Main points
- The Armed Forces should defend the state, deter threats, lead within NATO, and advance British interests abroad through selective and sustainable engagement.
- Force design should prioritise Britain’s home waters, Euro-Atlantic communications, homeland resilience, maritime power projection, modern deterrence, resilient command systems, and one credible land contribution to NATO.
- This focus requires explicit trade-offs, including a smaller but fully resourced Army, reduced Indo-Pacific presence, and no force designed for open-ended stabilisation or counterinsurgency, supported by stronger logistics, industry, and personnel systems.
The preceding chapters offered a diagnosis of the shortcomings of the most recent Strategic Defence Review and outlined a conceptual framework for how British defence should develop for the future. Looking to Britain’s history, Sir Julian Corbett’s maritime strategy offers a framework which suits Britain’s capacity and capabilities in this modern era.
This chapter will translate this framework into sequential concrete policy actions. It first defines the political objectives of defence, answering the question of “what are the British Armed Forces for?” This is the question from which all others flow. The paper then details what strategic mission tasks flow from these, discusses what effects are necessary for defence to develop, and then identifies what trade-offs result from these conscious policy choices.
A word of caution is necessary in that these strategic mission effects and the accompanying force generation implications are illustrative, but not exhaustive, and do not focus exclusively on specific systems or platforms. While some systems and platforms are referenced, this is again for illustrative purposes. This is to avoid an overly narrow focus on what should be purchased and acquired to deliver the effects. Indeed, this paper has sought to define first the political priorities of the Armed Forces and now seeks to translate those purposes into desired strategic effects and operational requirements, from which then flow the military’s joint- and service-based force design implications. The service-specific design implications are beyond the scope of this paper, but worth further exploration.
What are the British Armed Forces for?
The SDR correctly states that “The fundamental role of the Armed Forces is to deter threats so that fighting a war—in defence of the UK, the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, and allies—is not necessary.”[18] This is, however, an incomplete identification of the necessary implicit tasks that come from this main objective.
Articulation of the following four political tasks is necessary to define necessary strategic mission tasks that defence must execute:
- Defend the United Kingdom and preserve the integrity of the British state.
- Deter, prevent, and, if necessary, defeat threats to Britain and its vital interests.
- Lead in NATO collective defence and secure the Euro-Atlantic.
- Pursue and advance British interests abroad through selective, sustainable engagement.
Meeting these national defence priorities is not possible without the United Kingdom possessing the capacity to generate, sustain, and, where necessary, regenerate military power over the course of a prolonged crisis or conflict. National resilience, industrial capacity, munitions stockpiles, logistics, reserve forces, skilled personnel, secure supply chains, and public consent are therefore not secondary administrative concerns. Rather, they are the strategic foundations upon which British defence policy rests. Without them, the United Kingdom will be unable to defend the realm, meet its obligations to NATO, or sustain meaningful military operations over time. These are the core tasks assigned to the British Armed Forces. The question then becomes how the Armed Forces should translate these into policy.
Defining strategic mission tasks for the British Armed Forces
Translating this framework into action requires the articulation of what are here termed as ‘strategic mission tasks’—priorities that flow from the politically defined national defence priorities. The exam question then becomes ‘Given this changing strategic and technological environment, how can the United Kingdom achieve its political aims through the generation and deployment of military force?’
In essence, these are the tasks for defence around which the Armed Forces should be designed. To the Ministry of Defence’s credit, there is thinking underway along these lines. The challenge is, however, translating this intellectual rigor into practical policy outcomes. There are, naturally, overlaps between these mission tasks: they are by design mutually reinforcing. Achieving strength in one area enables operations and strength in another, thus providing greater effects per pound spent.
Recognise Britain’s unique strategic geography as an organising principle
The United Kingdom is an island nation, an unchanging geographic fact that provides innumerable strategic advantages, and which should serve as a central framework for defence. Indeed, recognising and exploiting the strategic geography of the United Kingdom is central to this maritime-first strategy. This geography must be reflected in the prioritisation of operating domains.
First and foremost, the United Kingdom must prioritise its immediate waters: the North Atlantic, Arctic, and High North. These are the home waters and without area control, operations further afield are beyond consideration. This includes control of the North Atlantic, GIUK gap, and Norwegian Sea. Within this, the United Kingdom, in concert with key allies such as Norway, will ensure that sea lines of communication and reinforcement between the United States and Europe remain open and uncontested. Such an approach will also deliver a meaningful effect for the ‘special relationship’, positioning the United Kingdom to cover off America’s eastern flank.
