Chapter 1

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1Maritime Doctrinein ContextIn the Royal Navy, the existence of formal doctrine can be traced back tothe original edition of The Fighting Instructions, issued to the Fleet in1672, and to a code of tactical signals promulgated during theCommonwealth in 1653. The development of maritime tactical doctrine isthus a well-established process going back over 300 years. The RoyalNavy’s current operational and tactical doctrine is still promulgated in TheFighting Instructions and a wide range of supporting publications. Theseare also subjected to regular review as technology and equipment isdeveloped and enters into service and as a consequence of bothoperational experience and the analysis of operational and exerciseperformance. By its nature, much of this doctrine is specialised, isessentially the domain of those involved in operational and tacticaldecision-making and is not very widely disseminated. Indeed, manyaspects of operational and tactical doctrine are sensitive and are covered byappropriate security classifications.However, once we move up the hierarchy, from the tactical and operationallevels to the military- and grand-strategic levels, doctrine becomes less theexclusive business of the deep military specialists and more the legitimateinterest of any with a professional, academic, political or social stake in theuse of military power. There is also an especial need to recognise that, forreasons of motivation, morale, commitment and professional operationalunderstanding, junior military ranks need to have access to an1
BRITISH MARITIME DOCTRINE / THIRD EDITIONunderstanding and interpretation of the strategic context in which theirprofession is expected to operate.The emergence of military-strategic level maritime doctrine can be tracedback to the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentiethcentury. Arguably, until the American Alfred Thayer Mahan applied hismind to the subject, there was little, if any, structured, academic thoughtgiven to the attributes of maritime power and how it might best be appliedin support of national interest. If one accepts the dictionary definition of‘doctrine’ as “that which is taught”, then the conclusions of Mahan andthose of a number of distinguished British maritime strategic thinkers couldbe credited with the doctrinal label. In the UK, perhaps none was soinfluential as Sir Julian Corbett, in particular the views he expressed in hisprofoundly important book Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. If,however, we restrict ‘doctrine’ to that which is officially promulgated, theonly higher level maritime doctrine that has been acknowledged officiallyin the UK has been that contained in the various editions of BR 1806. Thiswas originally called The Naval War Manual, its last appearance underthat title being in 1969 (previous editions dating from 1948 and 1958).In 1995, the new BR 1806 was published under a different title: TheFundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (this became BritishMaritime Doctrine in the Second Edition). The new BR 1806complemented similar publications published by the Army and the RAF toform a stable of documents dealing with military-strategic level doctrine.Eventually, in 1996, the individual Services’ doctrinal books were joined bythe military-strategic level joint doctrine publication, British DefenceDoctrine (BDD), the second edition of which was published in 2001. BDDprovides the higher level framework from which operational level jointdoctrine cascades.A Joint ApproachMaritime doctrine as discussed in this book is not simply ‘naval doctrine’.While this edition of BR 1806 has been edited at the Maritime WarfareCentre under the auspices of the Naval Staff in the Ministry of Defence andis, in that sense, a single-Service statement of doctrine, it is not, nor could it2
Page 1: HMS OCEAN, with Support Helicopters
Page 5 and 6: BRITISH MARITIME DOCTRINE / THIRD E

Chapter 1

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?