If Admiralty was restored, how might it manage the Royal Navy in 2026?
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 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For this exercise, the latest UK Defence Review will be discarded because it is unfunded, outdated and defence reviews an a foreign import to the British mindset, and the current funding model relatively maintained–although it is universally agreed, an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.
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’.
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 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.
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.
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.
END.