Second, its geography allows the United Kingdom maritime power projection into the Baltic Sea, North Sea, and Northern Europe. This is central to Britain’s defence support to NATO and reach into continental affairs. Here, in concert with its NATO partners, the United Kingdom seeks to ensure at a minimum area denial, preventing the uncontested movement of the Russian Navy and maritime and air assets. Littoral and archipelagic warfare capabilities will be maintained.
Third, by virtue of the British Overseas Territory in Gibraltar and sovereign base areas in Cyprus, the Royal Navy can and indeed does project power into the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East, and the associated sea lines of communication. Here again, area denial will be the primary focus against Russia when present, but also ensuring maritime security, protection of shipping, allied support, and the ability to respond where HMG determines British interests are engaged.
Finally, while Diego Garcia remains central to British and indeed American strategic calculus, the Indo-Pacific should be deprioritised as an area of explicit and direct British hard power reach and presence. This is not to suggest that His Majesty’s Government cannot influence events in the region, but that doing so is beyond the interests and capacity of Britain to do and sustain in a credible manner and in an independent capacity.
Britain’s chief priority is to ensure that its home waters and approaches, and the Euro-Atlantic reinforcement corridor, remain sufficiently secure for national defence and alliance operations. This does not require an expectation of uncontested sea control; it does require the ability to prevent an adversary from using the maritime domain to isolate Britain, disrupt transatlantic reinforcement, or dictate the terms of access to Northern Europe.
Force generation implications
To leverage Britain’s unique strategic geography, HMG should focus on developing the following effects when designing the Armed Forces.
First, Britain’s home waters must be secure and usable, which include its territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, maritime approaches, and the seabed. This includes developing a force that can, as noted above, ensure that the United Kingdom’s critical undersea infrastructure is protected, resilient, and rapidly recoverable. This, of course, is not solely the responsibility of the state and requires close coordination with private industry and economic partners such as Norway.
Second, the force should be designed to ensure that the reinforcement and economic corridor between the United States and the United Kingdom, and from the United Kingdom into NATO, remains open and free from interference from Russia. The United Kingdom should pursue sea control capabilities in and around the GIUK gap and associated waters. This in turn means developing a force that can deliver area denial effects against Russia, making it unable to operate in an uncontested manner in the North Atlantic, North Sea, High North, or Baltic Sea. In keeping these waterways open, the United Kingdom can ensure that there is access to and freedom of movement around NATO’s northern flank and into Northern Europe in the event of a large-scale crisis, necessitating American intervention. Generating these effects necessitates the development of a joint maritime force that can conduct robust ASW, AD, and ISR-T activities.
Third, the British Armed Forces should develop joint capabilities to conduct selected maritime operations further into NATO’s southern flank and the Middle East. These should be developed to ensure that critical SLOCs remain open and strategic chokepoints uncontested. Hard-power commitments to the Indo-Pacific come after, and because of, the generation and delivery of these effects.
Collectively, these effects will see the Armed Forces ensuring British national interests while becoming a decisive, credible, and capable Euro-Atlantic ally to both the United States and NATO.
Preserve the integrity of the British state
The central task of the British Armed Forces, or any country’s armed forces, is the protection of the state, its people, and its institutions. While the United Kingdom does not face, and is unlikely to face, immediate threats to its territorial integrity from nation-state adversaries, the Armed Forces are nonetheless tasked with ensuring the preservation and protection of the state. The security and defence of the United Kingdom is achieved first through the Armed Forces themselves, and second through Britain’s participation and engagement in multilateral and mini-lateral arrangements.
As this mission thread’s geographic reach extends outwards from the United Kingdom’s territory so does the responsibility of the Armed Forces. For example, the Armed Forces are tasked with providing support to civil authorities in the event of national (natural or otherwise) emergencies, providing resilience and redundancy as and when necessary. The Armed Forces can and indeed should assume primacy for the protection of critical national infrastructure from nation-state and non-nation state threat actors. This includes the development of localised integrated air and missile defence (IAMDS) with counter-UAS (CUAS) capabilities. Such a network is, however, a last defence. As described below, the development and delivery of deterrent effects is a more cost-advantageous and effective counter to the creation of a ‘British Dome’ designed to counter every missile and drone threat. Such a shield, while rhetorically attractive, is cost prohibitive, technologically challenging, and unnecessary.
The security of Britain’s energy and communications infrastructure from kinetic and cyber-attacks are equally of central importance and a responsibility of the Armed Forces. Here the Royal Navy (along with the Royal Air Force where appropriate) is tasked with ensuring sea control of its territorial waters, cooperating with the private sector to ensure the protection of subsea assets, and delivering deterrent effects in the waterways around the United Kingdom.
