The Future of Defence Organisation Resurfaces?
How defence is organised is fundamental in enabling or hindering national policy and strategy in peace and wartime.
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 article: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/the-future-of-defence-organisation-resurfaces , 6 Oct 2025.