Using history to inform UK naval strategy and doctrine

King’s College London's research on naval history and naval strategy during and since the Second World War has influenced the UK’s naval doctrine and helped inform a new policy around aircraft carriers, maximising their flexibility and value. Aircraft carriers are now one of the UK’s most significant military capabilities.

The research was led by Dr Tim Benbow, from the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. He looked at how the role and composition of the Royal Navy has evolved as an instrument of UK policy in peace, crisis and war. This included how naval power has been both understood and used, and how it has adapted in the face of a series of challenges such as technological development, the international strategic context, and UK foreign and defence policy.

The advantages of aircraft carriers  

The findings from this research highlighted how the advantages offered by naval forces made them indispensable to British governments and added significant value across the spectrum of conflict, from peacetime diplomacy, to crisis response, to limited war and up to major conflicts. Even British governments under significant financial pressure have accepted that the UK needs the ability to use the sea for economic, diplomatic and military purposes, which has required a navy with some sophisticated and expensive capabilities. In that vein, historical research reinforced that aircraft carriers offer significant military and diplomatic advantages over land-based air power, in particular the ability to operate in regions where local air bases did not exist or where their use has been denied for political reasons.

Impact 

The analysis drawn from these studies underpinned sustained engagement between King’s, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Royal Navy, providing these institutions with the opportunity to use the past to inform the development of current policy, strategy and doctrine.

In 2013-14 the MOD Strategy Team was tasked to recommend the future operating pattern for the new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, the biggest and most advanced warships ever built by the Royal Navy, and hubs from which military aircraft can take off and land. To support this work, the MOD commissioned a paper on the historical role of British aircraft carriers and the air group that operated from them. Later published as Corbett Paper No.13, it analysed the contentious debate over the utility of aircraft carriers and the ways in which they have been used effectively, including during bitter post-war arguments such as those of the ‘radical reviews’ of 1953-54 and the debates from the mid-1960s. By highlighting the importance of aircraft carriers for UK military capability, Dr Benbow’s Corbett Paper No.13 informed a new strategy for the use of new aircraft carriers. This involved having at least one aircraft carrier always available and with aircraft ready for use in order to maximise both flexibility and value to the UK. The results of this work can be seen today in the continued growth and delivery of carrier capabilities.

Importantly, Dr Benbow’s research influenced keystone publications Fighting Instructions and UK Maritime Power, the principal publication for UK naval concepts and doctrine. These publications represent the fundamental principles by which the Royal Navy and Royal Marines operate in support of national objectives. Dr Benbow acted as the lead academic advisor for the 5th edition in 2016-2017 of UK Maritime Power. This drew on his research to refine the Navy’s understanding of key concepts and to change how they are explained and taught. According to the officer who led the revision, “Benbow’s advice and counsel was central in revising the hierarchy of the concepts, and importantly distinguishing between the fundamental principles of maritime power from tactical and operational concepts.”