Force generation implications
The objective of homeland defence is not to construct an impermeable shield against adversary action or influence around the United Kingdom—this is an unrealistic prospect. Rather it is the generation of effects and capabilities to ensure that no adversary can coerce, paralyse, or prevent the British state from functioning, exercising its freedom of action, or pursuing national interests. The Armed Forces should therefore generate effects that protect the population, maintain, and protect critical infrastructure, deny coercive leverage through limited attack, preserve continuity of government, and sustain the national base (defence, industrial, and economic) from which Britain’s own and NATO’s military power is generated. In short, the overriding objective is to recognise the potential for adversarial influence in these domains and align capacity and capability to minimise such effects.
This necessitates a robust capability to detect, identify, attribute, and respond to capabilities across the spectrum of conflict from sub-threshold ‘hybrid’ or ‘grey zone’ activities through to direct conventional attack. While seeking to avoid the development of an air defence ‘national dome’ which is technologically challenging and fiscally prohibitive, the Armed Forces should seek instead to develop limited, prioritised, layered defence capabilities around critical national infrastructure. In lieu of such a ‘national dome’ the development of forward deterrent effects, discussed below, should be prioritised. The net effect of this capability generation is a secure and stable British state and population, from which British national power is developed and projected—it is the first principle from which all other aspects derive.
Defence should contribute to those aspects of critical national infrastructure protection that require unique military capabilities, such as in the maritime domain, air and missile defence, and cyber defence. It should do so within a whole-of-government resilience framework in which civilian departments, regulators, infrastructure owners, and local authorities retain their respective responsibilities.
Project power in and from the maritime domain
This paper advocates the development of an integrated maritime force that can secure the United Kingdom’s territorial integrity, leverage its unique strategic geography, and deliver effects primarily from and through the maritime domain. This necessitates a significant focus on and investment in ASW and AD capabilities and the development of long-range and deep precision strike from Royal Navy and Royal Air Force assets. The objective is to ensure the preservation of the state, first, but second the delivery of deterrent effects and, if necessary, warfighting capability against nation-state adversaries.
Nearer to the United Kingdom’s territorial waters this manifests in area control, but, as elaborated above, it transitions to area denial in the Arctic and High North and towards the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East to ensure the maintenance of SLOCs. The delivery of these effects is magnified by the United Kingdom’s joint production and cooperation with partners such as Norway through the development of the Type 26 frigate and Germany through the joint production of the deep precision strike missile.
Force generation implications
The purpose of Britain’s joint maritime force is not simply to operate ships, submarines, and aircraft across multiple theatres. Rather it is to generate and deliver a set of strategic effects from the maritime domain to ensure the preservation of the United Kingdom’s freedom of action in pursuit of its interests, prevent its isolation, and enable NATO operations in Northern and Eastern Europe. The central strategic effect is that the United Kingdom and its allies retain the ability to operate in and from the maritime domain in the Euro-Atlantic, while adversaries are denied the ability to use that domain uncontested. This effect is prioritised geographically, focusing first on Britain’s territorial waters, but extending into the North Atlantic, North Sea, High North, and into the Baltic Sea. Additional maritime effects are generated for the Mediterranean and Middle East, and finally into the Pacific as discussed in the preceding section on the United Kingdom’s strategic geography.
Maritime power must also generate credible deterrent and warfighting options. Britain should be able to identify, track, and, where necessary, disrupt hostile activity below the threshold of major war; protect and restore critical seabed and offshore infrastructure; and impose proportionate conventional (and, if necessary strategic) costs from the maritime domain. Such options should reinforce the United Kingdom’s wider deterrent posture and complement the nuclear deterrent while providing decision-makers with credible responses below that threshold.
The United Kingdom should retain the ability to project power selectively from the maritime domain in support of national interests and alliance commitments. In practice, this means being able to reinforce Northern Europe and to contribute to maritime security in adjacent theatres such as in and from the Baltic Sea. This includes offering supporting special operations capabilities, conducting amphibious and littoral activity, and generating conventional strike options. This does not require Britain to maintain a routine, independent hard-power presence in every theatre or to design the force around distant interventions that compromise readiness in the Euro-Atlantic.
These effects require a joint maritime force that can develop and maintain undersea situational awareness and command-and-control. Britain requires enduring maritime surveillance and the ability to integrate sensing, ASW, targeting, and communications across the Euro-Atlantic. These functions translate into the delivery of conventional area control and area denial effects. Britain requires a persistent undersea presence in constrained northern and littoral waters, without drawing disproportionately on its nuclear submarine force; this could come from the acquisition of air-independent propulsion submarines as well as uncrewed systems, as discussed below. Long-range precision fires from the maritime domain support conventional warfighting within Northern and Eastern Europe. Britain must retain a selective ability to generate air power, conventional strike, and limited littoral access from the maritime domain.
