What Can Lord Nelson Offer the Space Forces of the Future?

Admiralty and Admirals in Space is hardly a new thing

On Trafalgar Day (21 October), it is worth considering what Lord Nelson might offer those thinking about the future of military power in space. The technologies would be unfamiliar to him, but questions of leadership, professional responsibility and the purposes of force would give him considerable ground for discussion with his fellow army, marine and naval officers.

Last year,¹ I explored Nelson’s continuing relevance to defence and suggested that the maritime experience might offer insight into space. That connection deserves further attention as humanity’s activity beyond Earth expands, bringing with it new forces, institutions and professional traditions.

Nelson’s relevance begins with his willingness to think. Experience gave him a foundation for questioning accepted practice, developing judgement and preparing others to take responsibility. He also understood what battle was for. Trafalgar did not end the war. It secured Britain’s ability to use the sea, and to deny it to others, for years to come. It protected the communications along which trade, armies and information moved across the global commons of the sea, something space is fast becoming. As Sir Julian Corbett, one of the great strategists, reminds us, battle is the means, not the end. Today’s talk of space as the “ultimate high ground” risks mistaking the broadside for everything the broadside protected.

For space forces, this means examining the assumptions through which they understand their purpose. The maritime tradition offers a substantial body of experience on protecting communications, moving people and goods, and relating military strength to peaceful activity. Applying that experience requires careful attention to the physical conditions of space and to the societies whose interests space forces will serve. Those forces will project outward as naval power does, and exert influence back on events on Earth, as maritime power always has over the land. What activities must be protected? What constitutes a favourable strategic position or advantage? How should force contribute to maintaining peace, and what would its use achieve if peace failed?

There is also much to learn from Nelson about leadership and professional judgement. Before Trafalgar he told his captains that if his signals could not be seen or understood, “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.” That was command by shared intent, built on preparation, training, experience and trust. Space forces will face their own version of the problem. And make no mistake: plenty of false prophets talk about space. Theories built on assumption and guesswork end in disaster. Experience is all we have, and it will guide us in space too. That experience must be brought together through an understanding of strategy, not through the dogma of the culture into which many space forces are being born, that of air power and air forces. Operations will extend farther from Earth, and communications may be delayed, degraded or denied. Institutions will need to decide how authority can be exercised across distance and under uncertain conditions, as ships at sea long have.

This places responsibilities on political and military leaders alike. As I argued last year, America’s first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, drew on his interest in Nelson and on the professional naval counsel he received to understand what unity of effort requires. It requires respect for professional knowledge and care in the exercise of central authority. The organisation of defence shapes the quality of its thinking and must be treated with scrutiny. Space forces will need room to develop expertise while remaining accountable to the political purposes they exist to serve.

Perhaps the most consequential connection concerns humanity. On the morning of Trafalgar, Nelson hoped that “humanity after victory” would be “the predominant feature in the British Fleet.” He recognised obligations that outlasted the fighting: at sea, the environment could go on threatening the lives of those who had just been enemies. As human activity in space grows, and with it dependence on life support, transport and supplies, questions of rescue, assistance and restraint will take on real practical significance. Thinking about these responsibilities belongs within the development of a military profession, whose people must understand both the application of force and the obligations that come with the power entrusted to them.

None of this should surprise us. Humanity named its planet Earth, yet more than seven-tenths of it is ocean: it is Planet Ocean. Nor are oceans unique to our world. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus are thought to hide seas beneath their ice, and the search for life beyond Earth is, in large part, a search for water. The very words give the game away. An astronaut is, literally, a star-sailor, and aeronautics means air-sailing. Nobody has yet volunteered to become an astro-pilot.

History tells the same story. In Jules Verne’s Around the Moon (1870), a naval vessel recovers the returning travellers from the Pacific. A century later, the U.S. Navy did it for real, with USS Hornet greeting the crew of Apollo 11. Naval officers provided more than half of NASA’s early astronauts. The world’s first satellite navigation system, Transit, was built to serve the U.S. Navy’s Polaris submarines, and navigation had been the navy’s business since sailors first steered by the stars. President Kennedy called space a “new ocean”, and science fiction still puts Captains on the Bridge of spaceSHIP. As for the “ultimate high ground”: in orbit there is no up, no down, and no ground. There are, however, lines of communication, and navies have been guarding those for centuries: ready and able.

The scientists got there first. Scientist Carl Sagan described the surface of the Earth as the shore of a cosmic ocean, and a generation of astronomers has since pictured humanity standing at the water’s edge, looking out. The connection is more than poetic. The data that binds the modern world travels overwhelmingly through cables on the seabed and signals from orbit, two halves of a single system of communications, from seabed to space. Protecting that system is not the business of any one service, and here Nelson offers one last lesson. He served national strategy, not merely his service. He lost the sight of his right eye fighting ashore at the siege of Calvi, and his right arm leading an amphibious assault at Tenerife, working alongside the army and marines whenever the task demanded it. Loyalty to the nation came before loyalty to the uniform. Space forces are being born into institutions with strong opinions about who owns what. They would do well to remember that command of the sea was never secured by one service thinking only of itself, and command of space will not be either.

Nelson therefore offers future space forces a starting point for thinking about judgement, institutional culture and service. His relevance depends on our willingness to examine the experience he represents, question it carefully and apply what remains useful to different circumstances.

On this Trafalgar Day, the guiding ambition should remain the one with which I concluded last year: to keep war dead, maintaining peace from a position of strategic strength and ready to defend the people and lifelines on which civilisation depends. As those lifelines extend into space, that responsibility extends with them.

Tonight, raise a glass to the Immortal Memory, and perhaps glance at the stars. They were always a sailor’s business.

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