Defence digest: a fallen admiral, a rebrand and a new adviser at the MoD

The previous First Sea Lord was stripped of his commission, while Strategic Command changes identity again and Professor Malcolm Chalmers goes to work for the MoD

I’ve said before that I can’t think of a time since the Cold War, when I was a child, that defence was so consistently in the news and on the public agenda in a general, almost philosophical sense. The ill-fated deployments to Afghanistan (Operation Herrick) and Iraq (Operation Telic) garnered coverage, of course, but that too began to fade as there was obviously not going to be a narrative of victory, and in any case it had tended to be more a human-interest level, and the effect on domestic politics (which was of course considerable), rather than a broad consideration of defence and national security, and Britain’s place in the world.

That has now fundamentally changed, though I’m sure not forever. It is rare that a week goes past without a fairly heavy-duty news story relating to defence, and President Putin has certainly helped keep the subject current with his invasion and brutalisation of Ukraine over the past three years and more. This is not—in a narrow, selfish sense—any kind of complaint, as it’s given me many opportunities to write, talk and think about issues which fascinate me, but it can sometimes feel like an unmanageable tide. As a result, and as I’ve done before, there are a few smaller stories I wanted to sweep up before the week comes to an end.

Sailing into the sunset

On Wednesday this week, the Ministry of Defence announced in a very terse press notice that the former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Ben Key, had been subject to a full investigation, as a result of which both his service and his commission in the Royal Navy were being terminated. The outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, was quoted solemnly but opaquely:

We expect the highest standards of behaviour from our Service Personnel and our Civil Servants. We investigate all allegations of inappropriate behaviour and will take robust action against anyone found to have fallen short of our standards, regardless of their seniority.

There is, of course, a back story here. I touched on it in May, when I wrote about the likely contenders to succeed Radakin as CDS; I noted that Key had decided some months previously not to put himself forward for the top job and indeed to retire from his post as head of the Royal Navy this summer. There were strong suggestions, which I have no reason to doubt, that Key was unhappy about the scale of cuts his service had endured and simply no longer felt able publicly to maintain the party line. However, a fresh angle to his departure had emerged in his being investigated for an inappropriate relationship with a junior female officer (junior to him, that is, though when you’re a full admiral and First Sea Lord, almost everyone is junior to you).

Key has accepted the outcome of the investigation and taken responsibility for an episode which occurred in the spring of 2024.

Serving as First Sea Lord has been one of the greatest privileges of my life, and I pay tribute to the dedicated and professional officers, sailors, Royal Marines and civil servants who make up the Royal Navy. I deeply regret my conduct in the spring of last year, which fell well below the standard I set for myself and that which I set for the Royal Navy. As such, I fully accept the decision of the Defence Council. I am very sorry to those I have hurt personally, and I apologise to everyone who serves with the Royal Navy. Finally, I am very grateful for the support of my wife, family and friends during a very difficult time.

There is no suggestion that the female officer with whom he had the relationship was in his direct chain of command, but as First Sea Lord he was the professional head of the service and any relationship with another officer would have been compromising. Key had also made clear during his tenure that “unacceptable behaviours” would not be tolerated under any circumstances; if he had not already decided to retire, his position would have been untenable.

This is a serious and significant matter. Although he had stepped down on 6 May, th Second Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral Sir Martin Connell assuming the role in an acting capacity for a few weeks, he is the first Royal Navy chief to be stripped of his commission and is no longer an admiral, though he retains his pension and his honours—he is a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)—though any decision on potentially forfeiting those would be a matter not for the Ministry of Defence but for the Forfeiture Committee in the Cabinet Office, subject to the approval of the King. (Three Royal Navy submarine captains were stripped of their OBEs last month after being found to have engaged in abusive and bullying behaviour, including making a pornographic video and punching a female officer.)

I am not aware of an admiral suffering so direct a loss of status since Edward Vernon was removed from the Flag List on 11 April 1746 after publishing two pamphlets concerning his disagreements with the Royal Navy leadership; that is not quite the same as having a commission removed. Admiral John Byng was court-martialled and executed on 14 March 1757 for “failing to do his utmost” at the Battle of Minorca on 20 May 1756, though it is not clear if he was formally stripped of his commission before being shot. In any event, this tells its own story: we are reaching back to the mid-18th century, before the time of Nelson, to find a flag officer given so harsh a formal sanction.