Developing these effects requires a blend of crewed and autonomous systems, tied together in an overarching digital targeting network also known as a ‘kill web’ or ‘kill chain’. Such a networked system will allow for the United Kingdom, and its allies, to maintain decisive advantage in decision speed—being able to identify, interpret, and classify targets, and direct effects from appropriate munitions or systems faster than the enemy can react. Such a high-low mix improves persistence and resilience, generates its own form of mass, and contributes to affordability (though this should not be a driving priority; merely an ancillary benefit). Britain must retain sufficient surface-combatant capacity to defend maritime forces, protect reinforcement routes, and sustain operations under air and missile threat.
The purpose of this hybrid approach is not technological novelty, but a fleet capable of maintaining awareness, imposing uncertainty on an adversary, and sustaining operations in contested waters. Indeed, autonomy should augment persistence and mass, while the force must still be able to fight if autonomous systems are jammed, deceived, destroyed, or politically restricted. The specific mix of platforms and programmes required to deliver these effects should be assessed against mission needs, industrial capacity, personnel availability, and allied interoperability.
Shape and deliver modern deterrent effects
CAS-D is an independent national deterrent that contributes to NATO’s wider nuclear-deterrence posture. It ensures that the United Kingdom retains a secure second-strike capacity while reinforcing the defence and deterrence (DDA) mission of NATO (along with the United States and France, which itself is considering extending its deterrent umbrella further). The existence of CAS-D ensures that Russian strategic calculus is complicated by having a second source of decision-making outside of and independent from the United States in the event of hostilities.
Nuclear weapons principally deter nuclear attack and the most extreme forms of coercion; they do not, in and of themselves, prevent conventional, cyber, maritime, or hybrid aggression below the nuclear threshold. Britain should therefore communicate that attacks on its people, critical infrastructure, military forces, and ability to meet alliance commitments will carry consequences, while retaining ambiguity over the timing, scale, domain, and form of any response. Red line and strategic thresholds should be communicated without tying political leadership to proscriptive response plans that prevent flexibility and adaptability.
The goal of modern deterrence is to balance risk tolerance with investment cost. For example, a national Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) network or dome akin to America’s ‘Golden Dome’ or Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ would be prohibitively expensive. Developing low cost-per-kill capabilities to counter drones is a more viable prospect than building out a system capable of countering ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Rather, signalling the consequences of such an attack ahead of its conduct would serve to protect the British homeland, allow prioritisation of resources, and ideally prevent it from occurring in the first place.
Additionally, the United Kingdom should see to continue to develop its leading-edge cyberspace capabilities, which offer policymakers additional options and serve to support intelligence collection. This is a core feature of the task discussed below, which is the necessity of developing capabilities to support the command of communications.
Force generation implications
The purpose of British deterrence policy is to ensure that no adversary deems threatened or actual coercion, limited attack, or escalation against the United Kingdom and its vital interests to be an acceptable path to achieving political or military aims. Therefore, the central strategic effect is ensuring that Britain retains freedom of action in crisis and conflict: that HMG cannot be intimidated into abandoning its national interests or alliance commitments by nuclear threats, conventional attack, cyber disruption, or hybrid coercion. This is not solely a defence function but requires close coordination with and across ministries and departments to ensure a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to domestic resilience. It is insufficient to deliver deterrent effects abroad alone; ensuring deterrence by resilience is an equally important function.
Deterrence begins with, first the maintenance of a secure and credible independent nuclear capability, CAS-D. This ensures that no adversary can expect to remove Britain’s capacity to impose unacceptable costs through a first strike or nuclear coercion. It also reinforces NATO’s collective deterrent posture by ensuring that decision-making over Britain’s deterrent remains sovereign. Additionally, CAS-D contributes to NATO’s broader ability to deter by providing a secure second source of strategic decision-making for adversaries to consider.
Nuclear deterrence alone, however, is insufficient to prevent coercion below the nuclear threshold. Britain must therefore seek to develop capabilities that will threaten to, and, if necessary, impose proportionate conventional costs. In so doing, denying an adversary confidence that limited attack will succeed, while retaining credible options across operational domains. The intended effect is to ensure that any potential attack on critical infrastructure, military forces, allied reinforcement routes, or other vital British national interests cannot be treated as low-risk or cost-free options by adversaries.
This requires a balanced deterrence architecture below the nuclear threshold. Long-range conventional strike provides response options by holding adversary targets at risk. Prioritised air and missile defence, counter-UAS, hardening, and resilience reduce the expected benefit of adversary attack. Cyber and intelligence capabilities improve warning, attribution, disruption, and response to hybrid and grey zone threats, as well as conventional attacks. Forward-deployed British forces and NATO integration demonstrate the United Kingdom’s capacity to act with allies. A robust British national defence industrial base ensures magazine and stockpile depth, signalling capacity to sustain military operations over time. Together, these measures serve to develop deterrent effects, constraining the ability of adversaries to dictate the tempo or threshold of escalation.
