and RICHMOND electrified the officer and rating cadres had been in the fight and had acquitted themselves well––in the highest traditions of the service. Subsequently an intriguing case study emerges from HMS DUNCAN’s 2024 Eastern Mediterranean deployment. The ship remained in the Eastern Mediterranean and did not transit into the Red Sea. Officers anecdote suggests this positioning was deliberate: DUNCAN maintained readiness to support a potential Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) from Lebanon. Importantly, it would have helped take pressure of a strained US Navy which has too much placed on it already by lacklustre commitment of some nations to step up at sea.

The decision appears linked to organizational biases. Army officers, particularly since the 2021 Kabul evacuation, demonstrated heightened NEO preparedness come paranoia and have advised government to this, particularly when they hold positions of senior command over all British forces. The fault to not cycle more British frigates and destroyers through the Red Sea was jointly an operational level and reality that the Royal Navy is so short on assets, it can’t meet the demands required of it––blame successive cuts which at their root, is seablindness. Go anywhere outside the UK and North Atlantic, UK forces come under CJO’s Operational Command (OPCOM) from PJHQ, army officers’ rule here who in this case had little care for training sailors in a real world environment but turned their eyes to land events—which notably, did not occur.

The fall of Kabul triggered changes in military training priorities that persisted through early 2024. A consistent pattern emerged: army and Royal Marine leadership became primary architects of NEO doctrine, again, remove from core British needs. Exercises shifted to emphasize evacuation procedures, with staff teams spending significant time planning hypothetical saves. Differences in training intensity became apparent. UK Commando Forces conducted a January 2024 exercise focused entirely on NEO planning for a Philippines scenario involving hurricane damage and regional tension. Parallel high-intensity scenarios—such as Royal Marines transiting across a contested North Sea or landings in northern Norway—remained unrealizable for the 1* staff. That real experience against UAV’s and alike was deprioritised in a world where, in Ukraine, Asia and elsewhere, technologies such as this are moving to the centre ground, speaks volumes. This suggests selective operational validation where high intensity warfare, something sailors need experience in urgently was an afterthought and this shone through in the management in the Red Sea situation.

Some of this can be debated in professional circles, but it exposes that Britains navy is too stretched. For all the talk of hybrid navies, the reality is presence, capability and power counts and that means hulls in the water. However more importantly, the Red Sea situation exposed exactly that, the naval service is lacking experience. This is because there wasn’t a hand on the tiller with the authority to do it when it should have and others turned a blind eye to the sea and naval service. Those who have read more of my work, will know my investigation into the strengths and weaknesses of unified defence––the monolithic organisations like the UK Ministry of Defence–– read in “Endgame for Seablindness”6 I said the next step in unified defence was necessary but it had to acknowledge some things needed to be reversed. An army general, lacking the knowledge of running naval service demonstrates there is a limit to so called ‘jointness’. The point where operational jointness––forgo the rhetoric on reducing inter-service rivalry, it was a lie in the 1960s to help the Treasury case, and it still is now––undermines the quality of service emphasises how unified defence is not working. It is not centralisation that is needed but decentralisation of authority to avoid exactly the type of situation the Red Sea demonstrated. Britain needs to empower its service chiefs, not seek bland solutions disconnected from the ‘frontlines’. In short, one must be mindful the MoD was build at a land-centric ministry, in service to the treasury, hence, taxpayers must seek refuge and trust in the military to manage themselves not a MoD that produced better defence reviews with 500 staff in the 1950s, compared to now with over 90,000.

British ‘Naval’ Thinking: Or, What Actually Is It?

The amount of energy required to now refute the drivel, technobabble, terminology ridden gobbledegook and nonsense of the land-centric thinking that all services have had to endure, is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. British military doctrine has been profoundly shaped by concepts like “warfighting”—a word strikingly absent from Oxford dictionary–– yet evidently adopted from continental traditions. Island nations that treat possessing a “warfighting capability” as if it guarantees security reveal genuine confusion over strategy, again exposing unified defence is a land-centric school of thought not a maritime one. The persistent promotion of this framework suggests more than accident: the takeover of British defence by land-focused thinkers has over time forced the British military in a position which now every day is bringing it into question of it can defend Britain. An irony, that embracing tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury but nothing of substance, has broken British defence: exactly as the Admiralty in 1961 predicated would happen. Some equally may called this land-centricity the “The Continental Commitment” but it goes beyond that and is probably one of the worse things to befall British defence, something growing since at least 1914–I will not cover that here.7 Either way, the question is whether this will ultimately leave Britain defeated when theory collides with reality.

Elsewhere, by the end of the 20th century, British academics had become deeply embroiled in debates concerning the methodology, conceptual meaning, and practical application of seapower and maritime strategy—issues spanning the Navy’s future structure and theoretical foundations. Two schools emerged with prominence: first, the “Navalism and Sea Power” tradition, systematically advanced by Professor Geoffrey Till through PME (Professional Military Education). The other, Professor Andrew Lambert’s approach—the “civilian department”—which continued what had become known as the “Corbettian” school of applied history and maritime strategy philosophy. In Britain, the dependency on external defence educators and historians is how, generally, at least for navies, much thinking has been done, for all its benefits and a few detractors. To say the students of either school had not clashed would be a misunderstanding. It may even be the case and may have only muddied the waters with education to those outside the military then already was taking place. When I attempted to disseminate twenty years of research on seablindness––including how to fix it and ‘right the ship’––the response from certain segments of the naval and academic communities would have prompted whispers I was one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’.8 In fact, a few wrote to my mentor at the College asking me to be silenced. Why such sensitivity when everyone is supposed to be on the same side? Did they really think that twenty years of research, a PhD, and verification of my data by King’s and some of the world’s top historians, military personnel, and defence professionals was suddenly invalid because someone’s feelings had been hurt? This was exactly like when Sir Julian Corbett was given the boot by the Royal Navy in 1920: history reflecting reality was being used to point out failure and what needed changing for the positive, and that did require some constructive criticism and finger-pointing.

The point was that one school, who had become predominate because that ‘educated’ defence civilians and military personnel and therefore ended up in positions of influence, had avoided addressing the first and only issue that mattered: education about the sea and navy. They ignored that for terms like ‘seablindness’ to exist, it can only be seen as a complete failure where things once known and understood yesterday are not known today. Repeating the same tactics since the late 1980s, which have delivered little, is a sign of failing to understand the problem and is akin to madness to continue in this manner. The decline in understanding of seapower, maritime strategy and its interface with national strategy and policy does not occur overnight and will not be solved quickly. How can it be that warnings of the recent past have come to fruition? Why are the fundamental tenants of seapower, naval power or maritime strategy—questions solved by great historians like Corbett—seemingly not understood today in many quarters, particularly by some who should know better or claim they do ‘get it’? What have some been doing all these years, if still government and the public must ask: ‘What is the navy for?” The answer to “What is the navy for?” should have been thrashed out and resolved long ago; it was an easy task for the answers lay in the past, and from that, the answer communicated full volume to those at the highest level of decision-making in the nation. That this was left to linger by some past generations has caused turmoil that cannot be overlooked, particularly by those who present nothing but a negative message about the navy who had an opportunity prior to do something to avoid the situation the service now finds itself. Younger generations should be rightfully frustrated and equally seeking to give those with closed minds and status quo attitudes, the hard boot.

In the past, having the constant capability, institutional knowledge and corporate experience in place to be aware that educating on seapower was a constant task led by civilians to educate others about the sea and navy. Subsequently, it freed naval officers to be the best sea professionals. This was how Britain ended up with the best naval officers like Lord Nelson and quality trained ratings, which ultimately led the Royal Navy to become the successful force that it was. This was also because Britain had no choice regarding its national defence strategy, where officers had to be freed to focus on that task, for failure at sea meant doom for the nation. At the same time, civilians ensured that the Government, Parliament and the public were educated about the Naval Service and why Britain had no choice but to have a maritime strategy. The fact that anti-maritime and anti-naval voices after 1964 could even present to the government the illusion of choice other than maritime strategy or Britain is a ‘land power’ should have been squashed at inception if there was an active naval and maritime system to counter such ridiculous and unfounded claims.

Growing cognitive dissonance appears in terminology like “hybrid navy” and “Atlantic Bastion.” Britain’s naval strategy of locking down the GIUK gap and maintaining control of the Mediterranean has been fixed for centuries. So, why is it currently being called something new? An invention for someone to justify their wages or try and look smarter than they are? Or complete ignorance of island nation history? Probably a mix.9 Elsewhere, the hybrid navy approach raises questions: if sea-time experience has plummeted? Why? Because wouldn’t someone point out that the ocean’s ruthlessness on equipment knows no bounds and requires sailors, let alone to maintain it, or do we face a navy where no sailors want to go sea or even the ability to do so? If so, ‘game over’. If anything, “hybrid” may be merely political cover—a way of avoiding confrontation about the uncomfortable truth: Britain’s warship numbers are at historical lows, critical equipment programs remain unfunded, and to be a seapower you need hulls, aka presence.

Britain should lead global intellectual thought on naval and maritime matters, irrelevant of the Royal Navy’s size or power. We maybe at a turning point: those who deliberately apply historical wisdom to future planning—what I’ll call “inheritance thinkers”—seem increasingly likely to emerge from nations like the United States, Australia, and Japan rather than Britain. For those who resist historical study, the maxim “everything old is new again” takes on urgent relevance. The British Army insists on framing continental commitment as permanent purpose,10 rather than acknowledging its historically limited role for an island force that should operate primarily as an expeditionary service. The army unwillingness to accept its role has caused issues for defence and the navy for centuries but ultimately has undermined the armies own ability to manage its equipment and force structure: blaming government for the army, although partially true isn’t the whole picture and goes to the heart of the destruction of national strategy. Meanwhile, the RAF has effectively grounded its identity in nostalgia — the only narrative it can construct. Any serious thinker understands that this cognitive stagnation may be terminal, and that is without throwing into the mix the future of defence organisation, budgets, and the ever-changing technological landscape which is shifting at rapid pace––from seabed to space. The historical omission is not accidental; it’s strategic blindness.

As I argued in my PhD research: when an organisational culture is existing opposite to the truth, deliberately emphasises land minded centricity, a falseness, how can we expect meaningful change? Official positions—civilian or military—and governments seeking education remain closed to historical wisdom precisely because the system was designed to resist realignment. The irony is this: Britain has long claimed expertise in strategy through to Cabinet level, yet its defence institutions are fundamentally structured to prevent the integrated maritime approach that was proven to have worked for centuries.

The harsh message is clear: since the late 1980s, by every metric: every tactic attempted to address declining understanding of the Royal Navy and maritime strategy have failed—exposing the hollow promises of “solution” frameworks and false prophets in British naval thinking that treated a deep structural problem as if it were solvable through programmatic fixes. Navalism and calls for things like a ‘Navy League’11 demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of history and national strategy—and more importantly, of how seablindness has historically been addressed. The result? Nothing substantive has shifted. This remains the status quo and from that, don’t expect the future––or fate––of British seapower and Royal Navy to change.

Again, we can turn to the wisdom of the past, as Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe (1859-1935) told an American audience: 12

The worst possible people to talk about and promote the Royal Navy, are Royal Navy Officers.

Conclusion?

These few points, if thrown into a mixing pot, represent a perilous situation. As ever, organisational failure is a series of smaller mistakes that amount to a bigger one. The last great Admiralty Secretary warned, as he did to the US Navy, that constant change is tantamount to chaos and here we are.

In short, this article was for me to go back and test ‘Seablindness and Royal Navy’,13 to see if anything had changed. It has not, in fact it’s got worse. The Royal Navy may need Parliament or Cabinet to treat it differently—perhaps as a failing department or local council under special status. This would require a civilian leader with authority surpassing the First Sea Lord. “First Lord of the Admiralty” or “Admiralty Secretary” seems no less appropriate, though ironically, the previous holders had warned that current trends would inevitably play out this way. The land-centric MoD was successful in suppressing their warnings, it never intended to let official acknowledgment occur of what they said.

Fortunately, this will appear in my forthcoming book based on my PhD.

Dr Smith and Dr Klein started an annual tradition of a space lecture once a year covering space warfare, space strategy and matters related to space. This online lecture explored a range of topics ranging from the current state of the intellectual thought of space strategy, warfare, doctrine and technologies through to the geopolitical and related matters which space is involved in along with it being a more contents domain in itself.

This lecture will be of interest to students, military personnel and government officials who are interested in space warfare, space power, defence, strategic studies, and international relations. After Dr Smith’s and Dr Klein’s presentations and discussions there will be an open Q&A session.

About the speakers

Dr James WE Smith is a British Academy Research sponsored scholar and Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow at King’s College London, Department of War Studies. As the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow, James focuses on matters such as strategic studies, maritime strategy and space. He has a forthcoming book titles on of which is on Space Strategy. James has recently been working with partners such NASA, the US Navy and others on the future of strategy, seekingcloser integration of domains though a ‘seabed to space’ approach.

