‘Strike’: The point of the spear of expeditionary warfare
‘Strike’: The point of the spear of expeditionary warfare
Open Briefing | No. SDR-06.2024
This is the sixth in a series of Open Briefings to the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) from the Council on Geostrategy. Our aim is to analyse ten key questions facing the Defence Review Team, from the vantage point of how the United Kingdom’s (UK) adversaries and strategic competitors see us (an approach known as Opposing Forces, or ‘OPFOR’). We will avoid euphemisms and address the challenges head-on. After holding an expert seminar, we will formally submit the briefings at the end of September. Our contributions are deliberately candid – and we invite comment and challenge from all quarters. This sixth Open Briefing appraises Britain’s ability to strike enemies:
As an island power, the UK has always been expeditionary and able to strike from the sea, or the air, with appropriate levels of force. There were several phases in the UK’s approach.
Sea Power. Once its internal consolidation as a nation state was complete, Britain prioritised its navy in order to keep its adversaries at bay. This privileging of the navy meant that, in time, it could project power across the world’s oceans and profit immeasurably from internationalised trade. The sheer size of its merchant fleet and the Royal Navy meant that it could conduct maritime and limited littoral operations around the globe. Its priority was to protect its commerce and entrepots on foreign shores. Small land-based security cordons could be sustained from the sea, but by the middle of the 18th century, the British found themselves drawn into continental interiors. The country therefore developed small expeditionary forces which could be deployed rapidly to any threatened point and overmatch local enemy defences. Protected by the firepower of Royal Navy warships, and benefiting from the mobility offered by the sea, the UK could sustain both a worldwide commercial and a security apparatus.
Air Power. The advent of air power in the early 20th century offered a cheaper alternative to large-scale land garrisons through air policing. The Royal Air Force could also provide a bomber fleet with which to project power in the event of conflict. At the same time, the Royal Navy developed naval aviation which had the added advantage of worldwide mobility for aircraft carrier platforms which could strike enemy shipping or deep into hostile nations.
Nuclear Armaments. After 1945, the advent of nuclear weapons launched from fast jets and then long range missile systems gave new meaning to the idea of strike through strategic air power. It was now possible to project force into the heart of hostile powers territory with devastating effect. Britain’s nuclear capability meant that it was now possible to maintain a posture of deterrence to defend the UK homeland and its allies.
Precision Strike. After the Cold War, terrorist and insurgent organisations could be interdicted with precision strike from air and sea launched platforms, including uncrewed but remotely piloted air systems. In defence, British aircraft and ships could also intercept and defeat incoming hostile missiles and drones, protecting both themselves, their allies, and their partners.
Automated Systems. The rapid evolution of automated, uncrewed, air, maritime, and subsurface systems means that the UK can invest in a variety of cheap and numerous strike weapon systems. Instead of a few, expensive, and exquisite platforms, Britain has the opportunity to move to a new regime of ‘small, cheap, and precise’ ordnance and associated sensing capabilities.
Alongside this high-intensity capability, the UK can continue to deploy smaller expeditionary elements appropriate to the task and escalate that force projection as it requires. This might be called the ‘new British way of war’. Stealthy Special Forces will lead the penetration of hostile territories while National Cyber Force operations permeate through their electronic systems. Meanwhile, a cloud of sensing assets, from space down to ground level provide the intelligence picture component commanders require to unhinge and dismantle hostile air defence and area denial defences. Secure communications enabled by quantum encryption and the filtration of data by Artificial Intelligence (AI) augment the picture available to the commands at each level of the operation.
Orchestrating fires, directly from sensors in pre-designated zones, with mobile land and air forces striking against individual targets which are attempting to conceal themselves among civilians in other zones, the British Armed Forces will progress through an area with precision. The expenditure of ordnance is carefully calibrated, reducing the burden on the logistics chain and making the system of supply less vulnerable.
This is the new theory of war, a force of precision, speed, secure communications, agility, and lethality. The challenge for the SDR is realising this ambition.
Recommendations for the Defence Review Team:
Ensure all services are integrated: into a single sensor, fires, and communication grid, to be networked for multi-domain operations (MDO).
Accelerate enhancements in software and AI: to ensure a form of encryption that quantum enabled decryption could not keep up with.
Abolish the blockers: Terminate the rigid, ‘process’ culture of the UK defence and unnecessary tribalism between the armed services, the careerism of ambitious middle ranking leaders, and vested interests of the veterans’ lobby and replace it with the identity that the United States (US) Marine Corps has managed to achieve. In combat settings, the British Armed Forces cooperate extremely well, thanks in part to a unified staff college system, but diminishing and therefore competitive budgeting has generated an unhealthy and continued rivalry.
Embrace new technological opportunities for network warfare: Delaying modernisation programmes will, as in the past, increase costs over the long term, put jobs at risk, but, crucially, increase the risk to the armed forces personnel in the operational space. It also increases the risk that inevitable technological diffusion will weaken the UK’s third offset advantage.
Prioritise effects: Britain’s capability priorities are to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent, possess the ability to strike at range, ensure survivability of its forces, provide secure communications to protect and deliver lethal force, effect a decisive outcome, and be able to endure a sustained and protracted war.
Accelerate munitions production: Stocks are only reportedly sufficient for approximately eight days at the level of intensity seen in Ukraine. Manufacturing of new munitions and expansion of capacity takes a minimum of three years, and up to ten years to reach required levels.
Continue to invest in intelligence, advanced computing, AI, and communications for early warning, defence, security, and economic interests.
Develop technical education, staff, institutions, and scholars, to equip defence with the personnel and systems needed for multi-domain strike.
Combine technological development with the advanced technology nations, in the US, Japan, Australia, and Europe, to sustain a third offset advantage.
Organise for rapid decision making and decision support to the primary mission (defence design for decision, not process [campaigning], which will always change and demand a dilution of resources). Build no institution one would not need in wartime.
Assert operational security at innovation sites in electromagnetic and digital systems which are at risk from security threats. UK universities have large numbers of foreign students which are used as the means to acquire British intellectual property and conduct intelligence operations in sensitive scientific areas.
Dr Rob Johnson is Director of the Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was Director of the Secretary of State’s Office of Net Assessment and Challenge in the Ministry of Defence.
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