Britain should communicate resolve without relying on rigid public red lines or automatic response promises. The government should make clear that attacks on the United Kingdom’s people, critical national infrastructure, military forces, or ability to meet NATO commitments will carry consequences, while preserving ambiguity over the timing, scale, and form of any British response. Deterrence depends on credible capability and evident political will, but it also depends on an adversary’s uncertainty about how and where Britain may choose to act.
Programmes, for example, such as AUKUS, GCAP, and the F-35 dual-capable aircraft (DCA) should be judged by whether they improve survivable strike, air defence, targeting, and NATO interoperability, ultimately delivering deterrent effects, not by their value as standalone industrial or prestige projects.
Support NATO command of the commons and communications
Success on the modern battlefield requires integration of systems and sensors and closing the kill-chain at the speed of data, but more broadly the command of communications and decision advantage. The United Kingdom should seek to lead on the development of an integrated, inter-service, allied command and control system that enables intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR-T). This necessitates the development of a robust backbone to support the scale and speed of transmission necessary for machine-to-machine connectivity and AI-enabled operations. Current data rates are insufficient, and the development of these pipelines is vital for both national and economic security.
Force generation implications
The purpose of the integrated kill web is not to create a universal network in which every platform is connected to every other system. It is to ensure that Britain and its allies execute the ‘observe, orient, decide, and act’ (OODA) loop more quickly and more effectively than an adversary. Within a Britain-first, maritime-first strategy, the central strategic effect is therefore that the United Kingdom and NATO develop and retain decision advantage and command of critical communications in the Euro-Atlantic, even under sustained attack and in a degraded environment. This requires the maintenance of a joint operational picture across domains—a truly integrated picture of the battlefield. This includes the ability to connect sensors to strike assets. It does not require every system to be connected continuously, nor should it assume that seamless digital connectivity will survive first contact with a capable adversary.
The United Kingdom should seek to build a resilient and graduated command-and-control architecture, to include networked systems, data integration, AI-enabled analysis, and automated targeting. This system architecture must, however, be resilient and contain redundancy by design. The intended effect is that an adversary cannot gain decisive advantage by, for example, blinding British forces, disrupting satellite links, overwhelming data systems, or severing key networks.
In this context, space is a central component of modern command of communications. Space-based ISR, satellite communications, data relay, and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) are vital components of this joint operating picture and require investment and attention. Britain should combine sovereign, allied, and commercial space services, while investing in redundancy and terrestrial alternatives to reduce vulnerability to PNT jamming and spoofing, evidence of which is routinely seen on the Eastern flank. Britain will continue to depend partly on allied and commercial PNT services, but should reduce vulnerability by pursuing alternative PNT solutions, to include terrestrial fallback systems. The objective is not full sovereign autonomy across every space function but assured enough access and resilience that the loss or degradation of one system does not paralyse British action.[19]
Britain should seek to become a leading European contributor to NATO’s ability to sense, connect, target, and sustain operations. This is a natural area of comparative advantage: a focused British contribution in ISR-T, cyber, electronic warfare, space-enabled capabilities, and resilient C2 can make allied forces more effective without attempting to duplicate American capabilities in full. Such a role also supports British industrial strength in software, sensors, secure communications, data processing, autonomous systems, and space services.
Special operations forces are also an essential human component of this architecture. They provide reconnaissance, contextualised intelligence, partner engagement, targeting support, and access in environments where technical collection alone may be insufficient, in addition to direct action when necessary. Exploiting this advantage requires sustained investment in selection, training, specialist support, and force regeneration, as well as careful management of the operational tempo imposed on a relatively small community.
Deliver a credible and sustained British land contribution to NATO
The British Army’s central priority in the European theatre is to develop, deploy, and sustain credible conventional combat power in support of the NATO mission to include current and future capability targets and support to the evolving Regional Defence Plans. The United Kingdom, under this maritime-first strategy will echo Corbett’s concept of offshore balancing by eschewing the creation of a large, standing army in the vein of the British Army of the Rhine. While suitable for the Cold War, this is neither in Britain’s national interests nor within its current capabilities to field such a force.