Dr John Klein, callsign “Patsy,” is a Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research, Inc., and also instructs space policy and strategy courses at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, Georgetown University’s Strategic Studies Program, and Institute of World Politics at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels respectively. He routinely writes on space strategy, deterrence, and the Law of Armed Conflict. He is the author of the books Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy(2006), Understanding Space Strategy: The Art of War in Space (2019), and the recently released Fight for the Final Frontier: Irregular Warfare in Space (2023), along with Space Warfare 2nd Edition(2024).

Patsy is also a retired Commander of the United States Navy, receiving his commission through the NROTC program at Georgia Tech. He served for 22 years as a Naval Flight Officer, primarily flying in the S-3B Viking carrier-based aircraft. Patsy supported combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. His tours included the Executive Officer of Sea Control Squadron Twenty-Four and the final Commanding Officer of Sea Control Weapons School.Patsy holds a master’s in Aeronautical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, a master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, and a PhD in Strategic Studies from the University of Reading, England. Patsy is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. He has over 2,700 flight hours in 27 different types of aircraft and over 600 carrier-arrested landings.

In the January 2026 edition of Warships International Fleet Review, (on sale in e-version and print in the UK & abroad after 19 Dec 2025), I point out restoring Britain to its proven national strategy, alongside fundamental defence organisational change is the key to defending Britain and it’s interests while addressing a litany of issues plaguing British defence. Island nations should not be warmongering, but thinking more intelligently about their approach to contemporary defence threats.

The full article is available in print and e-print. The publishers website is:

https://warshipsifr.com/

Please support publishing where and when you can.

BRITAIN NEEDS ADMIRALTY NOT A MINISTRY OF WAR

INTRO:

The US Department of Defense was recently rebranded the Department of War, representing a high-level mindset change for the American military. In this commentary James W.E. Smith suggests Britain needs to carry out a similar evolution.

ARTICLE:

We are approaching 500 years since King Henry VIII, under the guidance of his once-special advisor, Sir Thomas Cromwell, established a ‘Council of Marine’, a forerunner to the Admiralty.

Although this could arguably be the foundational start of the Royal Navy, professionalism and organisation must go hand in hand; there was far more to it than creating a military force at sea. It was the process of acknowledging the harsh realities of what it meant to be an island, a topic I have touched on before in this magazine, but which it is worth reiterating.

Over the centuries, this has been analysed in different ways, but the reality is that Britain is easily defeated on land, cannot always sustain an army, is resource-strapped, and is often balancing its national finances.

This was obvious to King Henry VIII and Cromwell, who saw ports, sea trade, and merchants as the foundations of a national economy, and therefore something that had to be protected.

To go a step further, a professional military force at sea could not only protect trade but defend the nation from the endless threats of invasion. It could equally signal that Britain would commit national power - with pinpoint precision - to undermine the economy and military endurance of a competitor nation while calling in other Continental nations to ‘gang up’ on a threat to England. This simplified take on British defence strategy need not be expanded. History shows that politicians, when educated, understood the strategy that enabled the collaboration of a powerful, capable global navy with a flexible, professional expeditionary army. It delivered national security over the centuries, the ultimate proving case being the downfall of the French tyrant Napoleon Bonaparte, if not WW2.

Either way, King Henry’s and Cromwell’s argument for the organisation of defence offers some fascinating insight into where we are today: defence of the realm has no other options for national strategy but facing seaward.

And for Britain, national defence historically required that no one person, not even a King, could have total responsibility. It required a government and council of civilians and military that broadly covered the interests of business, as well as professional managers of the Navy. They worked together to ensure that the Government did not adopt foolish ideas, such as turning Britain into a fraudulent land power.

As resources are always limited, experience has proved that it is best not to overcomplicate matters. There was little need for complex organisation, nor did Defence need a powerful army-centric ‘Ministry of War.’ In fact, when Prime Ministers tried, usually to cover up the poor performance of British Army leadership, it was promptly shut down.

The lesson was made when Army leadership got too loud in the run-up to WW1: Britain’s national strategy was put into jeopardy. The outcome was clear: the coffins of our brave soldiers came home in quantities and WW1 became a bloody stalemate. The intelligent way of defeating an enemy power, maritime in foundation, was during WW1 easily disregarded due to a bloated defence organisation, which enabled too many voices who had failed to educate themselves in British strategic history. Defence organisation was further complicated with the creation of the Royal Air Force (RAF). In the end, the insight provided is that when you over complicate defence organisation, the line between defeat and victory becomes more blurred. Things take too long to get done: endless committees debate, money gets wasted, accountability and transparency evaporate. Organisational myopia and stagnation set in. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

A lean defence organisation, with tight budgetary controls, should be enforced in nations with a fixed strategy. Even after the creation of a third military service Britain’s the management of the armed forces remained lean and agile. Defence reviews were published –for right or wrong – consisting of a few pages, costed, equipment explained, with the plan detailed. You can find them in Parliamentary records. They put the 2025 strategic defence review document to shame. It is nothing more than a glossy brochure of wishful thinking rather than a plan of long overdue action. Equally, for all the promises of defence reform being better than what has gone before and solving problems, little has (at the time of writing) been delivered.

Britain once had a clear national strategy, and if was still followed - and the organisation built around it - then UK defence today would look very different. National strategy should decide defence organisation.

For navies, this is important, as they have been influential in shaping how defence organisations work, for better or worse, around the world. The wisest naval minds and maritime strategists have understood that being able to educate and communicate about the Navy, considering its business is far over the horizon, is critical to protect and maintain.

It is why they have pushed back on the concept of land-think dominating defence, not out of rivalry, but because there are more moving parts in defence than soldiering.

In the United States the Department of Defense (DoD) has been rebranded into a Department of War in which the naval voice is arguably much diminished. After 250 years of American ambition to be a power at sea, it now appears to be on shaky grounds if navalists cannot assert the truth of military history, which has seen America’s sea power vital to the success of its land forces over the centuries.

It serves as a warning for the British to reject any such notion that might gain traction in the UK. Firstly, any talk of fixed continental commitments should be dismissed and acknowledged as being out of step with the present and future of warfare. We are confronted with a future that spans from seabed to space, with warfare likely bloodier than ever. It will be integrated, complex and paced at a speed faster than the human brain can comprehend.

Secondly, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) must be scaled back to a size that it was in the 1950s - hundreds of staff, not thousands, centrally. Thirdly, re-empower British services to run themselves and our Service chiefs to coordinate our strategy and operations closer than ever.

Ultimately, the best medicine for British defence is a good dose of objective reality. Britain must relearn its national strategy, focusing on being the best at the things it can, and disregarding the rest. This may be uncomfortable for many, including the UK Government, which needs to learn the limits of British power; for actually, it has always been the same – for an island nation naval forces and a matching strategy paramount. We know what to call this approach. It is ‘Admiralty’.

‘Endgame for Seablindness: defence organisation and the future of the Royal Navy and the United States Navy.’

I argue, the future of navies, let alone strategy, and warfare may very well depend on the future steps taken with the next iteration of defence organisation––for one is now long overdue––whatever form that needs to be, it must be of one united from seabed to space.

It is an overlooked fundamental fact that the analysis of history proves, since the founding of professional navies, beginning with the Royal Navy in 1546, that if you cannot communicate what this military power is for, or what both ‘maritime’ and ‘sea’ mean to a nation, then nothing else matters. 1Most issues, debates, discord, discussions, and disagreements flow from the failure to consider this the number one priority. This uncomfortable fact has been forgotten, because too often naval minds are tourists in nostalgia - something antithetical to the fact that the very best maritime thinkers and naval personnel were rebellious to status quos, and adverse to the comfort of armchairs of the wardroom - and yet this is understandable to some degree. This is because few have accepted that the centrality of American naval power and British seapower to their respective nations ended after 1945. Although there are many factors at play, critically, the organisational setup of unified defence broke down the systems for communicating about the Navy and seas’ influence on each nation.2 Past systems to communicate were taken for granted, today misunderstood, let alone never rejuvenated. This is partially the root of why many in leadership roles have struggled to communicate about the Navy in an effort to encourage those with the authority to take that message and act upon it, particularly after the 1980s defence reforms and the end of the first Cold War.

After 1947, there has been a ‘beat the retreat’ within navies. The shock that navies were no longer as important as they once were left vast scars that too many took to heart, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to think innovatively about the future. Instead, there has been comfort in retiring to the sea and accepting, through a distorted lens of navalism, that navies are a minor matter, simplified and to be concerned only with naval warfare and less influential in the world around us. Although there is a sound argument for a period that this was true, that time has passed, but in doing a retreat to grounds of naval matters for a naval audience and where naval warfare is all that naval policy, strategy, and doctrine is, let alone maritime strategy and policy, has provided ammunition for far broader and more profound problems down the road. This is now coming home to roost, ‘cause and effect’.

Those wise enough know that a limited view of navies is not accurate and has undermined the process of thinking about the future of the Naval Service and wider national defence strategy for some time. To place the Service in a neat little doctrinal box, contained to the sea, was always the objective of those who had interservice agendas and were hostile to other Services, and who cared little for anything beyond narrow domain-centric views of warfare, and, at times, have been helped to fulfil that objective by those within navies themselves. Over the decades, some have been aghast at the sense of nihilism and drift that have been evident in many Western navies, characterised by a loss of confidence, risk aversion, and lack of boldness. A marked departure from the outstanding achievements of the past, although this is not a reflection on many of our hard-working sailors and marines, there is some blame to be shared between civilian leadership and the military. For we must remember that defence is not about being ‘comfortable’; otherwise, for example, many of our great naval battles would not have ended in victory if such a disposition had been taken. Elsewhere, for academia and supporters of our navies, and all their parts of the original ‘Joint Service’, many educated minds and scholarly works have been created. However, to say that ‘things have got better’ for some of these efforts’ smack of the ‘ivory tower syndrome’. Would anyone claim with certainty that the government’s understanding of the Navy and maritime affairs has improved and is reflected in some form? You can explore this yourself: the author challenges every reader to ask around ‘what is the Navy is for’, and the answer will be clear: from politics to the public, to inside the Navy itself, and with the other military services, you won’t get a clear, concise, or coherent answer. Turn the page back in history, and the ‘story’ would be different. In the past, there were mechanisms in place where institutional knowledge and corporate memory were fiercely guarded, along with the fact that there were fewer overbearing legal and political restrictions on those who wanted to report the truth, express evidenced analysis, as their duty would allow them to do, to the highest offices.

Another part of this is that it may be a moment for both professional military education (PME), and academia, to reflect on returning to proven methods of analysis rather than overdependency on guesswork, assumptions, and wishful thinking, as these are no grounds for good education, competent communication, or sound policy, let alone ensuring those who need to get the job done can actually do so. Either way, if a mindset of ‘ease’ over decades has been due to avoidance of conflict with the other Armed Services, or adverse to political investigation, that is entirely out of step with the history of civilian and military individuals who built the navies we have inherited. This approach has run its course; the result of the collapse in education of our nations to ‘maritime’ has allowed the explosion in the encapsulating term ‘seablindness’. 3While other factors have been at play - budgets, foreign policy, social and domestic matters, and technology - there was always going to be a reckoning moment, where a pause and taking stock would be necessary to change course or continue repeating the same old ways, expecting some miraculous new result to arrive. We have now reached that moment.

The hypocrisy of the matter is the same old question comes up: ‘What of the Navy’s future?’ Reflecting often on this question is helpful if it enables some positive action, but the fact that the frequency of this question appears and has become more entrenched should have flagged that something deeper is amiss. Some scholars have used the entirely unhelpful debates under a mantra of ‘fall and decline’, in short, to accept one’s fate. Elsewhere, others have delved into familiar grounds of navalism, trading blows over budgets, technologies, and whose weapon system is superior to the others. Often, when surveying debates over the past four to five decades, it has been a tale of reaction rather than pre-emption, when thinking more carefully and wisely about the security and defence picture influences what happens at sea and, equally, what happens back from it to other domains. However, often overlooked is the failure to educate the public and decisionmakers - in offices high and low.

What is the price of this?

The West was in a position of strength after the Second World War. Our enemies were defeated. The seas were ours; our sailors and marines had delivered their most significant victory. But it was short-lived. In Washington, D.C., the politics of defence, with deep roots, made it appear that, by 1946, the US Navy had done very little in wartime. The story was little different for Britain’s Royal Navy, which had slogged it out globally alongside merchant mariners to save a nation and buy critical time to form a war-winning Alliance. As the 1950s progressed, however, weaknesses in naval policy contributed to the rise of Soviet naval power. The Cold War distorted many minds to believe that navies were ‘safe’ and only so because of the existence of a competitor; but what would happen when there was no prominent or primary adversary, and the seas shifted from a two-power super struggle or something ‘multipolar’ today, more historically accurate, but more complexly contested?

