News, Articles and Comment

Ed. The author suggests an expanded international role for the RN’s subsurface surveillance capability, particularly with regard to building capacity to deter PLAN hybrid operations against Taiwan’s communications network. A 10 minute read.

Ed. The Indo-Pacific theatre presents new challenges for the RN that recent UK strategic reviews may have optimistically underestimated. The authors contend that future RN involvement will have to rely on a combination of deterrence and cultivating alliances. A 5 minute read.

Ed. In his analysis of strategic lessons to be drawn from the Second World War [40/4. p. 432], Captain S. W. Roskill, RN, wrote, “It took much ‘sad experience’ to show that Malta could have been properly defended and could have been kept in use as a base.” Roger Plumtree reconsiders the Maltese narrow margin with the question in mind: was Roskill wrong? A 15 minute read.

Ed. Jeremy Blackham highlights the weaknesses of Britain’s current strategic assumptions, demonstrated by the failure of the Western powers to prevent the Ukraine War despite ample warning.

Ed. The author responds to Sir Jeremy Blackham’s recent article concerning the future of Britain’s nuclear and conventional deterrence.

Ed. The author takes to task the need for public engagement by the RN, if a sceptical public is to be convinced of the vital importance of the maritime nature of the British Way of War. A 10 minute read.

Ed. Defence engagement is a vital component of any influence and deterrence strategy. But how well is defence engagement situated in the defence review and service doctrine literature? The author argues more can be done to explicitly define defence engagement as a core RN role. A 20 minute read.

Ed. David Waters concluded his 1995-1996 series of reflections on the Battle of the Atlantic [84/2 & 84/3] by returning to the question of convoy ‘laws’ and his concern that ideological assumptions and abstract thought concerning future operations would once again take precedence over the scientific conclusions he had reached forty years before. A 25 minute read.

Ed. In 1995 staff historian David Waters began publishing in the NR [83/4, p. 349] a series of commentaries on the Battle of the Atlantic, a subject he had mastered while working on The Defeat of the Enemy Attack upon Shipping (1957). He was inspired in this case by the renewed naval history discourse, evident in a review of S. Howarth and D. Law, eds., The Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945 (1994), the International Naval Conference on the battle held in Liverpool in 1993, and related writings in the NR [83/1, p. 84 & 83/2, p. 159]. Republished here as part of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. A 15 minute read.