Rather, in addition to developing a credible conventional force via the British Army to support NATO operations and allied partners, the British Armed Forces should seek to develop high-end enabling capabilities necessary for modern combat operations. These include, for example, over-the-horizon ISR-T from terrestrial, maritime, and space domains. This will include delivering airborne early warning and command and control capabilities to NATO partners. Special operations forces, integrated with maritime, land, and air power, will contribute reconnaissance, targeting, partner force development and high-value operations that magnify allied land mass without requiring large British formations. Lon-‑range and deep precision strike capabilities from land, air, and sea platforms will serve as offensive enablers.
Force generation implications
The purpose of British land power within a maritime-first strategy is not to recreate a large standing continental army such as the British Army of the Rhine. It is, instead, to provide a credible, high-readiness, and sustainable conventional contribution to NATO that strengthens deterrence on the alliance’s northern and eastern flanks. Britain must therefore be able to deploy, integrate, and sustain a combined-arms formation within NATO regional plans. The central strategic effect is that neither Russia nor any future adversary can regard the United Kingdom’s conventional land contribution to NATO as purely symbolic, hollow, or incapable of being sustained. Britain should be able to contribute meaningfully to the defence of NATO territory, delivering a deterrent effect and, if necessary, defeating aggression. This is Corbettian offshore balancing in practice: Britain contributes serious land power but does so as part of a wider alliance in which continental allies provide greater mass.
This requires a British joint land force that can operate as a coherent combined-arms formation under NATO command. It must be capable of manoeuvre, long-range fires, air and missile defence, engineering, logistics, medical support, communications, intelligence, and sustainment. Its value lies not only in combat power, but also in its ability to remain operational in a contested and degraded environment.
Britain should, therefore, seek to concentrate its land investment on generating one fully resourced and sustainable high-readiness division, rather than maintaining multiple incomplete formations. Such a force would form Britain’s principal conventional land contribution to NATO’s northern and eastern flanks and should be aligned to a defined set of regional plans and readiness requirements. Whether deployed forward persistently, rotated through allied territory, or held at high readiness in the United Kingdom, this division must be credible, sustainable, and fully resourced.
Following this effects-led logic, the 3rd Division is the most plausible institutional vehicle for this role. The objective should be the full resourcing of 3rd Division as the United Kingdom’s principal high-readiness conventional contribution to NATO. The force must possess integrated long-range strike sufficient to support NATO’s operational design and impose costs beyond the close battle. Before developing any additional forces, including a second deployable division-level formation, Britain must ensure that the primary formation possesses the manpower, equipment, munitions, and supporting functions necessary to meet its core mission. No secondary division-level aspiration should be funded at the expense of the readiness, sustainment, and credibility of Britain’s primary NATO land contribution. The proposal is not that one division can independently defend NATO’s eastern flank. It is, instead, that Britain should stop treating nominal but hollow force structure as credible capability and instead generate one contribution that can be relied upon within a larger NATO force.
The land contribution should be strengthened by high-end joint enablers. Long-range conventional strike, ISR-T, airborne early warning, cyber, electronic warfare, integrated air and missile defence, special operations forces, and resilient command-and-control should enable British and allied formations to impose costs, protect themselves, and maintain operational tempo. These capabilities are especially valuable as they magnify British land mass without requiring the United Kingdom to match continental powers in the size of its standing army, which is neither feasible nor desirable, given the priorities outlined in this paper. Uncrewed systems, autonomous, and one-way attack capabilities should supplement this force. They should not be treated as substitutes for trained personnel, combined-arms competence, stockpiles, logistics, or operational mass. Similarly, layered air defence and counter-UAS must be understood as a force-protection effect: British units must be able to continue moving, communicating, concentrating, dispersing, and fighting under aerial threat rather than assuming access to uncontested airspace.
The ultimate test of this approach is not whether the Army can advertise a particular number of brigades or divisions. It is whether Britain can generate a force that NATO commanders will trust to arrive, fight, survive, and remain in theatre for as long as the mission requires.
What trade-offs result from these mission tasks?
Large-scale continental land forces
The development of an integrated maritime force requires greater emphasis and focus on the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, and a consolidation of the British Army to a smaller, but more capable force. The British Army will not recreate the British Army of the Rhine, which is neither in line with these mission tasks nor within the capacity of the British state to sustain and fund. It is also strategically unnecessary given the approach outline in this paper. Instead, as discussed above, the British Army will concentrate on its commitments to NATO capability targets and regional defence plans.
This development does not mean that Britain is left without an Army. Rather, the Army that Britain generates is meaningful, credible, and sustainable instead of abstract, unrealistic, and overstretched. Consequently, Britain’s future leaders will need to become more selective in their application of force, particularly in areas that do not fall within the immediate area of operations and that are lacking supporting partner forces (e.g. NATO).