Turning to recent decades: merchant ships openly attacked in the Red Sea and off the coast of Africa, the lifelines of civilisation on the seabed contested, our lines of communication probed - from seabed to space - and the rise of an increasingly powerful and capable Navy of China that takes more bold steps, technologically or otherwise, every year. Seemingly, the teachings of great minds like British historian and strategist Sir Julian Corbett (1854-1922), who emphasised that our navies must never relinquish a position of strategic advantage,4 have been largely ignored. Ultimately, sea control was a theoretical aberration and was always going to slip through NATO, American, and wider Allied hands because, in ‘peacetime’, nations have different priorities, but this should not have been an excuse to stand still or fail to effectively communicate the fact that holding an advantage was the best approach to avoid bigger problems and greater expense down the line. The message was simple: maintaining a strategic advantage at sea, across the globe, and across chokepoints, while keeping merchant fleets’ security tight from terror or piracy, was the most effective way to manage uncertainty. But what then has gone wrong and why? Failures in policy? Our sailors and marines made mistakes? Was the doctrine dodgy? Is PME not working? No, not exclusively. It’s because, in simple terms, the priority to communicate what this very complex and expensive organisation we pay taxes for, ‘Navy’, was not expressed. This is an enduring task that is relentless, more than ‘public relations’, and everyone needs to take it with the utmost seriousness.

In the past, it has been a combination of factors, beyond national prestige, foreign policy, and defence threats, including public and private interests such as business and financial markets, that have driven the forum of debate on investment in the Navy. After 1945 this shifted away, often purposefully, from the accountability of public influence and became more dependent on the symbiosis between Government, Treasury, and the organisation of defence. This questionable relationship, if that is what it must be called, should not be confused with civil-military relations, although it is interconnected.

To think about the future requires some context, and because humans are ‘near-sighted’ and ‘memories short’, fortunately, we can turn to the past, for the past is all we have to seek guidance from. In the 1950s, the United States Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Arleigh Burke (1901-1996) took a stand against President Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) in the US Congress. He did so on two fundamental points:

The first is that a defence organisation must truly and equally allow each military Service equal representation and a voice to carry out their responsibilities and report honestly, non-politically, and in a timely manner to the people’s representatives. The reform package that the President was attempting to impose on the barely decade-old Department of Defense (DoD) sought to limit that, asserting military control akin to a German Army system and reducing civilian control. The second was that, while politicians were tinkering with defence organisation, world events were overtaking proceedings, adversaries were becoming emboldened, and America’s top military and civilian decisionmakers were focusing on matters of bureaucracy rather than the task at hand. Burke was proven right, the Soviet Union demonstrated its space power with the launch of the satellite Sputnik, and growing Soviet confidence at sea was proven, right in the middle of defence organisational debates. In short, Burke’s view prevailed with Congress: it was time to return to the business of being professional sailors, marines, soldiers, and airmen, in an effort to deter war, maintain peace, and be prepared to fight. But what was he demonstrating, and what were our forebears trying to tell us? If you cannot communicate about the sea, our maritime world, what the Navy is for, then the conclusion is clear: it’s endgame for the Naval Service. Burke’s interest in defence organisation was rooted in a concern that if the Navy lost its voice, or a pathway to communicate roles, missions, capabilities, and more, it would struggle in the future. Seemingly, the last Admiralty Secretary, Sir John Lang (1896-1984), and Admiralty-era First Sea Lord Sir Caspar John (1903-1984), warned the same, but Lord Mountbatten (1900-1979) had them ostracised. It’s clear today who was right: Lang and John, who were also notably students of Corbett’s scholarship, unlike Mountbatten who held on too rigidly to sentimental claptrap and his own agenda over the Naval Service rather then facing objective reality.

In all, Burke, Lang and John, amongst others, had the same primary concern - that there was ever a temptation for organisational reform of the unified defence system that would see its structure reflect a particular Service’s ‘way of thinking’, neutralising the forum, discussion and debate over strategy, doctrine, and inviting permeant stagnation and status quos, leading to a quick way to defeat. That defeat would be set in peacetime, executed in conflict or war. Letting this happen would be a short drop and a sudden stop for centuries of developing sea power, making the so-called ‘decline’ unavoidable. Burke had learnt from CNOs Ernest J King (1878-1956)5 and Louis E Denfeld (1891-1972) - one of America’s finest military officers - and the First US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal (1892-1949).6 Their contributions to creating what eventually became the Department of Defense rejected an Army takeover that had the intent of creating an all-powerful ‘Department of War’. These luminaries offer something fundamental to understanding navies in the future, and how seablindness could ultimately reach its final destination.

We only have to look at a case study to understand their arguments: the abolition of the British Admiralty resulted in the Royal Navy never recovering its voice. The Royal Navy, although not equipped to understand what it faced, did not challenge that the UK Government had failed to transfer vital institutional knowledge and ‘corporate memory’ into the UK Ministry of Defence. Notably, the other military Services were more astute on this front once they saw the opportunity to shape a new defence agenda around them and break the naval dominance on national strategy that had existed long before either the British Army or the Royal Air Force (RAF) existed. In short, navies have had to start again. Still, by then, a new national ‘way of warfare’ had taken hold in the minds of politicians and military officers, rejecting centuries of national strategic experience, one that was totally alien to an island nation. America’s Navy fared better, yet defence reforms, such as those in 1986,7 did not help matters. Both Navies suffered from weakened structures, which hindered their ability to operate and communicate effectively, thereby limiting their support for building a national defence strategy due to problems in educating about the critical contribution of naval forces to it.8

Returning to today, the concerns of those luminaries are not just relevant because of the aforementioned case study or many of the debates being discussed across the pages of defence discussions about the current and future of navies, but the topic of defence organisation has reared its head in political circles, for better or worse.9 The 2025 US Presidential Executive Order ‘rebrand’ of the Department of Defense to ‘Department of War’10 should set ‘alarm bells’ ringing in anyone mindful of the ‘health’ of the forum of high-level defence debate, where unity of effort is central. Yet, for those who argue that it is just a name change, they are short-sighted: words are powerful, both domestically and abroad. Names carry culture, connotations, and weight of the past, and those can drive intent - misguided or purposeful—even if it’s subconsciously executed. One example is that since this order, there has been a lot of talking of ‘soldiering, warrior ethos, Rome, Greece, and quaint ideas of militia and regiments’ by politicians. This is set in a backdrop of the ‘250th’ anniversary of America starting to reach out to sea through naval power. Notably, most of those 250 years took place under Constitutionally mandated equal War and Navy Departments.11 A pertinent reminder that, for nearly a century of understanding how to, in the simplest words, understand all the moving parts of war and defence, we’ve ended up talking about organisation through the lens of Prussian-style land warfare and ‘soldiering’.12 To use some English sarcasm: let’s hope the Napoleonic Wars ‘era’ or American Revolutionary War can guide us on seabed protection, Artificial Intelligence, space warfare, cyber war at the speed of light, the evolving air warfare picture and lethality in overall war and conflict that would make the Battle of Somme in the First World War look like a storm in a teacup. But the point is serious: if only the forebears could have warned us of the habit for defence culture to resort to comfortable old grounds, which history shows us time and again can happen, resulting in the coffins coming home at extraordinary rates when focus realigns to dwell on nostalgia, myths, and old ways—for the sake of it—rather than using the past wisely. It’s almost as if our politicians have not done their homework, or worse, those who advise them could not do research into their own organisations’ history. That’s new?

Returning to 1949, in the US there was agreement between the Army, Navy, and Air Force that the Department of Defense be named that way because it was about ‘defending America and its interests’.13 It was an intelligent move, with intent, providing manoeuvring space to adapt as the future required and to encourage the defence organisation not to stand still - a message lost in the latter 20th century and into the 21st. It’s pertinent to remember that US naval leadership effectively and efficiently argued between 1941 and 1947 to avoid a Department of War. Even with the overbearing lobbyists seeking an independent US Air Force, they won over the minds of Congress. Congress wanted to prevent squabbling military Services and equally hold the power over defence expenditure and many facets of it, including appointments, titles, and scrutiny of the DoD, as the US Constitution demanded of them.14 This charge remains in place today irrelevant of Executive Orders.15

It wasn’t a matter of interservice rivalry. Still, the Army and Navy had to work together, they had just experienced total war, and war was fresh in their minds when they knew defence organisation had to take steps away from a land-centric Prussian style soldiering and brutish ‘warrior ethos’ to something more intelligent, wise and bold - seabed to air to space - and to understand new capabilities and terrifying weapons to match. Time and again over the 1940s and 1950s, creating any system that reflected the structure of the Army was rejected, because it did not emphasise the requirement of unity of effort or cohesion to get the job done. Clearly, now that we are far removed from the Second World War, that insight is at risk of being lost. Equally, the experience of Imperial Japan during the Second World War, with its Navy overcontrolled by the Army, might be a valuable framework for Americans to consider, particularly in light of future defence geographical challenges that may lie ahead. Yet, answers for the US Navy are not the same for the Royal Navy, JMSDF, or Royal Australian Navy. Islands will always use sea power differently than that of great continental powers, even one like the US, which is flanked by two oceans; that mass of land can still undermine the best arguments of American naval power, rendering them subservient to concepts that erode the efficacy of sea power and maritime strategy.

To dismiss the wartime generation is not the correct path, for what has happened with defence organisations in the latter 20th century in the UK and the US clearly sets the stage for questions pointed at others. That is another topic, but younger generations could vent some frustration in helpful directions justifiably. What is more critical for navies and the maritime-minded is an objective understanding that seablindness has reached an endpoint if defence organisation is both hostile to navies and maritime strategy, because it faces a takeover by a view that sees the world as purely a land-warfare domain. Resultingly, on US Constitutional grounds, calls for an independent Navy Department may become louder; yet, it’s islands and smaller countries that could watch developments in the US and seek to streamline their defence organisations fundamentally. In the UK, revisiting plans for an alternative to the UK MoD, with an all-encompassing Admiralty as considered in the early 1960s, would provide a good foundation for the UK to recover from decades of failing defence reviews, along with schizophrenic direction and mismanagement of defence budgets.16 There is some wisdom that constant change is tantamount to chaos and, eventually, if an institution is repeatedly exposed to be riddled with mistakes and flaws, if not entirely broken, then shutting it down and starting again might be the best course of action [See UK Naval Review 112/4, p. 576].

As we live on the land, it’s understandable that land warfare rises to prominence. Yet, this view lacks nuance in the modern defence world. American General George Washington (1732-1799) recognised, along with the emerging nation, the importance of sea power and that military success was impossible without it, ultimately leading to the twin US Departments of War and Navy, for no land force can act decisively unless it is accompanied by maritime superiority. 17Critically, this statement tells us that intelligent civilian and military defence leadership refuses to be limited by narrow lenses when thinking about and executing defence policy and strategy. Yet, suppose the silence of navies worsens to the point where they are wholly invisible to politicians and the public, let alone because defence organisations strangle it, leaving their hands tied from offering the best options for national defence. In that case, seablindness is nearing its final position just as warned about earlier in the 20th century when the Admiralty and independent US Navy Department still stood.

Naval officers are not trained, nor are they equipped due to civil-military relations, to tackle this problem entirely, but they do need to understand it. Nations expect sailors and marines to get on with the task at hand, while, on the other hand, civilians have little excuse: naval personnel have a partnering role in the effort to communicate about the Navy, not just through public relations, but also in terms of how they express themselves and convey the message. If most senior naval and marine officers cannot do that effectively, then expecting other personnel to repeat the same clear message is a non-starter. Equally, it should be understood that most of the government, not least civilians across it, do not understand the sea nor have any interest in it, which makes the task the more complicated. A good case study is today’s Royal Navy, even its most senior ranks, fail to communicate confidently about what the Service does and why. The 2025 UK Defence Review, and subsequent outputs from the Service, continue to use weak, mild, and uncertain words rather than confident ones.18 This provides a pathway for alternative, narrow, and seablind views to seize the initiative and claim key arguments, which should be fertile grounds for the Navy to argue for its funding and future. It’s rare for the public to see or hear about His Majesty’s sailors and marines, and much of recent military history has been rewritten by the other military Services and their vested allies, so that the public effectively knows little of events at sea, past or present. Elsewhere, events to mark the ‘US Navy 250’ had shades of the British Spithead Naval Review of 1897, when lines of tired irrelevant warships were exposed for what they are by a display of new technology such as Turbinia,19 the world’s first steam turbine ship whose speed made other ships of the era look like a horse and cart compared to that of the NASA’s Space Shuttle heading to orbit. More importantly, how many Americans actually saw the display of naval power on the eastern US seaboard?20 Few. An impressive show to the US Commander-in-Chief, but the future of US sea power lies in Congress’ hands, not his.

A Service distant and remote to most humans means that bringing the Navy to the people and decisionmakers in a modernised fashion isn’t optional; it’s a must.