That said, it has been noted by almost every media outlet, with varying degrees of archness, that Key retains his pension, and there are plenty of people, perfectly reasonably, who would happily trade the formality of the rank of admiral for holding on to a generous pension. Knowing so few of the details I certainly have no intention of trying to check the work of the investigation or the decision of the Defence Council. As the Royal Navy’s senior officer, and as someone who had stressed the unacceptable nature of misconduct, Key clearly had a responsibility to behave in a way which was beyond reproach, and he clearly failed in that responsibility, so I don’t think an argument can really be sustained that he has been treated too harshly.

None of that means that we are not allowed to feel a degree of regret that his career has ended in this way. Key is a gifted and dedicated officer, and as Chief of Joint Operations he acquitted himself extremely well in supervising Operation Pitting, the evacuation of UK personnel from Afghanistan in August 2021 in the face of the Taliban offensive and seizure of Kabul. It was an inglorious end to a long military commitment and there were failures of intelligence and planning which left UK and other forces unprepared for the unfolding of events, but Key oversaw the evacuation of 15,000 personnel, UK and Afghan, on more than 100 flights out of Hamid Karzai International Airport. When he was promoted to First Sea Lord in October that year, the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, praised him as “one of the key architects of the incredible Op Pitting rescue mission”.

Key made his own decisions and his own choices, and he has accepted responsibility and the outcome. We should try to respect that without absolving him of blame or minimising his mistakes and misconduct, and at the same time acknowledge that his career saw great achievements as well. It is a complicated legacy, but life is a complicated business.

What’s in a name?

At the beginning of the week, the Defence Secretary, John Healey, made a written ministerial statement on defence reform to the House of Commons. One of the changes it signalled was the rebranding of UK Strategic Command to the rather less catchy Cyber and Specialist Operations Command (CSOC), which, he said:

reflects the Command’s changed role and reinforces its responsibilities following the SDR, particularly its leadership of the cyber domain, which the SDR demanded a greater focus on across defence and Government as a whole. It follows the MoD, and Government partners, having to protect UK military networks against more than 90,000 ‘sub-threshold’ attacks in the last two years.

The new, or renamed and reshaped, organisation will continue to be commanded by General Sir Jim Hockenhull, who was Commander UK Strategic Command and is now Commander Cyber and Specialist Operations Command. It remains under the control of the Chief of the Defence Staff as part of the Ministry of Defence’s Military Strategic Headquarters (MSHQ).

This is an area of capability which has gone through a number of iterations in a relatively short space of time. A review of the Ministry of Defence in 2010-11 by Lord Levene of Portsoken, adviser to Michael Heseltine as Defence Secretary, then Chief of Defence Procurement from 1985 to 1991, proposed the establishment of a tri-service Joint Forces Command “to strengthen the focus on joint enablers and on joint warfare development”. Headed by a four-star Commander Joint Forces Command, this would take control of the Directorate of Special Forces, the Defence Academy and the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre; the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood would also sit within the JFC but report directly to the Chief of the Defence Staff. Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach became the first Commander Joint Forces Command in late 2011.

In July 2019, Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt announced that JFC would be renamed as Strategic Command:

supporting Head Office, helping Defence think strategically, assisting our transformation programme, and taking responsibility for a range of strategic and defence-wide capabilities. Combined with its oversight of our global footprint, it will continue enabling our operations and providing critical advice on force development.

The change formally took place in December 2019, with General Sir Patrick Sanders becoming the first Commander Strategic Command before Hockenhull was appointed three years ago. In April 2021, space-related functions were separated from Strategic Command and UK Space Command was established at RAF High Wycombe.

The main purpose of this week’s change of name seems to be to emphasise the importance of the armed forces’ cyber capability within the joint organisation. Clearly the nature, extent and sophistication of cyber warfare is expanding at enormous pace, something made explicit in the Strategic Defence Review. The Ministry of Defence must be careful not to become fixated with this highly technologically advanced element of modern warfare: ironically it was General Sir Patrick Sanders, regarded as one of the most cyber-savvy senior officers, who warned of this in his address to the RUSI Land Warfare Conference in June 2022.

