Some may argue that the last 75 years has seen a steady erosion of the predominance of the single services within Defence. From the formation of the MoD in 1946 (HM Government, 1946), to the establishment of the CDS role and the Defence Board 12 years later (HM Government, 1958), the unification of the MoD under a single secretary of state in 1964 (HM Government, 1963), and, finally, the creation of a unified defence staff (MoD, 1984), the evolution of the central organization of Defence has progressively moved authority away from the single services. These changes have also driven a gradual reduction in the dominance of the service chiefs, since the high watermark of their defence policy and global strategy papers of the early 1950s (see Chiefs of Staffs, 1950; and Chiefs of Staff, 1952). Today’s service chiefs are not members of the Defence Board, and their direct access to the prime minister is no longer explicitly stated in the DOM. Nevertheless, the post-2010 SDSR DRP did expand considerably the single services’ responsibility for the acquisition and maintenance of military capability (MoD, 2011a, pp 36–43). The common shorthand across Defence for this disaggregation of responsibility from MoD head office to the single services, which was explained fully in Chapter 2, is the delegated model. The processes and procedures that underpin the delegated model, and the role played within them by the service chiefs and the single services, are fundamental to understanding why the UK has the military capability that is has.

This final data chapter explores the role played by the MoD and the single services in the translation of strategic direction into military capability. The first half of the chapter concentrates on the individual nature of the single services and the changing roles of the service chiefs. While the organizational construct of Defence has been regularly revised over the research period, the central framework of three separate military establishments that each concentrate on one of the three warfighting environments of maritime, land and air has remained constant.