the higher lens : 6
From Sea to Strategy: What the Royal Navy Taught Me About Modern Security, Climate Threats, and Intelligence Gaps.
In 2014, I began my service in the Royal Navy, assuming a role in logistics that, at the time, seemed primarily technical and operational in nature. However, this initial posting would prove to be the gateway to a far broader and more profound education in the character of warfare and the institutional underpinnings of British defence. Over the course of a decade, my career evolved through a series of progressively complex and intellectually demanding appointments, including four formative years embedded with the Royal Marines. There, I gained firsthand insight into the operational pressures of expeditionary deployments, the fluidity of modern battlefields, and the critical importance of logistical coherence in sustaining combat effectiveness across joint environments.
This operational grounding was later complemented by two years within Defence Operational Capability (DOC) at the Ministry of Defence. In this role, I was exposed to the intricacies of long-term capability strategies, force readiness assessments, and inter-service/nation coordination, allowing me to engage directly with the policy-level considerations that shape defence posture. Together, these experiences, combined with four years of operational service on a warship, provided a rare, multidimensional perspective on the British military apparatus, spanning from the tactical front lines to the strategic core.
Yet this professional immersion also revealed a series of persistent and increasingly urgent vulnerabilities. Chief among them is the complex and often under-acknowledged intersection between climate change, military readiness, and the deficiencies embedded within our intelligence and decision-making frameworks. As environmental volatility accelerates, it places unpredictable strain on military infrastructure, humanitarian commitments, and global stability, challenges that existing defence and intelligence architectures remain ill-prepared to absorb. The experience of working within both operational and strategic contexts afforded me a critical vantage point from which to observe how institutional inertia, fragmented intelligence ecosystems, and traditional threat paradigms continue to impede adaptive thinking in a rapidly changing world.
The lessons I took from that period were not only technical, but strategic. In my final role within DOC: a joint force establishment tasked with auditing Britain’s defence posture. There, the theoretical met the operational. It was an environment where abstract concepts like force projection and integrated deterrence became data points and strategic gaps.
Simultaneously, as a Richmond Fellow and a student of international relations and intelligence at Staffordshire University, I had the opportunity to explore in academic terms what I saw unfold in real time. That dual exposure, to the theory and the practice, reinforced a recurring theme: the UK, like many NATO nations, is preparing for yesterday’s war, not tomorrow’s.
Climate as a Catalyst for Strategic Vulnerability
My fellowship research focused on climate change’s implications for military infrastructure and equipment. What emerged was a sobering diagnosis of systemic unreadiness. Equipment that cannot function in temperature extremes, hulls not built for Arctic waters, radars distorted by persistent sand storms, and personnel PPE inadequate for either blistering heat or sub-zero temperatures, these are not hypothetical failings, but real limitations facing our current force.
The climate crisis is not a separate threat from warfare; it is an accelerant. As Arctic sea ice retreats and new shipping lanes open, our inability to operate in High North conditions creates an obvious vacuum. If we cannot project force or maintain presence in these emerging geostrategic theatres, someone else will, likely those who have already stress-tested their capabilities in the crucible of actual combat.
The Intelligence Gap: Cause, Effect, and Context
One of the defining characteristics of modern security is complexity. Analysts increasingly rely on vast and diverse datasets, from OSINT to SIGINT to HUMINT, and yet more data doesn’t always equate to better foresight. The gap between collection and comprehension remains dangerously wide.
Context is paramount. In intelligence terms, it is the framework through which information becomes actionable. But too often, the defence establishment underweights the so-called “soft factors”, the vicissitudes of logistics, the friction of day-to-day operations, the mundane but vital realities of passing tactics and operational tempo.
Our systems struggle not with data, but with meaning. The challenge is establishing cause and effect across evolving operational landscapes, where changes in doctrine, technology, or budget may influence outcomes in unpredictable ways. Worse still, we often attempt to retrofit conclusions after the fact rather than anticipate effects with clarity.
The Parkrun Analogy: Readiness Through Real Experience
To understand your true capacity as a force, you have to “run the race.” This is an idea I often return to, and one made all the more relevant by recent events in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine have, to extend the metaphor, completed the 5K. They’re lying in a bush, vomiting and recovering, but they now know precisely where their strengths and shortfalls lie. By contrast, the UK and NATO remain in the locker room, still tying their laces, debating shoe choice, and theorising over race-day nutrition.
No amount of simulation, modelling, or desk-bound wargaming will substitute for the brutal clarity of operational engagement. Yet we remain hesitant to adapt or restructure until forced to do so by crisis, a lesson that history teaches with frustrating regularity.
Interoperability, Stockpiles, and the Speed of Modern War
The pace of modern warfare is accelerating. Peer conflict is no longer an abstraction but a logistical and technological race against time. And yet, NATO forces remain hampered by a lack of interoperability, systems that can’t speak to one another, doctrines that clash more than they coordinate.
Our munition stockpiles are insufficient to sustain prolonged engagement, our procurement pipelines remain sluggish, and too often our strategies rely on assumptions that no longer reflect the real world. Warfare, in this new paradigm, is not just about force projection, it is about force adaptability.
Technological advancement provides unprecedented tools, data-driven targeting, real-time ISR, autonomous platforms, but unless these are matched with agile logistics, resilient command structures, and climate-ready force posture, they will fail at the moment they’re needed most.
Conclusion: Strategy from the Sea
Serving in the RN taught me that military power is not solely about platforms and posture. It is about perspective, understanding the interconnectedness of strategic planning, operational capability, climate reality, and intelligence integrity. It is about realising that waiting for certainty is no longer viable when the environment, both literal and geopolitical, is evolving too rapidly for slow reactions.
Now, in my current role as Programme Director at the London Defence Conference, I remain committed to advancing these conversations. We must ask ourselves whether our frameworks are fit for purpose, whether we are too reactive, and whether we are, quite frankly, ready to run the race.
Because the world won’t wait for us to finish tying our laces.
Joshua Clark - Programme Director at the London Defence Conference and former Royal Navy officer