Britain’s maritime enablers: Harmonising strategy, capability and industry
The Memorandum | No. 46.2025
This Memorandum consists of two parts. Part 1 provides the maritime and policy context; Part 2 describes the challenges, goals and implementation.
The trilateral approach described in Part 1 of this Memorandum aims to achieve a whole-of-government approach across defence, business, energy, science and technology, transport, foreign affairs and other policy areas to deter aggression in or from the maritime domain, protect trade routes, and uphold the global rules-based maritime order against attacks and disruptions by malign actors, including those at the sub-threshold level.
The National Security Strategy (NSS), Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) attempt to converge on achieving a coherence around both general defence and focused maritime ambitions. However, there is a lack of alignment and agreement about how these aspirations can be met, even though they can only be delivered through a set of actions, goals and values shared across the three primary defence stakeholders: government, industry and academia.
At the core is the alignment of strategy, capability design and industrial delivery, backed by sustained investment, a highly skilled workforce, cutting-edge innovation, resilient supply chains, public-private partnerships, and collaboration with the United Kingdom’s (UK) allies and partners. Local communities, academia (for both research and skills training and development) and industrial hubs are key enablers. His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s aim is to maximise the ‘defence dividend’ for local communities and, reciprocally, to benefit from a whole-of-society approach to defence whereby industry, academia and the British population at large are active actors in the country’s defence.
Staying ahead of adversaries depends on agile innovation, both reactively and proactively…To achieve this aim, partnerships with British universities and SMEs are key to translating emerging technologies into seafaring capabilities in months rather than in years.
Sovereignty over critical assets requires a sustained investment in shipbuilding capabilities, such as those in Barrow-in-Furness, Plymouth, Glasgow and other regional hubs with guaranteed workload pipelines fed by a skilled workforce. This approach has the potential to reinforce local economies, provide predictable order books for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), favour spillover innovation and yield export-ready naval systems with the potential to recirculate revenues into Research and Development (R&D).
Advanced maritime capabilities also require skills and capabilities beyond the building of ship and submarine platforms. Power plants, electronics, sensors and effectors have equal roles to play, and with the advent of complex algorithmic-based processing, digital skills and the application of digital technologies are an increasingly common element in maritime capabilities.
Staying ahead of adversaries depends on agile innovation, both reactively and proactively. This requires investment in both targeted and foundational R&D, whether direct energy weapons and uncrewed systems or quantum sensors, digital twinning and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled Command and Control (C2) systems. To achieve this aim, partnerships with British universities and SMEs are key to translating emerging technologies into seafaring capabilities in months rather than in years.
The challenges: Industrial capacity, workforce shortages and geopolitics
In terms of industrial capacity constraints, the UK’s shipyards and specialist suppliers face several challenges. There is limited dry-dock and slipway availability, while subcontractor shortages for high-grade steels, specialist alloys, microelectronics and energetic materials create single-point vulnerabilities. Surge production hinges on untested political and governance mechanisms, as well as on industry’s ability to expand workforce and tooling rapidly.
There is a limited pool of nuclear-qualified technicians, submarine systems engineers and undersea robotics specialists. Naval defence industries are in competition with commercial shipping, offshore energy and the global defence sector for the same skillsets.
Skills shortages and talent retention pose another problem. Complex naval platforms, both traditional and non-traditional (such as uncrewed vessels), and weapon systems demand specific expertise. However, there is a limited pool of nuclear-qualified technicians, submarine systems engineers and undersea robotics specialists. Naval defence industries are in competition with commercial shipping, offshore energy and the global defence sector for the same skillsets. Additionally, lengthy training pipelines to generate a highly qualified workforce clash with urgent delivery schedules, risking gap-filled roles rather than fully qualified staffing.
Supply chain resilience and geopolitical risks present a third issue for British defence to contend with. Global shocks, malign disruptions and strategic dependencies endanger supply chains, as well as introducing uncertainty into joint programmes. Challenges include reliance on single-source overseas suppliers for semiconductors and composite materials; vulnerability of undersea cables and critical maritime infrastructure to state-sponsored sabotage or natural disasters; and gaps in good governance of export controls and evolving trade policies.
Charting the future course
The UK’s maritime ambitions demand more than policy statements. They require political will, cross-government implementation and a shared vision between Whitehall, shipyards, the innovation sector at large (including universities) and regional communities to forge continuous loops of strategy, design, production and sustainment, – in turn powered by innovation, underpinned by skills and safeguarded by resilient supply chains. To develop these, the following recommendations apply:
Addressing industrial bottlenecks: Addressing shipyards’ finite assets and generating a skilled workforce will be key. Wages, career progression and the prestige of serving on a cutting-edge programme can determine whether the national and global talent market experts anchor in Britain. Likewise, investment in apprenticeships, graduate schemes, reskilling pathways and a ‘defence skills passport’ should enable workforce mobility across defence and industry.
Forging a maritime ecosystem: Seapower is as much a societal enterprise as a defence one. Implementing the three strategies rests on the cultivation of a ‘maritime ecosystem’ which connects government, academia, industry and communities for innovation to generate tangible capability quickly while also securing ‘defence dividends’ which directly improve local communities’ wellbeing. Defence and the broader British economy should adopt, and would benefit from, a community approach combining regional capabilities – such as those found in Barrow-in-Furness, Plymouth, Rosyth, Faslane and Glasgow – with national supply chains across defence, academia and industry.
Addressing sea blindness: No seapower project can succeed without stable budgets and political clarity. Here, the discursive dimension proves vital. Sea blindness must be addressed. Defence spending should be understood as an investment in economic and societal security, not just in military apparatus. Public understanding of the importance of the sea to the UK’s security and prosperity needs to improve. Current debates often fixate on platforms and kinetic effects (e.g., deploying assets to project power or deny access) while overlooking the broader spectrum of threats. Adversaries increasingly combine military force with economic leverage and soft power to achieve strategic ends. A focus on the naval dimensions of geopolitics should be complemented by an understanding of non-traditional risks and sub-threshold threats.
Making supply chains resilient: Geopolitics and a vulnerable supply chain mean that dependence on foreign microelectronics or rare-earth composites put Britain at risk. Risk management requires strategic stockpiling, allied interoperability on spare parts and dual-source qualification. HM Government should prioritise risk forecasting and planning, which requires regular wargaming in order to test supply chain stress points and ensure rapid scaling-up readiness. Similarly, it is necessary to stress test surge plans across shipyards and munitions plants.
New governance structures and mechanisms: The whole-of-society approach to defence requires strong governance mechanisms for delivery. Existing structures to oversee delivery pipelines, such as the National Armaments Director or the Defence Industrial Joint Council, would benefit from a centralised mechanism to ensure maritime programmes are delivered on time, integrated with industry, and aligned with national strategy and societal aspirations.
A suggestion to address these needs is the establishment of a ‘Maritime Delivery Office’. This would be tasked with stabilising multi-year budgets, expanding and modernising the industrial base, fast-tracking skills pipelines, diversifying suppliers, streamlining innovation contracts, and reinforcing governance and delivery benchmarking mechanisms within a single, empowered office.
Conclusion
To draw an overall conclusion to both parts of this Memorandum, HM Government’s three strategies offer a rare ‘strategy-to-supply’ continuum. However, this will translate into long-term strategic advantage to deliver effects at and from the sea only if there is a coordinated, enduring approach to strategy, force design and procurement, alongside industrial delivery and societal benefits.
Prof. Basil Germond is the Co-Director of Lancaster University’s Security Research Institute and a Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion.
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