Thinking Well: Royal Navy Doctrine in the Cold War

British Doctrine for NATO

After the Second World War, the Royal Navy brought together the experience of the war and published an updated edition of Fighting Instructions, along with more detailed ‘Confidential Books.’ It also wanted to remain able to work with the United States Navy, so in 1948 it formed a team to work with the US and Canada on doctrine for anti-submarine warfare. The next year, the committee’s task was broadened to cover tactical action more generally.

Meanwhile, NATO was founded in 1949 and needed its own doctrine to enable ships from multiple nations to operate together. This became particularly important from 1952, when NATO established a command structure and conducted the major Mainbrace and Longstep exercises. The solution was clear. The committee’s first output, Allied Tactical Publication (ATP) 1 – Allied Naval Maneuvering Instructions, covered most of what was needed to direct a fleet on operations and was quickly accepted by the alliance. More books were to follow, with ATP 2 covering Allied Control of Shipping, ATP 3 covering Evasive Steering, ATP 4 covering Allied Naval Fire Support, and so on. Other series of books were started, such as Allied Exercise Publication (AXP) 1 on practising for anti-submarine warfare.

These books blended UK and US ideas. This was reflected in the spelling conventions—while some words, such as ‘maneuver,’ followed American usage, the Oxford English Dictionary remained the primary authority for the remainder.

As NATO matured, it developed an annual update cycle run by personnel seconded to NATO rather than the nations themselves, and gradually the books came to be seen as the possessions of NATO rather than of the UK and US. The change in authority was marked by the UK and US sometimes being denied permission to share the books outside of NATO, such as with Iran, and changes being made that the UK or US did not support.

The 1959 Shift: Fully Into NATO

Meanwhile, the tactical challenge continued to grow more complicated, epitomised by submarines that could fire anti-ship missiles. In 1959, the Royal Navy updated Fighting Instructions again. To cope with the rate of change, the publication was divided into Volume One, which contained longer-lasting verities, and Volume Two, which was to be updated every year.

Soon after, many of the tactical publications below Fighting Instructions were gathered into Fleet Operational and Tactical Instructions, which encompassed all aspects of warfare a ship might conduct and were updated four times a year. Importantly, as these were created, it was assumed that Royal Navy units would use NATO publications even when not working with NATO allies, so the British publications only needed to cover more secret ideas or British-specific equipment. The US Navy, by contrast, kept a complete suite of its own doctrine.

This new structure lasted for the remainder of the Cold War and was used to overcome tactical challenges. Fleet Operational and Tactical Instructions included a section of problems, and the answers from the Fleet, along with the results of exercises and annual or biannual five-week-long study periods bringing sixty or so people together to work at a high classification, were used to answer them. Bilateral work was an important factor. For example, the UK and US worked together in the 1960s on defence against anti-ship missiles. As another example, in the 1970s, British and Netherlands ideas on over-the-horizon targeting—firing at enemy ships using information from an allied reporting unit—were merged and put into NATO doctrine.

The results were then put into other Royal Navy doctrine in an iterative manner and selectively passed to NATO. Security concerns arose, exemplified by a British-developed anti-submarine manoeuvre from the 1950s that was only shared with NATO in the late 1970s. Equally, NATO sometimes received up-to-date British ideas. For instance, in the early 1980s, the Royal Navy worked out how to simplify the mass of message formats that had developed. After a brief process of consensus-building, the new approach was tested in NATO’s Exercise Teamwork 1984 and agreed upon completion.

Doctrine Works

Was the result any good? The doctrine certainly helped the Royal Navy in the Falklands War, when many decisions can be seen to have been simply following what had long been worked out. Then, in the 1991 Gulf War, though the overall result was never in doubt, good doctrine helped the Royal Navy to sink 14 of the 22 Iraqi vessels involved, shoot down an anti-ship missile that had already passed over a nominally more capable US ship, and identify that the US plan for mine clearance was inadequate and provide a replacement.

This decades-long effort on doctrine challenges scholarly suggestions that the Royal Navy had a widespread aversion to written doctrine. Further, while one case study cannot be definitive, the evidence here supports the argument that processes are paramount in the creation of doctrine, rather than defeat or political pressure. It also points, for the Royal Navy, to a sense of self-worth and deep professionalism that such work was important and necessary. Perhaps navies get the doctrine they deserve.

For a more detailed exploration of the development of Royal Navy and NATO doctrine in the Cold War read Andrew Livsey’s open access article in War in History