First Sea Lord's speech to the International Sea Power Conference
Source: gov.uk (2025-12-08)

General Sir Gwyn Jenkins KCB OBE ADC RM, First Sea Lord, gave a speech at the Sea Power Conference.

Thank you, Minister. This is not a normal conference. This is not about glad handing and canapes. For those that know me, it’s not my style.

This is a conference about commitment to action. This is a conference about stepping up because we have to. I’m only going to talk for about 20 minutes this morning, and I’m only going to cover three topics.

I’m going to discuss what has not changed in our environment, the constants that those of us engaged in maritime power live by every day. I’m going to talk about what has changed, and then I’m going to discuss how we’re going to respond, and what we, in particular, the Royal Navy, are doing about it.

So what are the constants?

Well, one is the power of the sea and the oceans. It’s not lost on anyone here, but all our societies, the whole globe, depends on the free flow of trade that takes place across our oceans.

We’ve all witnessed how vulnerable that trade is to the disruption of one relatively minor actor in the Red Sea and most of us in this room, most of our careers, have been involved protecting that flow of trade.

And this is no more true than it is for us as an island nation. Virtually all our trade, virtually all our data and virtually all our energy flows either above, on, or under the sea. It is literally our lifeline for both us as an island nation, but also for NATO.

Geography is another constant. If you look at a chart that gazes down from the North Pole into the Atlantic, you will see just how important the Norwegian coast is in protecting our Atlantic. You will see that the UK offers a key position at the cornerstone of access to the Atlantic.

Geography is a constant for us, and our role as the Royal Navy is to exploit that position in order to protect ourselves and protect our allies. You look at that chart behind me, you’ll see what I mean. The gap between us and the Atlantic is small. The importance of the Norwegian coast is obvious.

Another constant is our alliances, the power of combination. It’s by no accident that we have asked you to come here today and gathered you in this room. We are stronger because we are together, not because we see the world in the same way, not because we have a homogenous view.

Actually the opposite. It’s because we can disagree, it’s because we can debate. Our strength comes from our differences. It’s what unites us. That is no more true than within NATO, the greatest defensive alliance the world has ever seen.

For us, NATO first means the commitment of our nuclear deterrent 57 years in being committed to not just protect the 67 million souls on these islands, but also the 1 billion souls across the NATO alliance, of course, it’s NATO first, but not NATO only, which is why we have partners here from across the world. Our friendships and partnerships matter.

It’s why we sent the Carrier Strike Group to the Pacific this summer. It’s why we’ve embarked on an amazing program to build nuclear powered submarines with Australia.

But if the seas, if geography, and if the power of our alliances are the constants, what is changing?

Well, first and foremost, it’s the threat. The world is becoming an unstable place. We see the rise of authoritarian regimes.

I haven’t met the commentator yet who can offer me an accurate view of what the future holds, and in that uncertainty lies risk.

Just look at Russia. Despite the millions of lives and the cost of their egregious illegal invasion of Ukraine, they continue to invest billions in their maritime capabilities, particularly in their Northern Fleet, a 30% increase in Russian incursion in our waters just in the last two years.

It’s most visibly seen in the presence of their spy ships like the Yantar.

But I can tell you today, the Yantar is only the visible bit you see in the public and it’s not the bit that worries me the most. It’s what’s going on under the waves that most concerns me.

I can also tell you today that the advantage that we have enjoyed in the Atlantic since the end of the Second World War is at risk. We are holding on, but not by much. There is no room for complacency. Our would be opponents are investing billions. We have to step up, or we will lose that advantage.

We cannot let that happen, as the Secretary of State for Defence said recently in his message direct to Putin, we see you and we know what you are doing.

So if the threat is changing, the other thing to watch is technology. Technologies are combining accelerating at a pace that we have never seen before. The pace of technological change will never, ever be as slow again as it is today. This is it. This is as slow as it gets.

If you have been baffled by the developments in artificial intelligence over the last couple of years, well buckle up. The next couple will be even more amazing. And much like the threat and the geostrategic environment, I haven’t met the commentator that gives me confidence that they know really what they’re talking about as to how the future will look. No offense to the commentators in the audience.

But the conclusion for us is not to try and guess what the future holds. The conclusion is to build ourselves for speed. The conclusion is to adapt our organisation so that we can move at the pace of relevance.

Now is the time for action. That’s why we’ve gathered you all here today.

But it needs transformation, not just modernisation. As our Secretary of State for Defence said, if we just modernise, we will fall short, which is why we are developing the warfighting hybrid Navy. At its heart, it’s about the Atlantic Fleet.

It’s about three overlapping concepts, Atlantic Bastion, which is the protection of our sensitive waters and the lines of communication for NATO.

Atlantic Shield, which is our contribution to air defence from our vulnerable North.

And Atlantic Strike, which is about creating the advantage that if an aggressor is foolish enough to strike us, they will know that we can strike back.

Today, I’m really going to focus on Atlantic Bastion, this innovative concept of connecting autonomous sensors in the Atlantic to be our eyes and ears.