Though I bow to no one in my advocacy for the need for game changing digital transformation, to put it bluntly, you can’t cyber your way across a river. No single platform, capability, or tactic will unlock the problem. Success will be determined by combined arms and multi-domain competence. And mass.

I think it’s fair to say that every significant military power is still “learning on the job” when it comes to cyber warfare and cyber security, such is the rate of progress and development. In May, the Ministry of Defence announced the formation of a new Cyber and Electromagnetic Command (CyberEM) within what was then Strategic Command, to lead defensive cyber operations and, together with the National Cyber Force, coordinate offensive cyber capabilities. The National Cyber Force, created in 2020, is a collaboration between the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the Secret Intelligence Service and Government Communications Headquarters, and is commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Tim Neal-Hopes.

However, this is separate from the National Cyber Security Centre, an agency of GCHQ which “helps businesses, the public sector and individuals protect the online services and devices that we all depend on”. It “lead[s] the UK’s defence against the most advanced cyber threats, including those from nation states, hackers, and cyber criminals” under its CEO, Richard Horne, who worked in cyber security in the private sector. In addition, the National Crime Agency, overseen by the Home Office, has a division responsible for cyber crime.

Cyber security and cyber warfare will always and inevitably be complex areas requiring a mixture of capabilities. The Ministry of Defence, and the government as a whole, will need to make sure that divisions of responsibility are clear without impeding flexibility and cooperation. We will see how the new Cyber and Specialist Operations Command beds in; Hockenhull will be 61 later this month and has been at Strategic Command for more than three years, so one would expect him to retire in the near future, and it will be instructive to see who is chosen to replace him and how they approach what will be a rather different role.

Poacher-turned-gamekeeper, or vice-versa?

The final significant announcement this week was that Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for the past 10 years, is leaving the think tank to become Strategic Advisor to the Secretary of State for Defence and Head of Review and Challenge at the Ministry of Defence. Chalmers is massively experienced in the field of foreign, defence and security policy: he was Senior Special Adviser to Jack Straw then Margaret Beckett at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2006 to 2007, was part of the Defence Secretary’s Advisory Forum on the 2010 Defence Green Paper and the Cabinet Office consultative group on the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, has been a specialist adviser to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy since 2012 and has given evidence to any number of select committees, including, during my time as Clerk, the Scottish Affairs Committee. He also chaired a panel during the Review and Challenge stage of the new Strategic Defence Review.

Appearing in front of the House of Commons Defence Committee this week, John Healey explained Chalmers’s new role.

To keep us all up to the mark, including me, I am also appointing to a new post of strategic adviser and head of review and challenge—in other words, to take the lessons that I think worked well during the strategic review process of bringing in external experts, but with a specific review and challenge process. Malcolm Chalmers will be joining us from RUSI to play that role in that new post. He will reinforce the policy muscle of the Department. To be quite honest, he is a one-man intellectual powerhouse on defence. In particular, he will become the head of a review and challenge within the Department, to me—so not just advising me, but challenging me—but also to leaders in the main areas.

It is difficult to predict how this new role will work, simply because of its novelty. My cynical instincts reflect that politicians like talking about being “challenged” much more than they relish the process itself, and the litmus test will come if and when Chalmers has to deliver a message that the Defence Secretary does not want to hear.

I have been very critical of some aspects of the Strategic Defence Review here, here and here in The Spectator. However, I think the independent and collaborative process which produced it was admirable, and the three reviewers—Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill—are all extremely eminent. The Ministry of Defence seemed at least to an extent to seek opinions and input from a wide spectrum, and if that sense of openness and iterative learning can also inform Chalmers’s new role, then he may contribute a great deal to the restructuring of the armed forces over the next few years. Healey was certainly right to call him an “intellectual powerhouse”: along with people like Professor Michael Clarke, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Dr Rob Johnson and Professor Phillips O’Brien, Chalmers is one of the biggest names and influential voices in the field of defence and security.

Let’s end on an optimistic note. This innovative appointment by John Healey is, I suspect, made in good faith, so we can but hope that it is a valuable addition to the huge amount of work which will have to be done in the coming years. Good luck to Malcolm Chalmers.