Most studies into post-Second World War UK defence matters spend at least some time examining comparisons between what the armed forces had and currently have in terms of manpower and equipment. Considering the substantial reductions that have occurred during this period, that is unsurprising. As an example, when Duncan Sandys was deliberating on the contraction of the armed forces in 1957, the combined size of the three services was approximately 690,000 (MoD, 1957, p 7). The start point for the 2021 IR was a full-time trained strength of 135,444 (Dempsey, 2021, p 5). For a statistic closer to home, when I left regular service in 2019, the RAF had an active fast jet fleet of 121 aircraft (GOV.UK, 2020e). When I joined 35 years earlier, it had more fighters and bombers than that just based in Lincolnshire (Mason, 1982, pp 142–3). Of course, no-one is suggesting the English Electric Lightning, which was the RAF’s first supersonic jet fighter and entered service in 1960 (1982, p 13), is comparable to its namesake, the RAF’s newest and most advanced fast jet the Lockheed Martin Lightning II. Nevertheless, since the 1957 defence review, the UK’s armed forces have seen a regular decline in personnel and equipment numbers. From the end of the Cold War percentage reductions in front-line strength have been more substantial. However, as Keith Hartley (2011, p 12) observed, the published data do not allow any assessment of these smaller forces and the impact on aggregate defence capability.

The defence budget is used to procure and maintain military capability through expenditure on each of the MoD’s eight DLODs. Clearly some of these, for example equipment, personnel and infrastructure, attract more cost than others, such as doctrine and concepts and organization. The DLODs are the inputs that enable Defence’s outputs; however, pinning down exactly what Defence’s outputs are is no easy task. Hartley (2011, p 11) suggested that UK defence output is a multi-dimensional concept embracing the protection of the nation’s citizens and their assets, its economy and economic infrastructure, its national institutions and its national interests.

In a perfect world, the four-step translation of strategic direction into military capability model should deliver a force structure able to implement extant defence policy. However, the analysis laid out in this book shows that this does not always happen. Not unexpectedly, there is no single reason why. The model is affected by untold factors, some of which are initiated by the government or defence decision makers themselves, others are determined by outside agencies. These include: politicians; elements of MoD head office, the single services and delivery agents; the defence industry; the media; the public; allies; and potential state and non-state adversaries. Except for the inputs of potential adversaries, most of the factors that these agencies introduce are likely to be in pursuit of valid and reasonable effects; nevertheless, they all add complexity to the model and make the task of providing fit-for-purpose armed forces considerably more challenging.

We know the translation of strategic direction into military capability is an open-ended activity. The introduction of uncontrollable and disruptive factors also make it complex and intractable. It has all the hallmarks of a wicked problem (see Rittel and Webber, 1973; and Head, 2008). No single action will resolve all the adverse effects of the events and influences that impact strategic direction into military capability activity; moreover, any attempt to mitigate the complexity that these factors introduce must be mindful of the following two points. In the first instance, an improvement in one aspect of the activity may well lead to a regression elsewhere. For example, several senior officials believed the freedoms within which the delegated model were implemented allowed the single services to introduce customized processes that best tackled the specific capability management demands within their environment. However, that resulted in considerable inefficiency within MoD head office and the delivery agents who then had to align with four bespoke operating models.

The first spark of an idea for this book was generated well over 30 years ago when I was still an extremely young pilot officer. It was the summer of 1986, a year after my graduation from the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, and I was commanding a small supply flight at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. Coltishall was home to a wing of Jaguar aircraft and my office overlooked the airfield’s single metalled runway, allowing me regularly to watch the Anglo-French ground attack aircraft take to the air on their seemingly never-ending training sorties. The Cold War was still the RAF’s main effort, and all three squadrons based at Coltishall were earmarked to deploy forward to mainland Europe in the event of hostilities breaking out with the Soviet Union.

The forward deployment of the Jaguars would leave the station free to be used by North American based United States Air Force or Air National Guard aircraft whose war role was to reinforce Western Europe. This concept of co-located operating bases was regularly practised, and that summer was no exception. Numbers 6 and 54(F) squadrons had been deployed to the Royal Danish Air Force Base at Tirstrup, leaving room at Coltishall for a USAF F-16 Fighting Falcon wing to exercise its reinforcement plans. As my war role was with the third Jaguar squadron – 41 Squadron – which was assigned to a photo-reconnaissance role in northern Norway, I had remained at Coltishall.