This isn’t theory: beyond those already mentioned, it was playing on the minds of previous British and American naval and marine officers in the 20th century. Great historians, commentators, thinkers, and strategists, such as Corbett and USN Captain Alfred T Mahan (1840-1914), were among them. Call them wrong if you believe that, but it’s clear that the approaches of recent decades to educate and communicate are not working. However, few could see the toxic combined effect of so many factors, more than those mentioned here, that occurred after 1945. Wiser generations analysed history to seek to understand how best to educate decisionmakers’ minds on a form of military power - naval - that was usually disconnected from the public, technically complex to teach about, and whose business, let alone achievements, is far over the horizon. A notable difference to the Army and Air Force, which have mastered their interaction with the public and have both the presence and therefore weight to reshape the image of themselves, define military history to support their own agendas, and insert themselves more into the viewfinder of the wider nation in many different ways.

But seablindness is not a mere matter of ‘literacy’21—behind seablindness is something more important: our understanding of our world and the space around it, and ultimately how our civilization works. The majority of humans do not think in these terms and are far less sensitive to the fragility of the nation, life, and dependency on logistics on Planet Ocean than previous generations. This reminds us that rampant navalism won’t singularly solve the issue, as the public’s views on what the Navy is and what it is for vary more widely than those of any other military Service. Arguably, you can’t ever beat the scale of the seablindness problem, just contain it the best you can. A helpful analogy is that astronauts will never be able to truly explain their experience in space because the majority of the human populace has no way of connecting with what they are talking about.

To reverse course from seablindness completing its journey, a journey complete when enough factors have aligned as they now appear to be, will rest on two future actions. The first is that navies must be willing to start discussing the future of defence organisation and Unified Forces, taking the lead, before world events overtake proceedings. We must all be mindful of the political rhetoric of the moment—for it comes and goes—while the Navy’s mission never ends and endures governments, but keeping in mind that being ready for war means fighting with what is available at the time. Tinkering with minor things and issues of the day, many of which are outside the control of the military, is not addressing the big defence questions of the present. The best solution to be ready for what the future holds is to ensure the forum for debate, where all Services—no silent Services permitted—can thrash out future strategy, and report honestly and sincerely to our elected officials about options ahead to address future challenges. This is the conversation that needs to take place continuously. Our defence organisation has to allow that and navies have traditionally been champions of using their voice, not being silent as has now become common place. Second, navies need to change how they communicate and start thinking wisely and boldly about the future. A clear, concise, positive, and coherent message, coupled with a realistic plan for new models of a Navy that deeply interconnects with the nation’s economy, culture, and its defence strategy, with timely responses to defence needs, will always best endless chop and change as demonstrated through mindless documents, plans, terminology, and concepts of late.

In conclusion, waking up and using voices is paramount. Embracing some proven traditions for communication is now needed, coupled with loudly rejecting any takeover of defence, which skews experience and military history to be of one Service against the others. An alternative positive plan for a high-level defence organisation—for the Navy’s ability to communicate and educate is intertwined with it—must always be at hand, rather than constant cynicism and negativity of the Naval Service and broader defence. The future of navies, let alone strategy, and warfare may very well depend on the future steps taken with the next iteration of defence organisation—for one is now long overdue—whatever form that needs to be, it must be of one united from seabed to space.

UK Naval Review Link.

US Naval Institute Link.

If Lord Nelson were here today he would be much encouraged by the inquisitive and educated minds of the modern military. Equally, for matters concerning seapower and the Royal Navy, he would have some concerns. Nelson would have encouraged others to think and question, for he too questioned values of the past and subsequently made up his own mind. His victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, saw him abandon proven battle tactics, breaking with tradition to do something evolutionary and new, yet guided by experience. He believed there was always ways for the military to improve, that although questioning accepted values, he sought better and fairer solutions, particularly for his sailors and marines. In short, people matter, and so that if any man––or women–– wants to ‘stand tall on the quarter deck’ in pursuit of the same cause, then he would see them looked after, and equally protected from whims of the public and the variances of the political body. All of his life, he sought to improve his men and their conditions.

But Nelson was no fool, he was able to distinguish between the good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice. While he clung to some traditions like honour, patriotism, courage, and duty, he did so by instilling the same into his men so that when they went to battle they did so with pride and reserved stoic confidence, not arrogance. He taught his men, his friends, his colleagues that one could defend their country, but not surrender their ideals. That one can add to a vision of peace and have no better satisfaction in doing something about it, with honour, through the profession of arms. It was Nelson’s character, evidenced and proven over time, that resulted in those around him holding him in the highest esteem.

Today, yes, much has changed and also some other things have not. The lifeblood of civilization flows still along the sealanes and trade sets the commons for wider interactions between peoples. As Nelson reminds, and something that sets navies aside from the other services, the enemy is the asset-–the ship, submarine, aircraft etc––and the sea: once victory objectives are achieved, the humanity of sailors and marines to help save souls from the seas becomes paramount, rather then pursuing things in a bloodthirsty, pure ‘war fighting’ manner. Nelson gave his life, so that his country might be safe and the seas remain free because he believed there can be no higher service or calling than to watch over those who go about their business in peace and even more so on the great waters that make planet ocean.

There was lesson in this, it offered insight to militaries far beyond Britain, including some civilian leadership and politicians who chose to learn more about Nelson and what happens on the oceans. For in most nations, it is a choice to go to the sea and learn about it for geography remains central to the shape of politics, culture and relationships between nations One such individual was America’s First Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, who had a long standing affection for Nelson. As a former US Secretary of the Navy during the final years of World War Two, his task postwar was to enable unity of effort between the military services, hashing out questions like roles, functions, missions and how they can work better together. This was a task that no politician, no leader had faced in the United States. In the end, it claimed Forrestal’s life. But Forrestal took inspiration from the best great British and American naval individuals. he did so because he understood that the role of Defense Secretary was to throw away previous biases and instead to be an arbiter, a decision maker and the guardian of the forum to enable the advancement of the military and protect those who are engaged in the profession of arms. In his personal, now declassified correspondence, he pointed out, and in not so many words to the US Congress and the US President, that a Defense Secretary must never become involved in the minutia of the military, they respect them to pursue their daily business and ultimately never over centralize power. The temptation, a word of warning to future defence leaders from Forrestal, was that a Defense Secretary or Defence Minister must never become a tyrannical leader, brutish in method, ‘gung ho’ or a ‘King maker’. If this happened, then the ability to maintain a workable military in a democracy or republic was quickly placed in jeopardy, for the culture of organization can be the dividing line between victory and defeat. Forrestal took from the fact that Lord Nelson respected their Lordship’s in the Admiralty, whose primary task was to educate and advise the government to national strategy and the role of seapower, while letting naval personnel get on with their jobs at sea. Forrestal’s view was Defense Secretaries have other tasks to be getting on with than backseat driving professional personnel of arms, whether they be sailor, marine, solider or other wise. But Forrestal was a generation who knew the suffering of total war, while faced with new weapons of mass destruction they sought to maintain the peace best they could, navigating defence policy and strategy through choppy waters the best they could.

Today, there is a lot of talk of soldiering and ‘warfighers’ [not a word in the Oxford dictionary], while military history is often twisted, as its always been, to suit the individual who is spinning a tale. But today’s language is all ‘land talk’, reflective of a world that sees the military purely through the eyes of platoons, regiments and land battles. We know this is not the case today, from seabed to space, to cyber, warfare has changed, as it has always been doing so. An ‘this way or the high way’ or arrogance of ‘shut up and get out we know better today’ approach is misguided when history offers us insight from all domains. This should not be so easily discarded just to suit matters of the moment. Nelson would have relished this defence environment today for provided more choice, more ability, more capability to think about how to defeat his enemy because ultimately defence is about thinking wisely and acting boldly. Equally, although I will not explore here, in the final frontier, to hostile environments like the seabed, there is something to take from Nelson and the age of sail, for the ideal of thinking more wisely about strategy, tactics and the warfare echo into our contemporary debates.

Some claim true or total war is dead, others claim war is inevitable, let us hope the former is still what many aspire for in an era where the pain of the generation fighting in Nelson’s time or over the 20th century has become disconnected from the mindset of today’s leaders and young people. To use an analogy, we must be all mindful of the those who think they are going to get into fight, so walk into the bar, and start that fight: a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if we can take anything from Nelson’s navy, it is to push back against warmongering. Instead approach it from the ethos that the task of our navies today is to keep war dead. They must do so from a position of strategic strength and advantage but only if necessary, ready and able defend their nation and global lifelines against aggression, for that is human nature in all generations.

It is generally accepted that the founding of England’s Royal Navy marked the starting point of military power at sea. Although England had a form of naval or maritime power and forces prior to King Henry VIII creating the ‘Council of Marine’ in 1546, which is commonly referred to later as the Admiralty, what is essential is that it made the future pathway for establishing standards and professionalism. In short, we combine professionalism with organisation as the founding principle of a military service.

Following this accepted fact that has been in place for centuries, the US Department of the Navy, established on April 30, 1798, would continue to function in the same role in the story of American naval power, marking 227 years of service of the US Navy that we understand in its base form today. Although there is some wiggle room in this, as the US Navy was established on March 27, 1794, it is older; yet, the Department of Navy was not created by Congress until a few years later. Historians would counter that there is little difference between the revolutionary naval forces and the Continental Navy, and the US Navy of today. The fact that America did not sustain its naval force (1775-1785), and it had to be renewed in the period in which the creation of a Navy Department in the 1790s, instead makes the point that the US Navy of today and its forebear is no different from English maritime forces being distinct from the Royal Navy under King Henry VIII.

Either way, this nuance is important for many of today’s naval and sea powers, great and small, who have evolved with the times serving based on the geographical realities of which nation owns them. America is no different. For example, islands will always use seapower differently than that of great continental powers, even one like the US, which is flanked by two oceans; that mass of land can still undermine the best arguments of American naval power, rendering them subservient to concepts that erode the efficacy of sea power and maritime strategy.

American naval power, reaching its zenith during the Second World War, was a notable anomaly in reality, and demand forced America into action rather than an active choice. It stands distinctly alone compared to other periods in the history of the US Navy, a path that other navies––which are not islands––, such as European navies, have taken. By the end of 1945, America’s navy was viewed as coming of age. Its success in the Pacific theatre of World War Two was immortalised. In my 2021 PhD thesis and forthcoming title, I argued that this was ‘America’s Campaign of Trafalgar.’ It began with the Battle of Midway in 1942 and continued through to the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. These victories, including that of the US Marine Corps, became central to the US Navy’s self-confidence and its place in the broader national identity as the navy looked to establish a prominent role in postwar national defence.

Nevertheless, it was short-lived, as debates over the US Navy and defense organization took place post-war. In Washington, D.C., the politics of defence, with deep roots, made it appear that by 1946, the US Navy had done very little in wartime. In reality, the aspiration of many Americans and US naval personnel to surpass the Royal Navy had ended in disaster as they turned their backs on what they should never have lost sight of, which was the vulnerability of a naval power answering to a continental country where the minds of land-thinkers dominate. This struggle has not changed since, and in 2025 only deepened.

Either way, at 250 years of America’s military power at sea, it is a choice to go to sea, something that many Americans and those who support US naval power often forget. A choice can also turn into a choice not to. That should be the message at this juncture.

How defence is organised is fundamental in enabling or hindering national policy and strategy in peace and wartime. Equally, the organisation of defence impacts command and control of military forces, the effectiveness of civil-military relations, and more. With a political rebrand of the US ‘Department of Defense’ to ‘Department of War’ taking place, Dr James WE Smith explores some points on defence organisation by reflecting on his PhD completed at King’s in 2021.

Today, monolithic-sized defence departments are accepted without question as part of the bureaucratic machinery of government. Scholars have researched defence policy, civil-military relations, and a range of other high-level topics related to national defence and security, such as strategy and doctrine. In the background has been the overarching organisation of defence for centuries. Our understanding of the history of defence organisation has lacked serious study, often limited to short official histories, and resultingly misunderstood. In recent decades, defence reorganisation has haphazardly reappeared on the agendas of governments, often as a subsect of broader ‘defence reform’. This is a marked changed from the decades after the Second World War as it was one of the leading matters in defence debate in Britain and the United States.

Defence organisation in the UK and US today operates in a form of ‘unified defence’. This system emerged during the 1940s to 1960s, replacing standalone executive government departments that represented the affairs of their respective military services, such as the Admiralty for the Royal Navy in Britain or the War Department for the US Army in America. Reorganisation was far from a simple process in either country, as defence organisation is all-encompassing. Official accounts of the main period of unification itself, 1941-1960, and subsequent changes, as well as other political, military, budgetary, and legal debates over the 20th century, have often obscured truth and historical facts. Many of the promises that unified defence would solve issues have fallen short, created new problems while addressing others. Critically, both nations failed to transfer useful institutional knowledge and practical corporate memory into the contemporary defence setup. The fact that defence organisational reform continues to this day, only completing plans from decades ago, long overdue scrutiny and assessment of relevance, or making endless modifications, proves the point that constant turmoil is tantamount to chaos. Ultimately, there are significant flaws in our understanding and approach to what defence organisation is and what it is for.

