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equired, what are they for? As a Board of the Admiralty paper stated in 1957, ‘Naval planning for Global War has not so far resolved the problems involved in conducting maritime operations from this country after a megaton attack’. 40 Even the concept of a ‘broken backed’ war - which envisaged that the nation would continue to function, and require massive reinforcement from across the Atlantic after a first strike – was losing currency in the thermonuclear age. 41 Thus in less than a decade, the costly nature of sea control coupled with the emerging nuclear threat fundamentally undermined the case, at the political level, for commerce defence as a core role. This had a far reaching, and recurring impact: the disaggregation of the protection of maritime trade from core Naval business removed at a stroke the ‘instinctive’ arguments that the RN had long relied upon – that the nation’s economic security in peacetime, and very existence in wartime, was underpinned by a strong merchant marine, which in turn, relied on a strong Navy for its protection. Mahan was right when he noted ‘nor is it easy to conceive what broad military use [navies] can subserve that at all compares with the protection and destruction of trade’. 42 Generations of Naval officers would struggle to make a resonant argument thereafter.The political disenchantment with the protection of commerce endured. The Sandys review may have marked the bleakest vision in which conventional forces were of questionable utility, with the tide only began to turn in favour of stronger conventional forces with the arrival of the incoming Labour government in 1964, and the realisation that some form of limited war may form a precursor to nuclear attack. Nevertheless, the RN did not do well – 1966 defence estimates confirmed cancellation of the new carrier and the eventual run down of the carrier capability in toto, to be replaced by land-based air. Again, the Navy had struggled to make its case to the then Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, who later stated ‘the Navy argued its case for the carrier badly. I had to keep sending its papers back to be more persuasive’. 43 The RN had reaped what they had sown: the rebranding of the aircraft carrier as a tool for policing far-flung imperial outposts to win over Sandys in 1957 – seen as such a coup at the time - meant that with the end of the East of Suez role, their retention was impossible to justify. Although the 1970s were a period of relative affluence for the RN, doctrinally the period reflected an increasingly continental focus for conventional forces. Philosophically, the menace of the USSR had driven policy away from the Corbett/Mahan models, with their emphasis on trade and maritime power, towards a firmly continental outlook. Politically as well, commitment to the continent was an overriding treaty obligation. So by 1982, the protection of commerce had become a virtual irrelevance for John Nott, the Secretary of State: he tended to agree with his scientific advice that cast serious doubts on the efficacy of convoy given Soviet submarine numbers and capabilities, even for the protection of reinforcement shipping from 40 Moore, The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons, 86 41 Richard Moore, The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001), 64 42 A Hattendorf, ed, Mahan on Naval Strategy, xxvii 43 Denis Healey, The Time Of My Life (London: Penguin Group, 1989), 276 7
the USA. 44 Echoing the frustration of the 1950s, the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, did not agree. In a ‘State of the Nation’ newsletter in November 1981 he wrote: ‘…the weight of scientific advice – unsubstantiated by any actual war or operational experience – was singularly unhelpful’, 45 going on to define both the protection of reinforcement and resupply shipping, as well as UK and NATO merchant shipping, as core roles, 46 despite its absence in either the Nott review. 47 While the Falklands campaign may have been a temporary reprieve, it in no way altered the fundamentally land-centric, continental view of European and British defence. This presented a real problem to Naval planners when the Cold War ended. If, even with the array of threatening sea denial forces, a submarine fleet measured in the hundreds and the powerful anti-ship missile surface fleet of the Soviet Navy arrayed against Britain, the RN couldn’t persuade Ministers that the threat to commerce was a priority, there was little chance that the argument would gain traction with the disappearance of the Soviet threat. So, as in 1957, there was only one option: find a new argument. By the Strategic Defence Review of 1997, this was articulated as the Maritime Contribution to Joint Operations (MCJO). 48 Power from the sea finally replaced power at sea as the principle force driver for the RN – and arguably, continues to do so. Nevertheless, this was a brilliant achievement. With the trend in the 1980s towards a heavy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) focus, the disappearance of the Soviet submarine threat left the RN’s core capabilities looking increasingly outdated. Quite simply, the RN had to find a narrative which had resonance with the other services in the new, Joint environment, or it would not survive. This has continued to evolve: submarines became strategic Intelligence collection platforms, also capable of delivering Joint Fires via the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM); the Invincible class light aircraft carrier, which had proven its worth largely for Fleet protection in the Falklands, became a Strike Carrier; and even the 4.5 inch gun on the front of the RN’s frigates and destroyers was remarketed as a ‘joint fire’. ‘Jointery’, in many ways, saved the RN from sliding into insignificance, but the cost was high: the strategic narrative of the RN was subsumed by the hard capability requirements of the Joint campaign which placed primacy on contribution to land effect and thus had little room for the funding of traditionally ‘core ‘ naval roles, in particular, sea control, unless directly concerned with defending SLOCs for the delivery and resupply of the land force. Consequently, the RN has also maintained a circumspect view since the 1990s. This doctrinal ambivalence is apparent in the first edition of BMD, published in 1995, in which ‘The 44 Grove, The Royal Navy since 1815, 244 45 Letter from Admiral Sir Henry Leach, 2600/85 dated 13 November 1981. 46 Ibid 47 Cmnd 8529, Statement on the Defence Estimates 1982 (London: HMSO, 1982), 24 48 Cmd 3999, Strategic Defence Review: Modern Forces for the Modern World (London: HMSO, 1998), 321 8
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90 percent by sea - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

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