Maintenance of continuous hard power defence presence in the Pacific
Leveraging Britain’s strategic geography and emphasis on the Euro-Atlantic and surrounding waters necessitates a reduction in priority of the Indo-Pacific theatres. While Operation Highmast was a political success, it was exceedingly costly and required significant enabling support from the United States without which it is unlikely that the operation would have been possible. While the United Kingdom has significant interests in the region, these will be pursued through defence diplomacy, economic engagement, and opportunistic exploitation of gaps created by the People’s Republic of China. Diego Garcia will, of course, remain vitally important for the United Kingdom and that of the United States—it is an unsinkable element of Britain’s defence posture. The United Kingdom will also pursue its national interests in the Indian and Pacific oceans through the United States by enabling Washington’s operations in the region. For example, the United Kingdom can and indeed should assume greater roles in the Mediterranean Sea and waters around the Middle East. This would enable the United States to reallocate its own force posture before and in response to a crisis in the Pacific over, for example, Taiwan. A concomitant effect of this reprioritisation of theatres is fewer resources for engagement in areas such as in Africa, and Latin and South America. While remaining priorities, activities in these regions will be selective and directly tied to British national interest.
Open-ended conflict stabilisation, reconstruction, or counterinsurgency capabilities
The emphasis on operations in and around the Euro-Atlantic theatre and the accompanying mission thread prioritisation consciously accepts that His Majesty’s Government will not develop forces capable of or designed for open-ended stabilisation, reconstruction, or counterinsurgency operations such as those undertaken after 11 September in Afghanistan and Iraq. The experience of these operations reveals the heavy opportunity cost imposition on readiness and the core defence and deterrence mission set, something this model consciously avoids.
This is a political decision with defence implications. Politically, the British government should accept that this is neither a core competency outside of limited areas of interest such as Northern Ireland, nor in the interests of the United Kingdom to find itself embroiled in costly conflicts. A concomitant trade-off is that the United Kingdom will not have the capacity to support the United States if Washington finds itself in scenarios in the future. This does not preclude short-duration stabilisation or limited crisis management where British interests are directly engaged, such as non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) activities.
A changed role within the ‘special relationship’
The approach outlined in this paper results in a Britain that has a new and different role in the special relationship with the United States. This defence strategy will result in a United Kingdom that is less able to act as a routine hard-power partners in American-led interventions, should they materialise, outside of the Euro-Atlantic theatre.
This is a conscious trade-off, but one that will reposition the United Kingdom within the special relationship in a more meaningful manner. Britain’s value to the United States lies increasingly in its role as NATO’s leading European maritime and enabling power in the North Atlantic and High North, helping to anchor the Euro-Atlantic while the US shifts more attention to the Indo‑Pacific. Indeed, in developing a primarily Euro-Atlantic and maritime focus, the United Kingdom will provide the United States with a form of eastern flank defence to include the vital waterways, subsurface cables, and help develop and ensure the command of communications. This would, in the event of a crisis, allow the United States to reposition forward deployed forces towards other theatres. Backed by the United Kingdom’s regional power projection capacity, the United Kingdom can also provide a backstop in the Mediterranean and Middle East, provided there is political alignment and shared goals and interests.
By delivering a clear strategic focus and operational prioritisation, and resourcing these activities accordingly, the United Kingdom will develop a more credible force and serve as a more reliable partner. Consolidating conventional ground forces in a smaller, but fully resourced and deployable manner will make the British Army more capable than its present incarnation. Ironically, this will also make the United Kingdom more credible within NATO and see London as a leading player within the alliance, and as a result a better partner for the United States (although this is not a central driver of this defence concept, merely a secondary benefit). This approach first supports British national interests, second provides a meaningful and credible contribution to NATO, and finally makes Britain a more viable partner for the United States.
Critical enabling factors for a maritime-first strategy
Logistics, munitions, and sustainment
The conflict in Ukraine demonstrated that assumptions about the rate of consumption and the depth of munitions stockpiles were insufficient for modern conventional warfighting. Conflicts of the future will demand not just deep stockpiles, but also the capacity to rapidly expand production of key weapons and the ability to shift industry from peacetime to wartime in a rapid manner. Industrial surge capacity should be seen not as solely a function of bureaucratic administration or a ‘nice-to-have’, but a key component of deterrence. Additionally, through sea control the United Kingdom can ship and deliver more munitions to forward deployed forces and allies in the event of a conflict. Airborne logistics cannot match the volume of material delivered via ship.
In following the approach outlined in this paper, the United Kingdom will need to develop depth of maritime munitions, subsurface uncrewed systems to support crewed operations, deep stocks of air defence interceptors to support IAMDS operations, and long-range precision strike assets (developed independently and in concert with partners such as Germany) to first support the deterrent mission, and then warfighting operations should the former fail. This is in addition to traditional munitions such as 155mm artillery and 120mm tank rounds, mortars, and small calibre ammunition.