For some, defence organisation is a struggle between military service agendas and budgets. In contrast, others are concerned with the decentralisation and centralisation of power, command, and control. These chop and change with the times they serve, as they should. However, a myth persists at the heart of political and military minds when it comes to defence: the notion that a perfect defence organisation exists. The reality is that the concept of an organisational utopia is a dangerous one but not a new on; political minds and military service ideologues have been vying for centuries, battling and arguing over what may and may not work in nations that can pick and choose their national strategy, such as America. A helpful analogy could be that some believe in a ‘holy grail’ for defence organisations when none existed, while others sought the dominance of one military service over another. These debates vary depending on the geography of the land a nation calls its home, for continental countries like the United States can choose their strategies, modify their policies, and adapt doctrines. By comparison, island nations such as Britain have no choice in their national strategic doctrine, which is why their defence organisation has remained consistent for centuries, as it serves a singular purpose: the national strategy right for an island. Subsequently with the creation of the UK Ministry of Defence, British defence strategy betrayed centuries of national strategic experience––with maritime at its core––as defence organisation was fundamentally changed. Geography, culture, and ways of Government matter because they shape how the higher organisation of defence has developed, including the scope of how command and control interfaces with political power and civilian oversight over decades, if not centuries. Either way, the long history of defence organisation spans further back than the age of America itself, demonstrating perils and pitfalls, with dangerous tightrope lines that impact victory and defeat nationally or operationally. For all the criticism defence organisation receives, it also gets a lot right. Nevertheless, many ignore the fact that defence organisation is not static question or answer type situation with a defined endpoint. Instead, it is a living evolving process, requiring careful consideration and routine revaluation not just to improve on what has gone before but avoid undermining military operations and confidence in civilian and military leadership.

It must neither be forgotten or ignored that defence organisations answer to political and financial authority. Broadly, defence has always been vulnerable to whims, political cycles, and short-termism, among other factors. These factors and influences combined can lead to a perilous situation fraught with rabbit holes and traps, which can undermine the very best strategies and militaries, with plenty of examples to pick from the days of classical Rome and Greece, the execution of the First World War, to the struggles in conflicts after the Second World War like America’s ‘Vietnam War’. The reality is that scars from past defence organisational debates and reforms have left a bitter taste in the minds of politicians and militaries on both sides of the Atlantic. The result is that debate on defence organisation has become less robust, for fear of stoking political fires and inflaming military rivalries, fostering misplaced concepts, and enabling false accusations, all of which have undermined the opportunity to reflect deeply on defence organisation and its many parts. Stagnation has set in. The concept of an organisational utopia is a dangerous one, nor a new one, for it is more often than the case been that it has been used as a scapegoat to cover up questions that few want to answer such as operational failure and higher loss of life than expected. Fewer are equipped to address and even less that have a plan to answer probing questions, or may want to avoid scrutiny of failure, incompetency and inadequacies in leadership, planning, capabilities, policy and more try to blame organisation. This may have been a factor that led to the US Presidential Executive Order on 5 Sept 2025, ‘Restoring the United States Department of War’

The debate about this Executive Order has exposed many of the points mentioned above. Claims of restoring ‘military heritage’ overlook that, in America, the Department of War and the Department of the Navy were established as equals in 1789, as defined by the US Constitution, with the primacy of civilian control over the military. The Department of War was never dominant and the greatest champion of what would become the US Army, General George Washington (1732-1799), recognised along with the emerging nation the importance of sea power and military success was impossible without it, ultimately leading to the twin Department’s of War and Navy for no land force can [act] decisively unless it is accompanied by maritime superiority. In short, a series of legislative processes following the Second World War, driven by debates over unification and advocacy for an independent air force, ultimately led to the establishment of the Department of Defense by 1949. These plans were forged by a generation of men and women wanting to defend America’s interests, haunted by the experience of total war. Notably, a driving factor in creating the Department of Defense was the paranoia of pro-land force civilians and army officers who sought to conceal their relatively poor performance compared to the US Navy prior to 1941 and wanted to use organisation as a scapegoat for various issues. The assertion by some political figures that the notion of a singular Department of War for all defence is a historical fact, when it is not, raises an urgent question for the US Congress to explore current developments in defence organisation. It should not shirk its Constitutional responsibility to do so nor avoid executing its authority over defence organisation and expenditure, no matter the political turmoil that ensues. If a misguided and misinformed agenda or policy overrides a common commitment to national defence, then accountability must follow swiftly. This is no different in the UK, where defence reformists are implementing a tired and haphazard plan, as envisioned by the late Lord Mountbatten (1900-1979) which has since been exposed as flawed. The British parliament would find it a useful exercise to probe defence reform and reorganisation to assess the evidence behind current MoD plans for reform.

The generation that built unified defence was about aiming for peace but being ready for war, something enabled by a department of equal services, pulling together as one. This is far beyond a simple, unnuanced ‘offence versus defensive’ take and out of step with the fact that defence departments have engaged in offensive operations untold times since 1947. A narrow view of ‘offence’ and ‘defence’ overlooks the very fabric of centuries of military experience. Today, this is not a chess game of Roman and Greek combatants, Prussian land warfare tactics, nor quaint American militia and regiments or a sports game of teams on ‘offence’ and ‘defence’. Instead defence and security today is a complex interweaving of seabed to space, spanning strategic, operational and tactical advantage at sea, air dominance, space control, intelligence, AI and cyber war at the speed of light. And underlying all this are technological terrors that with one false move, one poor investment of taxpayers money or falling behind on strength of training, education, innovation and more, can make the difference between peace and war, victory and defeat. While the West tinkers with defence organisational irrelevancies, just as it did at times during the early Cold War – sufficiently distracting it to benefit Soviet Union space and naval power – today, other nations who seek to assert influence and to control and expand their military power won’t be wasting time and money on rebrands and are instead laser focused on the tasks that matter.

Ultimately, we must all remember that the primary task of any national defence establishment or organisation is to implement policy and execute national defence strategy. This is achieved by the cohesion of all the parts, allowing them to be brought together to achieve aims, objectives and strategy, as well as the baseline defence of the nation and its interests. This can only be achieved by avoiding false narratives, as the analysis of experience is paramount; otherwise, strategy and policy-making are on questionable grounds. The past should not dictate the future. But it can provide insight and guidance to contribute to an ethos that embraces the evolution of learning to keep moving forward. Instead of rebrands, decision-makers should be thinking about the next iteration of defence organisation and not missing the opportunity. No question or law should be ‘off the table’ for revisiting, such as:

How many military services and departments? How can financial controls be improved? Does command and control work effectively? Are we adapting to the pace of technological change efficiently? Does recruitment and retention align with modern ways of living? Is training and education working as a constant feedback loop from experience back into the classroom?

And so on. Alternatively, if old names and titles of departments are to be used literally and that results in domain-centric thinking such as land ruling, in an era where the lines between the services’ capabilities, missions and roles blur to the grey, there may be an argument to merge naval and marine forces with air forces, space forces and more under a common service, uniform and command.

Defence organisational reform is akin to Pandora’s box; in it lie perils and pitfalls, often with deep historical roots and contemporary challenges. The recent American Executive Order, although driven by questionable attitudes and nebulous claims, raises the long-overdue question of defence reform, and in it lies a useful opportunity. Yet, careful thought and consideration must always be given to reform, as it should not distract or undermine operations, plans, and other aspects of current defence and security.

In conclusion, defence organisation is not a museum, nor must it be viewed as an opportunity to be tourists in nostalgia. Defence organisation must keep moving forward based on the best experiences of the past yet remain responsive to the times it serves.

With thanks to King’s College London, who wanted to highlight the work completed when I was a PhD student.

Original: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/the-future-of-defence-organisation-resurfaces , 6 Oct 2025.

Delighted a book on one of my mentors will be published shortly (October 2025, Pen and Sword Books UK). It was an honour to aid the author on this project and my remarks are contained within and on the jacket along with Professor Andrew Lambert’s within.

The contribution of Commodore Michael Clapp has been overlooked when compared with the other senior Falklands commanders and the time is ripe to redress the balance. Despite commanding the Amphibious Task Group and being responsible for Operation Sutton, the successful San Carlos landing, Clapp was overlooked for promotion and instead received several snubs including not being allowed a seat at the top tables of public events celebrating this stunning victory.

Sadly, his naval superiors showed no interest in learning the amphibious lessons, and others, of the war preferring to focus on supporting the British army in a potential conflict with the Soviet Union in Europe. Michael Clapp’s career has illustrated many of the corrosive effects of inter-service rivalry and the author asks if the military establishment has now lost interest in amphibious operations in their purest form.

This highly readable and controversial work covers Clapp’s distinguished wider career which included active service in Korea, the Cyprus Emergency and the Indonesia-Malayan confrontation where he gained a reputation for decisive action. He was an observer and squadron commander in the Fleet Air Arm; took command of several warships and served in staff posts, playing a crucial role in the introduction of the famous Sea Harrier V/STOL strike aircraft before his appointment as Commodore Amphibious Warfare.

I am grateful to Dr Cumming’s and Micheal for the use of my work in the description and context of Micheal’s career. Some examples are included below:

I spent fifteen years studying the relationship between organisation and the development, understanding and execution of strategy for national defence. It culminated in a PhD in ‘War and Strategic Studies’ from King’s College London, Department of War Studies. The PhD was titled: ‘Deconstructing the Seapower State: Britain, America and Defence Unification.’ That study included an entirely new analysis of the history of defence unification, the process by which the U.S. Department of Defense and U.K. Ministry of Defence were created. It was the first comprehensive narrative of defence unification, which went far beyond official accounts by utilising new, original documentary evidence, oral history, miles of declassified material, and more.

Having stated my credentials, this note reflects on the recent discussions in the United States regarding the renaming of the U.S. Department of Defense to the ‘Department of War’. I wish to point out, in brief, some salient points:

• A significant force in the creation of a ‘Department of Defense’ was driven by the U.S. Army, which, in partnership with vocal advocates for an independent air force, believed that a unified defence department would be more effective in addressing their needs.

• The U.S. Army, paranoid about its relatively poor performance and in particular civilian and military leadership in the Department of War—the bureaucratic control and command hub of the army––in the latter 19^th and early 20^th century, unlike the U.S. Navy, sought organisational reform as a way to explain away, rather than address fundamental issues it had.

• The United States Navy was not represented in the Department of War; it had its own command and control in the form of the Department of the Navy prior to unification.

• Unified defence was also partly driven by the experience of the Second World War and rapidly changing post-war circumstances. Crucially, lessons and insights from wartime, such as the collaboration between the services, were a key consideration in the creation of legal acts that culminated in the establishment of the new Department of Defense. The head of the U.S. Navy summarised to Congress: “unity of effort”, in short, matters like combined operations were vital to carry forward in a new organisational setup.

• The Pentagon was initially designed to house the Department of War, before it became the Department of Defense. The U.S. Department of the Navy was reluctant to relocate to the Pentagon, as it would reduce the physical distance, oversight, and connection with the branches of the U.S. Government.

• There were decades of debate and legal processes put in place to attempt to make defence work more effectively and efficiently in the defence of the United States, which could only take form within a unified department where all military services were considered ‘equal’.

• The eventual title, ‘Department of Defense’ (1949), represented the mindset of a wartime generation, who, considering the new technological age, believed that efforts to fight for peace were vital, where lawmakers, military and citizens alike supported the title of the new department, which clearly sent the message of ‘peace by strength in our common defense of home’.

• The U.S. Navy only supported unified defence after effectively campaigning for decades on the importance of equal Departments within a unified Department of Defense. They were later supported by U.S. Air Force who felt with the navy that any move, such as when former army General President Eisenhower attempted in the 1950s to change unified defence into an army approach in a revised ‘Department of War’ dominated organisation, would be devastating for effectiveness and efficiency. The need of a forum between the services to be able to execute their missions, roles and tasks was and is prime. The navy's view, in an effort to reduce toxic interservice rivalry, was that it was right to protect against one service overpowering or overshadowing another and equally too risky for the nation to have ‘blindness’ to strategic and tactical options of executing ‘war and peace’. Something that such ‘blindness’ would also hinder critical timely decision-making in the highest offices. Congress agreed by 1960.

In effect, calling the Department of Defense, ‘the Department of War’ could be interpreted as a retrograde step. One that is antithetical to the spirit, intent and law of unified defense, one bound Constitutionally to an army and navy, hand in hand. Rejecting over seventy years of organisational defense reform––not perfect with much right and wrong, bound up in law that would need to reversed or changed only by Congress––and equally operational experience before and during the DoD’s existence, would be a significant misstep in defence of the nation.

In short, although as innocent as some may consider a name change, the choice to call it ‘Department of Defense’ was because behind it was wisdom to send the message of effort of equal military services working together, than an image that any one service is more important than another. This also opens interesting questions for the US Congress, and in some legal circles may feel that lawyers are reneging on previous agreements one that could support an independent navy or maritime department of the US Federal government.

Energy and effort should be directed to useful defence reform. Future debate should explore fundamental questions, rooted in sound policy and strategy, where the next steps in the journey of unified defence can take place. Reverting to a situation that, albeit only ‘sounds’ like one service dominating defense, is ignorant of the seabed to space defense of the 21^st century. Notably, a world which did not exist when the Department of War was founded as a free-standing executive branch of the U.S Government.