I still remember vividly the morning after the Fighting Falcons arrived. It was hot and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. The first wave of Jaguars from 41 Squadron had just taken off – a pair of two ships labouring down the runway, struggling to unstick before reaching the piano keys in the far distance. Nothing new there. Then, a couple of minutes later, a single F-16 taxied out onto the runway. The roar from its single Pratt and Whitney F110 turbofan jet engine grew louder and louder as the pilot opened the throttle wide, the aircraft tyres straining against their brakes. Then, when it seemed the noise couldn’t possibly get any louder, the pilot released his brakes.

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.

At the highest level, strategic direction is provided by senior figures within the UK government. Speeches and interviews given, as well as newspaper and journal articles written by prime ministers, chancellors of the exchequer, foreign and defence secretaries, provide insight and guidance on how the incumbent government is approaching its defence obligations. More recently, with the convergence of defence and security through the articulation of a strategy for national security, this list has grown to include other ministers, for example the home secretary and the Cabinet secretary. In addition, there are a number of non-elected officials who also write and speak on defence and security matters in an official capacity, the most notable being the National Security Advisor (NSA), the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and the service chiefs, as well as the permanent secretaries to the ministries served by the politicians listed above. What flows from this verbal and written direction is defence and security policy, which, in simple terms, is what the government chooses to do, or not do, about a particular defence-and/or security-related issue or problem. The government has a generic approach to the formulation of policy; however, there are peculiarities specific to departments, including those responsible for defence and security. An obvious example of this is the defence review process.

Military capability is a term that has only recently been added to the UK defence lexicon. In 1997, the newly elected Labour government introduced the Smart Procurement Initiative (SPI) intended to deliver equipment ‘faster, cheaper and better’ (Taylor, 2003, p 7). This initiative was a significant theme in the 1998 SDR and was subsequently re-launched as ‘smart acquisition’ in October 2000. The currency of smart acquisition was military capability, defined as ‘an operational outcome or effect that users of equipment need to achieve’ (MoD, 2002, p 51). Since then, the process for the acquisition of military capability has developed significantly and is now cohered through a formal list of Defence Lines of Development (DLOD), which were endorsed by the defence management board in 2005 (MoD, 2005b, p 1). The 2015 version of the MoD’s operating model defined military capability as ‘the combination of equipment, trained personnel and support that gives the armed forces the capacity to achieve the tasks they are given’ (MoD, 2015b, p 8).

Existing analyses of early defence reviews are dominated by the impact that economics has had on decision making. John Baylis (1986b, p 443) cited the titles of several books and journal articles on the subject to reinforce what he believed was a commonly held, or conventional, view that a continuous process of contraction and decline was the most apt description of the trajectory of post-Second World War UK defence policy. This historiographic orthodoxy that economic constraints on defence expenditure precipitated the UK’s post-1945 relative decline remains the dominant paradigm. In the academic examinations that followed all the Cold War defence reviews, cutbacks in capability were regularly attributed to the deterioration of the economy, which forced the government of the day into reducing defence expenditure (see Chichester and Wilkinson,1982, pp x– xvi; and Rees, 1989, p 218). For some, even the first consideration of nuclear weapons in the 1957 defence review was influenced by economic factors (see Dorman, 2001c, pp 188– 92). Specifically, Martin Navias (1989, p 408) asserted that ‘[in 1957] nuclear strategic thinking was very much a secondary consideration in a larger formula that sought major financial savings’. Evidence that this thinking endured throughout the Cold War period can be found via both commentators (Healey and Cross, 1969, p 15) and practitioners (Jackson, 1990, pp 3– 22). Revealingly, in 1975, defence secretary Roy Mason (1975, p 218) observed that ‘the imperatives of economics, no matter how illogical this may be, do in fact exercise a commanding influence over the level of the resources which we can devote to defence’.

There are alternative points of view. Recalling the consequence of the UK’s tardy rearmament decision in the 1930s (Dunbabin, 1975), John Slessor recognized the significance of the prevailing economic situation in the 1950s, but sounded the following words of caution: