Think tank urges unified maritime strategy for UK defence

A new analysis from the Council on Geostrategy argues that Britain risks falling short of its maritime ambitions unless recent defence strategies are better aligned and translated into concrete capability, industrial delivery, and sustained investment.

In a memorandum published this week by Britain’s World, the Council on Geostrategy’s online magazine, Professor Basil Germond of Lancaster University examines what he describes as the “maritime dimension” of the UK’s 2025 strategic triad.

The paper assesses how three major defence documents published this year interact with one another: the Strategic Defence Review, the National Security Strategy, and the Defence Industrial Strategy.

The memorandum frames seapower as central to British security, economic resilience, and global influence. It argues that maritime issues now cut across traditional defence concerns, from the protection of sea lines of communication and undersea cables to freedom of navigation and the projection of military power. According to the analysis, the UK’s dependence on maritime trade, energy infrastructure, and data cables leaves it increasingly exposed to disruption from state and non state actors, environmental pressures, and sub threshold activity at sea.

The National Security Strategy is presented as establishing the core strategic rationale. It links Britain’s prosperity and security directly to global maritime supply chains and undersea infrastructure, casting the Royal Navy and the wider national maritime enterprise as frontline defenders of economic stability and territorial integrity. The strategy commits to protecting territorial waters, defending critical undersea infrastructure, and maintaining freedom of navigation through contested regions, while also emphasising the importance of sovereign maritime capabilities and domestic shipbuilding.

The Strategic Defence Review, although published earlier, is described as translating those broad objectives into force design and operational requirements. It calls for a balanced fleet that integrates aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, submarines, amphibious ships, and auxiliaries, alongside continued support for the nuclear deterrent. The review also highlights emerging requirements such as integrated undersea sensors, agile mine countermeasures, quantum secure communications, and new classes of autonomous and uncrewed maritime platforms.

According to the memorandum, the Defence Industrial Strategy completes the triad by focusing on how these capabilities should be designed, built, and sustained within the UK. It emphasises sovereign supply chains, ring fenced innovation funding, and regional Defence Growth Deals aimed at anchoring skills and industrial capacity in key shipbuilding and defence hubs across the country. International partnerships such as AUKUS and Five Eyes are also identified as essential to sustaining maritime innovation.

Despite the apparent coherence of these three documents, the paper argues that they remain insufficiently integrated. While each outlines clear ambitions within its own remit, the memorandum suggests they lack a unifying delivery framework capable of turning aspiration into deployable capability. In particular, it highlights gaps in how budgets, industrial capacity, skills, and technological development are coordinated across government, industry, and academia.

Read it here.

Britain’s World, published by the Council on Geostrategy, positions the memorandum as part of a wider effort to shape debate on the UK’s international posture and long term defence priorities, particularly at a time of growing maritime competition and strategic uncertainty.