Endgame for Seablindness: defence organisation and the future of the Royal Navy and the United States Navy
Navies must reinvent themselves and retake the lead on defence organisation. Their futures, that of national defence strategy and warfare may very well depend on it.
If you are member of the UK Naval Review, or US Naval Institute, including associated partners around the world, you can now read my latest paper titled:
‘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.
James W.E. Smith, ‘Deconstructing the Seapower State: Britain, American and Defence Unification’, PhD Thesis (King’s College London, 2021).
‘The Admiralty and the Art of Admiralty’, The Naval Review Journal, Volume 111, Number 3, 2023. J W E Smith.
‘Seablindness and the Royal Navy after 1964’, The Naval Review Journal, Volume 112, Number 2, 2024. J W E Smith.
Lambert, Andrew. The British Way of War: Julian Corbett and the Battle for a National Strategy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022.
Kohnen, David. King’s Navy: Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and the Rise of American Sea Power, 1897-1947. IN: Schiffer Publishing, 2024.
‘America Owes James Forrestal a Great Debt’, January 2024, US Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 150/1/1,451.
Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-433, 100 Stat. 992 (1986).
ibid., Deconstructing the Seapower State.
‘The Future of Defence Organisation Resurfaces?’, 6 Oct 2025, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/the-future-of-defence-organisation-resurfaces
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restoring-the-united-states-department-of-war/
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C13-1/ALDE_00013363/
https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4318689/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-addresses-general-and-flag-officers-at-quantico-v/
Op cit., ‘Deconstructing the Seapower State’
The National Security Act of 1947 as amended by, Pub. L. No. 216, 63 Stat. 578 (1949).
The National Security Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 253, 116 Stat. 49 (1947).
Reforge Britannia’s Trident or Close the Shop? The Naval Review Journal
‘Letter to the Editor: Strategic Defence Review’, The Naval Review Journal, Volume 113, Number 1, 2025. J W E Smith.
‘Titans of the Sea’ Presidential Review Oct. 05, 2025.
‘Letter to the Editor: Seablindness’, The Naval Review Journal, Volume 113, Number 1, 2025. J W E Smith.