Should the First Sea Lord Be A Former CO or CTO? Thoughts on RN Technology & Careers

 

The Royal Navy has named the newest vessel to join its fleet. The XV Patrick Blackett, an experimental vessel intended to support trials and technology demonstration was formally named in Portsmouth on 29 July. Flying a blue ensign (denoting a Government owned vessel), and with a Royal Navy crew embarked, the ship will help take forward the next stage in trialling equipment that will form the basis of the future fleet. This is a significant move forward, not least because she is the first Government vessel to operate a ‘QR’ code on the side explaining what she does!

Technological change is at the forefront of what the Royal Navy is all about, yet sometimes it causes concern to those comfortable with ‘the good old days’. Look to the history of the RN over many centuries and it is a story of people spotting new ideas, being willing to trial them and then take the next step in pushing them forward to give the fleet another battle winning advantage. From the iron hull of HMS WARRIOR through to all 12” gun turrets of HMS DREADNOUGHT, the story of the Royal Navy is about technological innovation and resistance to change.

For every new change, be it torpedoes, electric propulsion or gas turbines or bunkbeds instead of hammocks, there was opposition – people often looked back fondly and were convinced that older meant better – yet it is the ability to look past this and show how the future offers more promise that is central to why the RN succeeds so magnificently time and time again.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The next stage of the journey is one that will perhaps prove to be even more controversial as we see the fleet move away from crewed ships and instead towards uncrewed platforms that operate with varying degrees of autonomy. This may range from drone helicopters dropping sonar buoys through to mine hunting platforms operating without crew onboard to find and destroy mines in hostile waters. There is a great deal of routine and arduous work that often places people at high risk that can, and arguably should, be done via technology instead of in person.

Getting the technology right will take time, and ensuring that it works to a sustained and credible level of assurance is also important. Right now we want people in the loop because we know that they will meet certain standards – conducting a mine hunting operation in complex waters like the Arabian Gulf is difficult, and you need to be 100% certain that the area is surveyed and mines dealt with before allowing other vessels to enter it. With humans involved there is a greater level of certainty that this has been done. It will take time, trials and a lot of evaluation to ensure that there is a similar level of confidence and assurance that autonomous capabilities can do the same thing.

Once these assurances are gained then we stand on the edge of real change in how the Royal Navy is structured, and the platforms it is likely to use. The days of crewed mine warfare vessels will be numbered, as smaller platforms are replaced by ISO containers, robots and drones, with a smaller number of ‘mothership’ platforms to sustain them at sea. This means that the RN will remain as capable as ever at tackling these threats, but it will not need crewed ships to deliver this.

There will likely be an evolution as the Royal Navy uses fewer platforms and more systems to achieve the same, if not greater, levels of operational capability and success. This will be a difficult sell to those who associate hulls, not systems, with fleet strength, and will take time to build consensus on. People and media commentators will see a smaller fleet, not a more capable one, and overcoming this resistance will be a significant challenge in the path ahead.

One intriguing opportunity, hinted at by the current 1^st Sea Lord is that as the Royal Navy capability and structure changes, so too does the opportunity to revisit career structures. Right now the Royal Navy is structurally self-limiting in who it lets rise to the very top of the service. Recruits joining today stand no chance of promoting to the highest levels of the force, and the most influential positions unless they join the Warfare branch. Unless you have served in command at sea, you stand no chance of leading the Service. Is it time that this position changed?

Command at sea is but one facet of the work involved in leading and shaping a hugely complex organisation of nearly 40,000 service, civilian and reservist personnel operating across the planet. When you look at the range of roles it carries out, from operating nuclear power plants to supporting aviation safety or running critical dockyard infrastructure or multi-billion-pound budgets,  huge swathes of what the Royal Navy does has little to do with command at sea. Yet despite this, the talent management system effectively practises a form of career apartheid, pushing those who at 19 or 20 years old who didn’t want (or could not) become a Warfare Officer into positions that are senior, but will always play second fiddle to the so-called ‘Warfare Master Race’ for the remainder of their careers. This decision means that hugely experienced, talented and capable leaders are not able to fill jobs that could help them lead the Service unless they have filled a very traditional route to the top.

While the 1^st Sea Lord may talk of how the next generation of officers will have very different career paths to his own to the top, it is hard to see how this will be the case. The way in which the Service structures its career plot means that decisions taken today shape how the leadership of 30-40 years time emerge. Looking ahead, unless you choose to go Warfare, don’t quit and sacrifice a lot of time with family in your 30s when in PWO and Command roles, then push into ever more high profile and exhausting roles in your 40s, you stand no chance of going to the top. Has the time come to change this to a more sensible career structure?

It feels odd that the Royal Navy is reliant on generating senior leadership appointments by hoping that its talent doesn’t quit in their 30s and 40s. The manner in which promotion relies on visibility, doing the right job and getting the all important ‘good OJAR’ at the right time means good talent who have a clash with their reporting officer, or who want to have a career break to have children, or who simply need a pause after years of being thrashed in challenging roles will lose out. The system is seemingly designed to push people away from progression, not be managed through and into talent roles further up the ladder.

The idea of saying (for example) to a mid career Lieutenant Commander that they should go to industry, take a career break and come back in 3-4 years with wider experience, similar salary expectations and be credible at promotion boards is little short of impossible. The system does not reward those who break the mould, rather it pushes them into cul-de-sacs from which there is no escape. Trying to untangle this web and redesign the career system to offer genuine choice, an opportunity to take time away but know you can return, and also the prospects that anyone of any branch can rise to the top is going to be hard.

This issue matters because the Royal Navy is still trying to run a career model that dates back to the 19^th century well into the 21^st century. The next generation of recruits want portfolio careers, flexible employment and may want to ‘dip in and out’ of their naval career as the demands of life change. Insisting on a rigidly managed system may sound good in principle, but costs people who are irreplaceable in the short term, and where it may take 10-15 years to recover the experience lost by one early and unplanned resignation.

If the RN didn’t have its career structure now, it is certain that this model isn’t the solution that would be invented. It is clung to because this is the way that its always been done. It is easy for senior Admirals at the tail end of their careers to call for change, because they have achieved success. But for those lower down the ladder, calling for change can be seen as being a troublemaker, and that way lies OJAR mediocrity. Perhaps the time has come for career and talent management to be taken out of the hands of the RN and handed over to a truly professional HR organisation to develop a better more inclusive and effective form of retaining and developing talent? It would be fascinating to see how industry would try to run the Royal Navy career plot if given a chance, and while the outcome may upset and worry people (after all it was better in ‘the good old days’), perhaps this externally forced change is what is needed here to ensure the system remains fit for purpose?

While this may upset some old seadogs, if the next 1SL needs to be as much a CTO as a CO, then perhaps we need to think radically about how to generate the best talent the nation can provide. It may be that only by taking career management out of the hands of the Royal Navy is it possible to recruit and retain the next generation of talent who will be vital in harnessing the technological change embodied on platforms like the XV Patrick Blackett and helping ensure that the RN keeps its position at the leading edge of warfighting technology, with people who no matter how they are sourced, will doubtless be ‘good enough for Nelson’.