It’s not just technologically innovative. It is innovative in the way that we are conducting procurement for every pound we have invested, industry has invested four. By our estimation, the technology involved in the demonstrators for Atlantic Bastion have involved some half a billion pounds in research and development.

Why? Why would industry join us on this journey? Well, I’d say three reasons. One is they believe in our purpose. It’s too easy to be cynical about industry, but we keep the nation safe so that we can prosper. We contribute to NATO so that the NATO nations can prosper. We believe in a free world where trade can flow, and so does our industry.

The second reason is the Royal Navy contest and experiment in a way that industry cannot on its own. We are a test bed, and we want to be. We want to develop our capabilities in lockstep with industry.

And the third, of course, is there is profit here. The estimated market for maritime autonomous systems around the world is £350 billion, and the UK is already at the cutting edge. This is an engine for growth come to life. This is thousands of jobs in the UK.

The other innovative thing we’ve done is we haven’t given industry a long list of our requirements. We haven’t over specified what it is we want to do. We have merely given them a problem set and asked them to solve it for us, and they’ve stepped up in spades. Which is why next year, we will have our first sensors in the water. We will issue our contracts for Atlantic Bastion as a service.

But we can’t do it alone. We can put sensors in the Atlantic. We can connect them to our ships and submarines and our aircraft. We can work as a force, as an integrated force, across the Navy, the Air Force, the Army and CSOC.

But we really need allies, and that’s why I was so pleased last week when the Norwegian Defence Minister said that he wanted to join us in Atlantic Bastion. He wants to connect the new Type-26 ships that we will run as a combined anti-submarine warfare fleet in the High North to Atlantic Bastion. And I want others to join us as well.

We need other allies. Together we will build a network that we can connect to our systems and capabilities, and we will, we will remain controlled in the Atlantic.

But it’s not just Bastion. I said at DSEI that we would get our first autonomous escort in the water within two years, and we will.

It’s a key component of Atlantic Shield, and we must prove that it can work.

We will get a demonstrator for our fast jet fighter capability off the carrier next year, because it’s a key component of Atlantic Strike, we’re working closely with the Air Force to make sure that we can develop together, transform together.

We will continue to transform the commando force. In many ways, the commando force presaged what happened in Ukraine.

We began to transform that force five years ago, small teams of determined, resourceful, independent individuals operating with the best that technology can provide an extended range and friendly lines.

They are now re-rolling the whole force for the High North to work alongside our Norwegian us Dutch and other allies, because as that chart behind me shows that Norwegian coast is essential to protecting NATO.

If this all sounds like science fiction, it is not. It is science fact.

This is not future technology. This is stuff that is here now, and we have a plan to deliver it. Today, I am also launching our Warfighting Ready Plan 2029. It goes live within the Royal Navy as I’m speaking.

We have built this plan on the back of extensive wargaming to understand our weaknesses and our strengths, to understand where we can complement our allies and where they can complement us. And we’re already rolling out. We will discard the old and leap to the new.

We have already moved on from our concepts to replace our LPDs as our landing ships. More distributed, smaller with more autonomy, our landing force will match the commando capability we’re creating.

But the Warfighting Plan is more than just capability. It’s about leadership. We need warfighting leaders, which is why we’ve embarked on a programme to revise the way we train our officers within the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines.

We need leadership excellence that is leaders who can deliver results, but they can do it whilst inspiring their people by helping their people to be the best that they can be, because that’s how we solve our most difficult problems.

Because warfighting is a mindset, warfighting is a discipline for action, and warfighting is the difference between deterrence and vulnerability, but it’s more also than leadership.

If we cannot strip back our own bureaucracies, we will not be able to move fast enough. The pace of the threat, the pace of the technological change, demands a different approach from us.

In the last 100 days within the Royal Navy, we have stripped back unnecessary process to save our people 200,000 hours within the year. That’s 200,000 hours we can invest in getting better, in being faster and in being more prepared.

We will unshackle our people so that they can perform, because these answers don’t exist with me. These answers don’t exist at the top of the Navy. These answers exist with our warfighters and with our people.

But to reemphasize my point, we cannot do this alone. We need industry to work in lock step with us, and we need allies. We need our allies to join us so that we can protect these seas. We can protect our data cables, our energy and our supply lines. We must be greater than the sum of our parts what our alliances are all about.

And it doesn’t matter if it is in NATO or if it’s elsewhere around the world, there’s a reason we deployed the carrier to the Pacific. There is a reason that the chief of the Australian Navy has just flown all the way here to join us in this conference. Our alliance is stretched far and wide, and we must maximize them.

So this is a call for action. We are moving out because we have no choice. The alternative is not worth thinking about. Our job is to be ready, and I want you to join us on that journey.

I can’t promise it’s going to be easy. It’s not. We will face headwinds, we will face rough seas, but together, we can solve these problems if we have the appetite, if we have the determination, and if we have the mindset.

So I’m really looking forward to the discussion over the next couple of days, really looking forward to hearing from you how we’re going to solve these problems.

I’m really looking forward to hearing how we are going to sustain the advantage building on the blocks that we have already put in place. It’s going to be a good discussion.

Thank you.