The British government should adopt an inverse ten-year rule, where the assumption is (for planning purposes) that a war could well happen in the next decade and sufficient stocks of materials and munitions are necessarily commensurate with that risk.
Investing in autonomous and uncrewed systems today and at scale risks acquiring capabilities that will be obsolete by the time that they are deployed. The innovation and adaptation cycle between Russia and Ukraine is measured in weeks, not months or years. While a 155mm shell has its own shelf life, its utility is far more consistent than novel technologies like FPVs, the iteration of which rapidly ensures obsolescence. While this is somewhat offset by the software defined nature of many of these systems (e.g. updates can be pushed to operating systems to changing parameters such as angles of attack), there remains an inherent risk given systemic hardware limitations. To offset this risk the United Kingdom should shift to two acquisition strategies.
- Purchasing key interoperable components at scale such as batteries, energetics, and solid-state motors around which evolving capabilities are designed. This will support the ideas of spiral development and constant innovation. This should also seek to leverage, where possible, the software defined nature of many of these systems, as noted above.
- Developing ‘always on’ manufacturing lines capable of scaling production as and when needed, and seeking to leverage commercial-off-the-shelf technologies and dual use components. This will necessitate His Majesty’s Government entering into long-term agreements with industry, but such agreements are necessary to provide industry the confidence needed to invest in the systems and production lines.
A specialised defence industrial base
This new maritime-first approach to British strategy delivers a focusing effect for the defence industrial base (DIB). This leads with enhancing and expanding Britain’s shipbuilding capacity and existing infrastructure. Beyond the construction of the vessels themselves is the supporting ecosystem and infrastructure necessary to deliver and sustain maritime operations.
The United Kingdom’s approach to the DIB should prioritise innovation and technological development. This is done through sensible, smart, and indeed small bets across multiple British companies to see what works and what does not. This also necessitates confronting challenges facing British industry writ large, including high energy costs, excessive regulation, insufficient and inefficient capital allocation, and gaps in the skilled workforce. This is a fundamental change in acquisition mindset. This requires a willingness to accept that some bets will not result in outcomes or wins. Additionally, a willingness to recognise that some systems will become obsolete and will need to be phased out over time is necessary. Not every system or programme will survive the innovation cycle. Indeed, the government must accept and recognise that defence industrial policy is an instrument for specialisation and innovation, not merely a vehicle for keeping legacy programmes alive beyond their useful lives.
This also offers a framework for considering strategic dependencies and risks and continuing and pursuing sovereignty where appropriate. The nuclear enterprise is, naturally, one where external dependency beyond those which already exist (the United States) are not acceptable. Greater dependency is, however, acceptable in areas such as joint deep strike development programmes or in GCAP, for example. The United Kingdom will not, of course, outsource all its weapons production but should seek to develop specialisation where comparative advantages are available, and purchase off-the-shelf where possible.
An approach here is to consider three buckets:
- Production of national and strategic importance;
- Co-production where possible; and
- Off-the-shelf purchases from allies and partners.
This three-way approach will see the United Kingdom develop a robust and specialised DIB that will offer comparative advantages within NATO and on the export market, allow for selective partnership with the United States and NATO allies, and maximise capability per investment. Co-production of long-range and deep-precision strike with Germany and Australia are emblematic of this second way.
Personnel generation and sustainment
The men and women of the military are the most important aspect of His Majesty’s Armed Froces. Translating this truism into action requires resources and attention regardless of the strategic design the United Kingdom choses to adopt. The strategic approach outlined in this paper is skill-intensive—submariners, cyber professionals, electronic warfare experts, special operators, and engineers, etc. This more focused group will require greater investment and commitment from the services to the personnel, their families, and their post-service careers to ensure that recruitment targets are met and sustained. This also necessitates creating an environment where service is an attractive option both through the benefits offers from the military and in valuing service amongst the broader political and societal landscape. For instance, prosecuting soldiers for actions taken under an existing legal framework simply because the politics have changed sets a dangerous precedent and serves to deter would-be service members.[20]
The emphasis here in the maritime domain requires the most significant shift in emphasis not for the Royal Navy specifically, but for the industrial base supporting the maritime industry. Facilities in Clyde, Barrow, Rosyth, Portsmouth, and South Wales, for example, will need increased resourcing and support to mobilise the industrial base and keep highly skilled and highly trained personnel. Creating a favourable and attractive environment for workers in these key industries and developing pathways for mid-career entry and temporary assignment, for example, and post-service pathways into key industries for service members would enhance the talent pool necessary for this strategy.