Please look out for extended outputs on this topic in the near future.

Please read the original article as published on July 22, 2025 on the Centre of Maritime Strategy webpages here:

https://centerformaritimestrategy.org/publications/navies-are-our-guide-for-space-strategy/

Space is an ocean—not metaphorically, but conceptually and operationally. The cosmic frontier has always been militarised but experience in it remains limited compared to other domains like the land and sea. Although the study of orbit and outer space, along with aspirations to explore and use it were formulated long ago in tandem with human exploration of Planet Earth and the changing face of warfare, that lack of experience has led to questions on what models, if any, could be used to guide the future use of space, particularly for defence. Yet, the most applicable––navies and maritime strategy––was often rejected in favour of more tactically minded land-based doctrine, which now, as space has become more complex and competitive, is running out of headroom to be able to resolve these issues. Debates covering topics such as space strategy and space warfare have spiralled into an abyss of guesswork, theory, assumptions and a sprinkling of sensationalism, in which history warns us that such approaches are a dangerous path to navigate.

The term ‘ocean’ conjures the image not only the Earth’s interconnected body of salt water, covering approximately 72 percent of the planet’s surface, but also of any vast and seemingly limitless expanse. From antiquity, human societies have perceived a profound connection between the seas and outer space. Post-Second World War interest in space was driven by the paranoia and division that sprang forth from world-destroying inventions like the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Space is interweaved with defence, relations between nations and cultures and the progress of our civilisation in areas such as science and trade long before the rocket or aircraft. During the age of exploration, navigators turned to the stars as guideposts across the unknown maritime expanse. Science fiction writers past and present—serving as speculative architects of the future—invoked the term “ocean space” to describe the cosmos, envisioning its traversal by “space ships”. Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991), the creator of Star Trek, accurately captured this maritime sensibility by structuring the Starship Enterprise and ‘Starfleet’ as a naval vessel and organisation in both hierarchy and function.1 He was neither the first nor the last to do so and it cannot be overlooked that in the analysis of science fiction, a naval philosophy dwarfs any other.

However, in the real world it is land-based air forces—not navies—that have taken the lead in space on behalf of national governments, setting the prevailing conventions along land-based air power models and air force conventions rather than naval and maritime ones with often hostility to joint-thinking. The term ‘aeronautical’, a reminder of the common connection between air and nautical traditions has often been ditched by the most ardent ideologically driven air power theorists. Meanwhile, the high operational tempo of navies since the end of the Second World War, and pressing questions on the future influence of seapower, has meant that navies could not be as focused on space operations as they should have been. Sometimes, naval public relations devalued their relationship with space and science, a long-standing connection, while missing its potency to educate about navies.

While aerospace forces have an impressive track record in space, leaving the domain entirely to air force operatives was not the right call across operations, policy and doctrine. The reality is that in the long run particularly as closer integration of seabed through space domains is needed, space will require broad input operationally but also how we think about its influence and use rather than any single dominating viewpoint. This has become more apparent as a problem as the intensity of civilian and military events in space has picked up pace. Probing debates public and professional about space power and space warfare shows a trend that leads to an uncomfortable reality: much of policy and doctrine by national governments sits predominately on ideas rooted in little more than guesswork and assumption. This is dangerous and can mean there can be no other option to look elsewhere to models that provide useful insight, such as maritime strategy and naval operations.

For anyone seriously considering these issues and the integration of all domains—from the seabed to space and digital—into a cohesive whole––a national strategy––there should be concern that nations often place trust in theories that lack substantial experience to support them. To some degree, this is not a unique situation. Land and the seas have gathered operational experience before great minds could analyse that experience and turn it into understanding or educational materials for the military student or policymaker alike. Space is somewhat following this trend but does not have the deep reserve pools of experience or experimentation outside the bounds of the status quo because it had to be made useful as a domain and operationalized quickly. By contrast, land and sea warfare had centuries—if not millennia—to evolve both in terms of practice and theory. As a result, our understanding of how space works as a domain is less robust than other domains.

Great theorists like Prussian army officer Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) and British naval historian and strategist Sir Julian Corbett (1854-1922) had more material to work with. They investigated and explored interconnected experiences, often free from the pressure of bias, operational schisms, and organisational myopias. This allowed them to create the very best guides to the past and also spark living debates on future strategy and doctrine. Similarly, Corbett would have warned that guesswork and assumptions are tantamount to chaos, and the chance of defeat grows with them. However, to think about these questions in a more strategic studies sense must be done free of influences that have various pressures on them, such as political or budgetary. Today, pressures are putting thought on defence space strategy—or more broadly, space strategy—on the back foot. The environment of today does not provide the luxury of time or thought that minds like Corbett and Clausewitz had.

That is not to say that the body of thought on space strategy has not vastly improved; increased research and publications show green shoots for the future. However, they do not match the pace at which activity in space is developing, technologically or astropolitically. This risks placing many nations at a disadvantage. The United States and its allies should not be swept into a wholly technological argument that some “space doctrinists” put forward, where the only solution to them is endless investment in equipment and the certainty of warfare. Instead, strategic thought is superior on how to manage the evolving situation in space wisely. The tough lesson in all of this is that without the intellectual backing underpinned by a broad debate, the ability to use space capabilities wisely can effectively wipe out any advantage that technology may have over a competitor.

Space, like the oceans, requires an intellectual strategic approach more akin to a game of chess. This is far superior to the blunt trauma approach of the land-based air power mafia theorists who have dominated strategic thinking since 1945 and believe that nations could bomb their way out of every foreign policy problem. History has discredited their approach. You could equally be as critical of “space warfare-ists”, “navalists”, “air power purists” and a host of other examples. This codifies the fact that a universal trend in nations is to slide away from thinking strategically, toward a pattern of mind that is less mature, rigid, and short-term. This has long been a factor in the use of space for warfare, and ultimately political aims. The fact that thought on space has predominantly been reflective of a tactical mindset, not a strategic one, should hardly be a surprise. The tactical mindset provides refuge for those who have operational responsibility to make things work, all of which serve the bigger machine of organised defence. A byproduct of the defence unification process—the creation of Defence Departments as we know them—has seen strategy devalued, which has filtered down over the decades to create organisational cultures to think more tactically, more akin to land warfare than something broader: a position diametrically opposite to the maritime mind. A true “maritime mind” holds that the term “maritime” connotes the broad spectrum and many interrelationships of interests regarding the oceans of the world such as politics, economics, science, technology, exploration, industry, trade, foreign relations, communications, law, and culture. This is little different to what is happening in space.

You can see the risk of rushing thought and thinking less strategically in the soundbites of the last decade, certainly as bureaucratic and political pressure to develop yet another armed force of the U.S. military, ––the U.S. Space Force––has taken grip. Whether creating Space Force was right or wrong will not be debated here but setting it into context is important for organisational culture shapes how it thinks, in this case now with heavily influences of the U.S. Air Force. Firstly, creating another military service was antithetical to the principal of defence unification which in base form sought closer relations between services. Secondly, the operational military lessons from the U.S. and U.K. and its allies of the first bloody half of the 20^th century pointed towards integration of services, then further division. Thirdly the advice of organisations such as National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics (NACA, 1915-1958), U.S. Navy and Royal Navy, warning that a singular model for space could lead to difficulties in funding and operations was ignored. In fact, the debate over the possible use of space strategically was a naval conversation, not an air force or army one, and it occurred over a decade prior to the start of the first space race.2 That limited debate happened at a service level on a course of action, reflected by the presumption of many that space was an air force function, should have been a warning in itself. If that debate could not be resolved or the allocation of responsibility for space placed under the Navy Department, the unified defence system, if probably working, should have forced Space Force into a distinct service in its own right. This was to safeguard space and to highlight its importance particularly from predatory tactics of service departments to bolster their budgets by grabbing missions, as had been seen countless times before during debates on defense organization. Sadly, the political motivation and financial requirements, aligned with other factors scuttled having a useful reflective period on space power and forces, which has led to this point where there are more questions than answers.

Statements such as “space is the ultimate high ground”3 simply reflect the organisational myopia in which that doctrine was created. Anyone who thinks space is ground, or that it has the high advantage, seemingly doesn’t understand physics, let alone that there is no “up or down” or “ground to hold” for that advantage. This becomes even more of a problem beyond orbit due to the vastness of space and the potential mobility of an aggressor. If anything, forcing an enemy to battle is more akin to the age of sail naval battles of old, with ships chasing one another across the oceans. An apt analogy would be as Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) did in the Campaign of Trafalgar 1804/1805, which saw the British fleet corner the enemy for warfare, in which to gain strategic advantage for England, over the total annihilation of the enemy’s forces. The same could be said about the Battle of Jutland in 1916 between the Royal Navy and Imperial German Navy, whereas the destruction of Germany’s High Sea Fleet was irrelevant as long as the fleet couldn’t threaten the Royal Navy’s sea control across the globe which was vital to Britain’s survival and victory. Ultimately, the prevailing rhetoric by some is that space is the “decisive domain”4clearly has little grasp or is miseducated about the thousand years of military history in which false prophets have made numerous claims, often all weakened from their original overpromise.

As the United States faces a new epoch in space, it will require an intellectual approach to maintain an advantage rather than one of dominance. This space era is not defined by the false security of the post-Cold War era were science and exploration took to the fore, but one of exploitation, commercial competition, and potential conflict. Washington needs a coherent philosophical framework suited to the nature of the orbital domain which cannot nor should not be considered separate from the other domains. Some have argued that the best paradigm is inherently naval in origin and orientation. While this is true in many regards to the best outcome for future projection in space, particularly beyond orbit, a maritime philosophy of space, one that draws further upon nautical5 principles, institutions, and operational practices, would enable greater comprehensive integration of terrestrial, maritime, and extraterrestrial activity. Under such a framework, space operations would be conceived not as “missions” but as sustained operations similar to naval and maritime ones that have in reality gone on unendingly in some cases for decades if not centuries. This emphasis would shift from individualistic, land-based, inspired approaches to spaceflight toward collaborative systems reflective of both naval and air traditions, prioritising cohesion, continuity, and strategic reach.

Crucially, it is now more vital to treat space not as a discrete or exceptional environment, but as part of a continuous operational spectrum extending from the seabed to orbital altitudes and beyond—a multidimensional theater in which human presence, mobility, adaptability, and sustainability must be assured over extended periods. Adopting a maritime strategic posture is not merely rhetorical. The U.S. Navy’s and once Royal Navy’s, enduring imperative to ‘command the seas’ is ultimately grounded in its ability to shape outcomes ashore. The naval tradition of joint operations—particularly in concert with the Marine Corps and the Army—demonstrates a longstanding capacity to coordinate integrated actions across the domains of land, sea, and air. Arguably, expeditionary and special forces operations competencies embedded within a maritime mindset offer a logical model for sustained space deployments, applicable for both peacetime presence and potential conflict scenarios. In this light, space operations, particularly those concerned with security and deterrence, should be approached with a similarly holistic mindset.

By considering space through the lens of a maritime philosophy, it provides the safeguard against the marginalization of critical space functions to all services, ensuring they remain integral within broader operational concepts rather than becoming siloed or deprioritized as defence budgets remain under scrutiny and the United States sees the gap between wishes and priorities widen.

Space is not a mere extension of any one domain. It is best understood as an oceanic expanse, complex, vast, and strategically vital in its own right and locally to Earth. As in oceans, it is navies that decide outcomes when it comes to peace and war. If we are to genuinely continue to claim responsibility for the process of evolving strategy in the “western tradition”, it is not a strategy for “space”, “air”, “land”, “sea” and “digital”, but quite literally a national strategy of “seabed to space”.

Dr. James W.E. Smith is the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow at King’s College London. In 2021, James completed a 15-year study examining the relationship between the higher organisation of defence and national strategy-making in the U.K. and the U.S. As a result of that work, James was additionally commissioned to explore the future of defence and civilian space strategy by the British Academy, King’s College London and working with support from civilian space agencies and various navies from around the globe.

In the August 2025 edition of Warships International Fleet Review, (on sale in e-version and print in the UK & abroad after 18 July 2025) I analyse the recently published UK 2025 Defence Review document. I continue to advance the argument 'strategy is dead' and defence organisation isn't working

The full article is available in print and e-print. The publishers website is:

https://warshipsifr.com/

Please support publishing where and when you can.

WHO DO DEFENCE REVIEWS REALLY SERVE?

In the context of British governmental and military history, defence reviews are an anomaly. Looking more broadly and with objective reality at defence reviews since the creation of the Ministry of Defence in 1964, they have rarely seen their plans delivered, regularly unfunded and ultimately never come to fruition. That British defence reviews seldom work is nothing new; the reviews of 1966, 1981, and 2010 still cast long shadows, the latter crippling defence and foreign policy options for Britain to respond to a hostile world to this very day. Defence reviews, at their core, are an import to defence, along with other things, from an American continental model of defence organisation: alien in substance and near impossible to make work in an island like Britain. Hence, endless defence reviews and organisational changes demonstrate an organisation in constant flux whose plans are exposed to be pointless, and the fact other factors often defeat those plans demonstrates it to be neither an effective nor efficient organisation.

The 2025 defence review could have easily hit the shredder on publication, literal taxpayer-funded waste. At 140 pages in length, it was a brochure, wish list, and hope list, full of aspirations, which, in defence, are about as good as wearing tin foil on your head in a nuclear blast. Equipment changes like the reduction in naval and maritime assets were made during the review, and much of the equipment programme remains yet to be confirmed, an immediate knock to the creditability of the document. Elsewhere, funding remains elusive, even with contradictory messages between government departments. Those with a basic understanding of finances can see the vast gap between wants and reality where even a modest uplift, considering inflation, and disasters like the strategic and fiscal cost of the Chagos deal, from 2.5% through to 3.5% GDP on defence couldn’t deliver what the review or world affairs require. That hard, transparent, honest talk on equipment and finances is absent in a review undermines the point of the whole exercise because if the ‘workings’ cannot be shown, then any remaining credibility is destroyed. Parliamentary records evidence how the process used to work in the early MoD and service ministry era––when the military services and the service chiefs rightfully had greater influence and could speak without fear of persecution by rivals or risk of political revenge––with far greater transparency and, ironically, better coordination with the Treasury and cross-government.

Behind the political pantomime is something more concerning and has plagued Britain for too long: the illusion of Europe or the World. Britain once knew it had to perform great power foreign policy on middling power budgets and tight resources. This requires strategy, something Britain does not have. That dealing with the attack on national maritime lifelines in the Red Sea swiftly and decisively, or being able to contribute to deterring tensions with China, seemingly cast to one side, seems fundamentally naive. If government forgets the basics of islands along with that major economic shock that would come from conflict with China, it will line up issues potentially far worse than the bloody half of the 20th century.

This raises a more profound concern: to understand what it means to be Britain is to understand the fragile intelligent balance between resources, finances and assets of defence. Our forebears knew this, a strategic doctrine developed over centuries, from the defence of England by King Henry VIII in the Solent through to the Battle of the Atlantic. You cannot hide in an island nation and hope regional matters can contain world events or that purely technological advantage will save the day. Since at least the battle of Agincourt in 1415, there have been claims of ultimate weapons and enablers such as nuclear, cyber, space, drones, hypersonic and now Artificial Intelligence (AI), will change warfare. Yet, we still find young men shooting across trenches at one another, such as in Ukraine. Beware of false prophets and misleading directions as tempting as they are, driven by often nebulous and sometimes military service and industry interests, while experience trumps it all.

The review is a blast from the past, and one can wonder why it took so long and exactly what evidence was given; it’s not truly forward-thinking nor grounded in strategic experience. Pointlessly withdrawing the Royal Navy to the North Atlantic when it has global capability, no matter the glitzy words used, the idea of an Army on the Rhine (or Ukraine) and the RAF as ‘defender of the realm’ and that ‘NATO’ is the ‘be all’ clearly shows government advisors have become part of the wallpaper in Whitehall and disconnected from the modern world, let alone the population of Britain, and they need to go. The RN’s mission is presented as a priority, yet priorities are not necessities; meanwhile, the British Army seems as lost as it’s ever been, and the RAF continues to peddle it’s the precious child that defends the realm––a lie circulated since at least 1945––and therefore cannot be touched.

In conclusion, thinking in NATO alone terms is lazy; it’s easy, and why it was chosen because defence reviews serve neat political cycles and soundbites to make it look like the government is doing something and the MoD was created to be an outpost of continental thinking in a globally vulnerable maritime nation where the illusion of options is the most dangerous of all. European countries need support to develop their own solutions focusing on what they are good at and what an adversary to the east fears most, good land and air assets. In contrast, Britain must return to its role on a global, national strategy with maritime at its core.

The 2025 defence review is a reminder that the MoD, as is, isn’t just right for Britain, nor is it following a sound model, but because at the root of all of this is a presumption that war and conflict will fit the MoD and ultimately treasury’s timetable—yet time and again, to this very day, that has not been the case throughout history. Nations have to fight with what they have at the time, which means Britain operates with what it has at the time the call comes and right now, let alone in the future, that’s paper thin both in intellect, substance and assets. If anyone can say defence is in good shape, the reality is far grimmer: Cabinet, Parliament and Whitehall do not understand defence, and that shouldn’t just concern you; it should keep you awake at night in a darkening world which is interconnected, global and from seabed to space. Ultimately, another defence review fails because it serves political power and treasury officials, not an honest discussion on the protection of the British people and their interests.

Navies and Seapower have never been more capable, with scope and reach enabled by unparalleled technological advancement from the seabed to space. Still, after centuries of their existence, understanding what navies are for and why they exist is arguably at an all-time low, particularly for Britain’s Royal Navy. Dr James WE Smith explores one element of his work as the Laughton-Research Corbett Research Fellow, supported by King’s College London and the British Academy.

It was not long after great armies fought over continental Europe, Africa and beyond, defending lands and building Empires in the classical period, that the sea on the horizon emerged as the final frontier which could unlock strategic or tactical advantage over enemy or rival nations. The bravery of what today seems rudimentary, trireme boat warfare in fact set the path––that would take over a millennium––to develop skill and mastery of sailing that eventually opened the globe through exploration and trade. Using the seas to further national goals transformed them into the commons for diplomatic relations and trade; the professionalism of navies was a step guaranteed to flow from this development. The demands of trade and diplomatic relations instigated the choice to build a navy, in whatever form chosen, by continental nations and elsewhere force island nations, like Britain, firstly in self-defence and then to maximise its far more limited power and resources to act.

Insights from history enhances government decision-making

Over the centuries, historians have studied, debated and argued about naval history and its role in nation-states. Seapower’s scope to influence events in peacetime, war and conflict, has been analysed, as has different countries’ use of naval force both at sea and to influence what happens on and over the land. Thus, island nations have no choice but to be the best at sea and invest their limited resources into maritime power. This means civilian and military activity through multiple avenues on the seas, acting both defensively - to guard against invasion – and proactively – to secure trade pathways for national survival. For Britain, the result of experience was a national strategy, maritime at root and core. It was a pure product of centuries of experience from land and on the seas, which effectively positioned the Royal Navy as central to British culture, nation and defence. It earned widespread public admiration and centrality in island culture and national policy while the people’s faith in the White Ensign to deliver was rarely misplaced: such was the untarnished British naval record that home soil remained free from foreign invaders and goals beyond her shores were made possible and even realised.

Further admiration was garnered elsewhere, like the City of London who were content to pay taxes to fund naval programmes because of the need to defend trade, which was the best prosperity generator and stabiliser for national and international affairs. Today, from the seabed which cradles digital pathways to the sea’s surface on which civilisation depends for transporting physical resources and goods — which cannot be matched in the air or orbit –– this enterprise must be protected from interference and aggression. For islands like Britain, it is not a question of the freedom of the seas but that good order at sea is non-negotiable to ensure national security and global stability.

Understanding and education of seapower in Britain has been taken for granted. In the past that knowledge was not the sum of national arrogance, nor glitzy displays of public relations or manipulation of battles and myths, but by hard-won experience. This experience has formed the basis of how to think effectively and efficiently about defence strategy and policy, analysing the trends of the past, which forces leadership to face harsh realities rather than invent fanciful ideas based on ideologies. Britain, vulnerable to global events, resource-strapped and financially constrained, must think carefully about its strategic posture, which time and again seapower has delivered when the nation asked. Experience is all that can be relied on for guidance.

Fundamental change: The death of a national strategy by continental commitment

Naval power’s centrality to government and culture was not to last. The de-prioritisation of maritime culture and navies was one of the most fundamental changes in the history of the British government. After 1945, a growing problem of understanding the changing face of the Navy and its effort during the Second World War to save Britain from invasion and capitulation was accelerated by relentless inter-service rivalry, delayed technological responses to tactical warfare developments and the manipulation of the record of the war by extremist civilian and military theorists. These threads of debate became part of a greater whole which focused on the higher organisation of defence.

The creation of the Ministry of Defence in 1964 enabled a hostile contradiction to what Britain’s national strategy is, i.e. maritime, not a land posture. Since then, there has been only endless reform to British defence. This suggests, from inception, that something is rotten at the heart of the national strategy-making process. Ejecting the centrality of the Navy or, more specifically, the concept of ‘maritime strategy’ being core to policy, was akin to the start of the spread of a terminal disease. Ultimately, the abolition of Admiralty was representative of the new ethos entering British defence policy: short-termism, and the greatest betrayal of hundreds of years of experience. The message was that Britain is a continental land power perpetrated through its army and the Air Force.

Fortunately, a century ago, British historian Sir Julian Corbett studied centuries of British tactical and strategic experience, developing and educating about national strategy. His reading remains as relevant as ever but after 1914, this understanding of national strategy was degraded, if not outright ignored, only to be expelled after 1945 by lesser scholars with different agendas. They feared that applying Corbett’s approach would result in unpalatable results that would disrupt and shatter the MoD-established defence culture beyond recognition. Corbett’s analytical tools can support this point. The trend is clear: nation and governments have desperately sought better solutions to defence; one only has to look to foreign and defence policy debates in recent decades, let alone endless defence reform, to see that answers have not been forthcoming. The irony is that Britain did know how to do it; the question remains: what is blocking it from doing so again, beyond educating itself?

Britain is not Europe’s protector as is commonly believed today: the idea of a continental commitment to the European mainland is entirely manipulated and misplaced. Britain is a guarantor for the process of continental Europe seeking its own defence solutions. This is because Britain knows how to help Europe best, not on land but by sea, trade and other levers like finance: working around the edges, while European countries focus on their land forces. Britain used to know its strategy, one by sea that saw close coordination between an expeditionary army with a globally capable Royal Navy: a strategy applied from seabed to space, through submarines, aircraft carriers, marines, and the capability to support the army, striking from anywhere at any time. This approach helps Britain’s allies best, for islands have limited power and must always look to their defence first, along with a hefty dose of realism acknowledging Britain’s position in the 21st century. This would see the limited deployment of British troops, relying instead on the success of a naval strategy and our allies taking the lead on land.

Britain’s Seapower guards the freedom of us all, from seabed to space

Britain must look more closely at the future of the Royal Navy. Britain’s naval past and future result from a bespoke set of national circumstances demonstrating what national defence strategy should be. To think about the Royal Navy is to think about national strategy; they are intrinsically tied together. It is no coincidence that deprioritising one— seapower—has impacted the other and, from it, endless problems and questions flow. Reinventing the wheel and following distractions that have no basis in experience wastes taxpayers’ money and precious time that ought to be used to prepare for war and conflict; neither is ultimately in the interests of an island.

The Royal Navy cannot be a continental navy which mimics that of more powerful nations whose priorities for the use of naval power inevitably differ to Britain’s. Although there are those who would relish the approach of consigning navies to niche roles, ignorant to the broader arguments which encompass understanding of the world we live in, Britain must rebuild its navy. Navalists may hide in technocratic discussions and ignore the failure of their attempts to persuade the nation of the navy’s role, they must wake up to accept and promote the fact that seapower is the method in which to have a broader conversation about national defences, acknowledging that this may entail tough conversations within defence and for the taxpayer.

Today, Britain needs bespoke solutions for national defence rather than copycat ones of nations with different geographic boundaries and who focus on regional issues. Issues like the security of shipping may seem remote, but they impact every Briton today, and good order at sea cannot be a task handed to nations that are not sea-dependent. History has demonstrated time and again since the 1500s that islands have a different approach to defence policy and relationships with allies. Bland generic outputs, ignorant messaging and irrelevant discussions alien to national circumstance should be consigned to history. The state of the world in 2025 serves as a warning that the time is ripe to think again: effective progression means taking guidance from the past.

British seapower today and the Royal Navy aren’t any more or less relevant than they once were. The issue is that questions over its future are tied to the fate of a national strategy, often resulting in them being ignored because they lead to uncomfortable questions and the exposure of recent failures. Britain’s national strategy was ultimately devalued long ago, because politicians and the centralisation of defence organisation had little time for nuanced answers which didn’t fit political cycles or quick decisions by pressured, unelected, opaque bureaucrats. This can no longer continue in an increasingly darkening world. The future of British seapower rests, as it always has, on understanding and educating that British national strategy with maritime at its core is the best course for the nation. It is that which ultimately did and still can make island nations, great.

This paper featured on the King’s College London main website, May 06, 2025.

My most recent publication at the Center for Maritime Strategy is titled ‘Learning from the Royal Navy: Lessons for the USN on Sea Power Politics’, published on April 29, 2025, in ‘The MOC’, the center’s online journal.

In this article, I examine the historical and strategic parallels between the United States Navy (USN) and the British Royal Navy (RN). He explores how the RN's experiences in navigating political, cultural, and institutional challenges can offer valuable insights for the USN. Dr. Smith emphasises the importance of understanding the political dimensions of sea power and the necessity for the USN to adapt its strategies in light of these lessons.

This publication continues my exploration of maritime strategy, building upon previous work, such as the November 2024 ‘To Provide and Maintain a Navy Is Not Enough: Making the Case for American Sea Power Requires More’ where I argued for a more comprehensive approach to American naval strategy beyond constitutional mandates.

For those interested in a deeper dive into Dr. Smith's analysis, the full article is available on the Center for Maritime Strategy's website.

For students and researchers:

Dr. James W.E. Smith has contributed several insightful articles to ‘The MOC’, the online journal of the Center for Maritime Strategy, focusing on the interplay between historical maritime strategies and contemporary naval challenges. His works emphasize the importance of integrating historical lessons into modern naval strategy and policy.

Key Themes in Dr. Smith’s MOC Publications

1. ‘Learning from the Royal Navy: Lessons for the USN on Sea Power Politics’

In this article, Dr. Smith examines the historical and strategic parallels between the United States Navy (USN) and the British Royal Navy (RN). He explores how the RN's experiences in navigating political, cultural, and institutional challenges can offer valuable insights for the USN. Dr. Smith emphasizes the importance of understanding the political dimensions of sea power and the necessity for the USN to adapt its strategies in light of these lessons.

2. ‘To Provide and Maintain a Navy’ Is Not Enough: Making the Case for American Sea Power Requires More’

Dr. Smith argues that the constitutional mandate to "provide and maintain a Navy" is insufficient for addressing the complexities of modern maritime challenges. He advocates for a more comprehensive approach to American naval strategy that goes beyond constitutional mandates, emphasizing the need for a robust and adaptable maritime strategy informed by historical precedent and strategic foresight.

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Dr. Smith's contributions to ‘The MOC’ underscore the necessity of integrating historical maritime wisdom into current naval strategy and policy. By drawing parallels between past and present, he provides a nuanced perspective on the challenges facing modern navies and the strategic imperatives required to address them.

In the May 2025 edition of Warships International Fleet Review, (on sale in e-version and print in the UK & abroad after 22 April 2025) I consider a ‘revolution’ (a very unbritish word!) that is, ironically, needed to return the UK to the ‘British Way of War and Peace’.

The full article is available in print and e-print. The publishers website is:

https://warshipsifr.com/

Please support publishing where and when you can.

RESTORE THE BRITISH WAY OF WAR & KEEPING THE PEACE

Put the Navy-Army Team at the Centre of British National Defence

If there was ever a prize for a top ‘told you so’ moment in British defence, the opening quarter 2025 is a strong contender. The gloom of a renewed Cold War with Russia, a rising China to the east, turmoil worldwide and domestic issues have exposed how British defence is inadequate for not only for those challenges but also in undertaking key functions needed to defend an island nation. Britain is desperately exposed to global threats.

In conjunction, rightfully, the United States has told other countries to do more for their own defence. The exhaustion of world policing and the campaigns of the early 21st Century have broken the Americans, akin to how the British felt after WW2, with a desire to save the lives of services personnel rather than embarking on misguided land campaigns far away.

The current UK Government’s initial response to all the turmoil was a panicked public relations exercise to be seen as increasing defence funding and goals, all while trashing the on-going Strategic Defence Review (SDR), making it irrelevant like previous ones. Talk is cheap; walking the line another matter. Presuming the strategic disaster of the Chagos deal proceeds -with the UK paying billions of pounds to rent the Diego Garcia that it currently owns - the new funding for Defence will be like expecting a flour sieve to hold water.

There is little pleasure when the facts have been exposed so bare, for many warned this day would come. Many have drafted shopping lists of unaffordable equipment and capabilities, which are difficult to procure, presuming that they will be ready for conflict at a time of Britain’s choosing. The history of war is shows that you have to be ready to fight with what you have at the time, which may well not be when you choose. Which is why Defence is a long-term chess game rooted in a national strategy.

In Britain, lists of new equipment tend not to reflect geography, the requirements of a national strategy and cleave to the idea that Britain can be a great land power.

The harsh reality is that Britain is a small island that is financially broken, potentially unable to feed itself, barely able to manufacture anything and dependent on the flow of data and goods plus resources via seabed cables and pipelines and ships.

Any intelligent adversary who is studying history – and they are - and our texts on strategy, doctrine and warfare, knows how to strangle Britain, subsequently knocking it out of alliances. Or crippling those alliances by not allowing Britain to focus its military power at and from the sea.

Throwing mediocre amounts of money at Defence is akin to trying to plug holes in the aforementioned sieve, but won’t change the fact that it’s a sieve. Rearming Britain when, for example, it can barely make steel means that the dynamics have changed considerably even if understanding what British national strategy should be restored. The hill to climb has become a mountain - something that was avoidable. Power, oversight, leadership, direction, and action are required, which Parliament and military service chiefs used to have.

This should be a moment to look broadly at British defence and foreign policy. Both need to be wholly rebooted and the Royal Navy reconstructed. The era of deconstruction of a national strategy with maritime at its core - which started in 1914 and came into effect after the 1960s - must end.

The first is to understand that vast portions of Defence over recent decades have not delivered and cannot continue as is. Succeeding defence and military organisational reviews have all been as useless, or they would not be occurring as often as they have.

Instead, the reform of Defence and the Royal Navy must be unsentimental, unrelenting, and grounded in national strategy, which surely puts island security first.

Preserving and bolstering nuclear deterrence and Anti-submarine Warfare (ASW) should come first. Second on the mend list must be the relationship between Army and Navy - long undermined – and which should be built on the latest technologies. The nihilistic airpower theorists who have argued since the 1950s that the RAF can solve every foreign policy and defence issue need to be cast out to the fringes.

For the Royal Navy, the issue of all-encompassing ‘seablindness’ is a huge problem: active anti-naval and anti-maritime voices, who wouldn’t understand strategy if it hit them in the face, remain entrenched in Whitehall. They serve only serve short-term political needs and cycles. The lack of education and understanding remains the most pernicious enemy of all, not least to a national defence strategy.

The Treasury is not a threat but an ally to be educated about what seapower offers the nation economically and for Defence. For failure in Defence will cost far more in the long run than tackling the problem now, no matter how unpleasant the medicine is.

Either way, the task of national education on maritime strategy and Navy - an endless task - must address ‘seablindness’. However, the tactics of past decades for dealing with it have failed. The connoisseurs serving the same old approach ignore that the UK Government has cut warships, failed to support shipyards, and hollowed out capabilities; in short, governments have not been listening.

Fortunately, Britain does have a unique advantage it can call on in hours of need. Not, for now, Drake’s Drum or King Arthur, but 500 years of history and its examples. That is, ever since King Henry VIII started to codify a British way of war and keeping the peace into the national mindset. That experience of defending the nation is vital. If the Admiralty existed, the message would be clear: maritime strategy and the close relationship between Army and Navy would give the Govt the broadest options and global reach. That’s all the UK Govt needs to know; options matter internationally, and the Navy-Army team can offer it in a neat, efficient package and smaller MoD. Educating people about this is all that matters. It’s time to think wisely and plan boldly. Sooner or later, the ‘smash glass in emergency’ moment will come; the question is not if, but when.

The 2024 King’s Impact Report highlights research by King’s academics that, based on feedback from sources such as governments and lawmakers, has made a global impact and is considered a top priority today and tomorrow. The report features British Academy-supported Dr James WE Smith’s research that focuses on advancing education and understanding of strategy and how it can help overcome issues like policy and public blindness towards domains like the sea and space.

Governments and lawmakers need to have informed debate to develop defence and foreign policy, while those they represent – the public – struggle to connect with places alien and hostile to human existence which significantly shape those matters. At the heart of this is the reality that our environment shapes our lives. The place of least interaction for most – the sea and space – do so daily. From the seabed, where raw resources and the bulk of digital data flow, advance national economies, to the oceans where ships move the goods and resources civilisation depends on, to space that influences everything below it, everything works in a fragile concerto of technology and human exertion to keep our civilisation functioning. This is an inheritance for all, where human endeavour, innovation, exploration and much more work together, often in a less than perfect manner. Nonetheless, it does work to provide the global commons in which decision-making and directions can be taken – locally, nationally or internationally – on every sector and activity humans engage in.

Looking Beyond the Horizon

Humans tend to focus on the here and now, while looking to the past and future with curiosity, trepidation and some suspicion. There is a tendency to focus on day-to-day activities where individuals set importance on the perception of their immediate needs. This rarely results in a spare thought as to what is beyond the horizon, coastline or far above them. While those interested in the world around us and how it functions understand this concerto, the fact that it does work only serves to push what happens at sea and in space far from most people's minds until it goes wrong. In these moments, what happens on the oceans or in space usually comes to the forefront of people’s minds, particularly as it usually involves economics, defence, technology and relations between nations.

When questions are asked about pressing economic matters, military operations, or delicate foreign relations, poor education often either exposes or leads to blindness on various issues in policy. These weaknesses can be purposefully prised open by adversaries and those with ill agendas or, through a series of missteps, delay addressing problems. This obscurity often pertains to what happens on the sea and in space and their impact on national life, along with the interaction between these crucial domains and the activities of the nation. Most are not to blame for this as it goes beyond a mere matter of literacy and reflects the particular geography of a nation where debate occurs. For example, the sea is non-negotiable to an island like Britain, while in other countries like the United States the drive for superiority in space to achieve global reach may take precedence. Humans have had to purposefully set out to develop machines and technology-enabling pathways to make these domains useful. In the process, they have developed skills, defeated challenges and made theoretical ideas practical. That is because neither the sea nor space is humans' natural habitat. We cannot naturally survive there, and unlike air, which is a transitory area, we do things with sea and space vital to the success of our species. In their own way, they provide security, which people depend upon, whether logistically, such as raw resources to power homes and businesses or to defend against adversaries’ actions.

Educating on Strategy

Understanding these domains requires special and continuous effort. Advancing understanding requires ever-present education, which in itself is based on the only thing it can be: experience. This is because guesswork, assumptions and weak theories with little supporting substance are useless to inform those who make policy, design strategies, debate laws and execute doctrine. This is because the price of failure at such a level can often be disastrous. Instead, using the best tools at our fingertips is a superior way to address the task. Studying history – but with a view to applying the wisdom and insight that can be gained from it – will always provide sound foundations. This enables nations to refresh debates, ideas, and policies for the times we face by using that guidance in discussion forums.

To help maximise usefulness and understanding of the sea and space in the many-faceted parts of national enterprise requires strategy. This is because a national strategy, where all the levers of a nation – military and civilian – must work together, can be brought to bear to achieve national objectives. Often, this is not the case and is more of a phenomenon in recent decades of policy-making than it was in previous centuries. What happens at sea and in space is not a self-contained history, nor is strategy a self-contained history of ideas; they continuously and reciprocally influence the world around us. The use of both today results from complex and often non-linear processes and experiences, that shape nations, cultures and human interactions. These interactions may function as unity but – in the worst cases – can lead to tension, conflict and war. Elsewhere, military power requires strategy bound in timeless principles, and all the components from all domains—land, sea, air, space, and cyber–must work together towards a common goal. However, blindness to sea and space will provide nothing more than a clear path to defeat. Not understanding the importance of internet stability, the adequate flow of resources, the support of power grids or the value of intelligence – all of which are crucial to military and diplomatic efforts – ultimately stunts a nation’s ability to make and execute informed choices.

Navigating the Oceanscape of Policy-Making

In attempting to navigate the choppy waters of the 21st century, it is helpful first to recognise that the challenges faced are little different to all recorded history; turmoil is a status quo and often has deep roots. ‘Peacetime’ and nothing happening would be the end of history and is out of step with the trend of humankind, at least for now. Today we see, from the Indo-Pacific through to Europe with the Ukraine-Russia invasion, a complex interweaving of history, culture, politics, economics and more where the sea and space bear influence across the civilian and military spectrum. How we think about these domains and the process of understanding their role will either aid resolving questions and problems or hinder them, particularly if they are used to effectiveness by those with different agendas. Modern warfare and diplomacy are full of complexities influenced by seabed through to space and by the realm of cyber and artificial intelligence. We must look to a comprehensive strategy rather than a selective approach. This is not an easy process, but history shows that understanding the relationship between land and sea, armies and navies, has been crucial, and that educating decision-makers on these dynamics is crucial to empowering national discourse and the process of strategic thinking.

In short, the seas and space matter. Although, through time, their influence and usefulness have been questioned, misunderstood or even manipulated, they cannot and should not be ignored. For blindness in policy or strategy, both military and civilian, will always exist. It can be combatted and tempered, but never wholly defeated, but the success of that task ultimately rests on the education of decision-makers and the public alike because international order and national security rest on seabed to space strategy.

Original link: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/education-and-understanding-the-strategy-for-sea-and-space, 31 March 2025

With thanks to King’s College London for asking me to write this article where I expanded on the King’s Impact Research Report.