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Wavell Room Audio Reads

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An improved audio format version of our written content. Get your defence and security perspectives now through this podcast. Ciencia Política Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • LICENSED TO HACK

    LICENSED TO HACK
    Apr 1 2026
    WHY BRITAIN SHOULD RESURRECT 'LETTERS OF MARQUE' FOR THE DIGITAL AGE
    In 1708, a Bristol trading captain named Woodes Rogers departed England in command of the 'Duke' and 'Duchess', two heavily armed merchantmen, with a commission from Queen Anne authorising him to wage war against French and Spanish shipping. The letter of marque had transformed him from a private citizen into a state sanctioned privateer. Over three years, Rogers circumnavigated the globe and captured – amongst many – a prize Spanish treasure galleon worth approximately £800,000. Rogers returned home having demonstrated the value of private enterprise under sovereign aegis: strategic power could be projected with minimal Crown expense.
    Three centuries later, on 18 December 2025, Senator M. Lee (R-UT) introduced S.3567 to the 1st Session of the 119th Congress. Named the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025, it proposes to give the US President authorities "to issue letters of marque and reprisal with respect to acts of aggression against the United States by a member of a cartel". The US Government is also reportedly considering "enlisting private companies to assist with offensive cyberattacks". The historical inspirations are clear and the modern utility of private enterprise for British national purposes is worth considering.
    What are Privateers?
    Letters of marque were state-issued licences authorising private individuals to wage war on designated state enemies. Britain once dominated privateering. Elizabeth I's sanctioning of Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh transformed merchant adventurers into instruments of grand strategy against Spanish hegemony. The British Monarchy issued as many as 4,000 letters of marque during the Napoleonic Wars. In the war of 1812 alone, American privateers captured 1,300 British vessels. Privateering allowed governments to project power to complement or negate sovereign economic or military resource. The system worked because frameworks were clear, courts enforced rules and strategic objectives aligned with commercial incentives.
    The 1856 Declaration of Paris formally abolished British naval privateering, yet in the United States the Constitution still empowers Congress to grant letters of marque under Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. As the national defence conversation in Britain develops, with many difficult fiscal choices that lie ahead of the Government and all departments. Meanwhile, Private offensive cyber operations are reportedly occurring daily around the world and the consequences of unregulated private cyber capabilities are already visible. The Israeli firm NSO Group was ordered to pay damages by a US federal court for using intrusion cyber capabilities in June 2025. Whilst Ukraine's IT Army operates today as a volunteer cyber militia with tacit government blessing but minimal legal framework. The choice is not whether private actors will conduct cyber operations – they already do – but whether democracies should harness them through regulation.
    Not doing so may cede advantage to adversaries exploiting unaccountable proxies.
    Why could it be important?
    The world of Great Power Competition and the looming threat of war crystallises the defence imperative and security challenge facing Britain today. The Strategic Defence Review 2025 said "innovation and industrial power are central to deterrence and decisive factors in war", going beyond pure military force to a 'whole of society' approach. The British Army stands at approximately 73,000 personnel – its smallest since the Napoleonic era and much reduced from 102,000 in 2006 – and the broader Armed Forces and security services will inevitably concentrate on protecting critical government and military networks, rather than the national infrastructure that underpins economic activity. More capacity is needed as capacity shrinks and threats expand.
    Private companies and enterprise could fill this gap. British Private Military Companies (PMCs) alre...
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    12 m
  • 20:40:40

    20:40:40
    Mar 6 2026
    THE BRITISH ARMY'S 20:40:40 SOLUTION TO THE 'SURVIVABILITY PARADOX'
    Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brutally validated an old truth about modern war: it requires not just military forces in the field but the societal ability to regenerate, outproduce and outlast. As the British Army's Chief of the General Staff observed in January 2026, "Russia is not looking at your front lines, they've priced that in. They will only take you seriously when it comes to deterrence, and strength, when they see your factories producing at wartime production rates."
    This article outlines the British Army's emerging '20:40:40' concept that offers a solution to what Phillips-Levine et al recently identify as the "survivability paradox" – the vicious "self-reinforcing cycle" where "scarcity drives concentration, concentration incentivizes survivability, survivability increases costs, and rising costs further constrain force size.".
    Operational imperative
    Consensus academic and military analysis of the Russo-Ukrainian War has concluded that modern wars between near-peers will almost certainly remain as attritional as those of the past, which means, "as [a] conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies". Today, the industrial scale of Russia's war effort is immense and continues growing. In 2024 it produced approximately 1,500 tanks and 3,000 other Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV) whilst achieving 85% of their recruitment targets despite the pressures of economic sanctions and mounting casualties. The reality is that Britain cannot match such a defence industrial output, but nor should it seek to. Instead, it should pursue an asymmetric advantage "by making the component more survivable to protect the investment [force]."
    The 20:40:40 concept is the logical corollary and draws on lessons from Ukraine that show the battlefield application of drones and combines them with extant British Army doctrine to achieve distributed lethality. The British Army will not simply incorporate emerging technology into an old-style fighting system but will instead rewire the system.
    Defining the Layers of Distributed Lethality
    The concept of 20:40:40 describes broad proportions of the force – people, platforms, software and sustainment – that are designed to 'endure, be risked or be expended' to keep the combat network functioning. The British Army does not seek for every formation or unit to become '20:40:40' but rather that the whole force will apply the concept differently by role and echelon. It is the Land component within the broader Integrated Force that harnesses and integrates together cross-domain capabilities alongside the other single services.
    20:40:40 was announced in June 2025 (image above) and is to be the British Army's most significant conceptual evolution in generations. It is a deliberate move away from platform-centric to a network-centric approach warfare and seeks to maximise lethality by layering 'Reconnaissance Strike' (or 'Recce-Strike) combat systems of crewed / uncrewed sensors and effectors. It is designed to dismantle a peer adversary's fighting systems whilst protecting and preserving friendly combat power, an approach many will recognise from 'systems warfare'.
    At the centre is a relatively small numbers of crewed 'Survivable' platforms (20%) that are the backbone of the tactical force. These are expensive capabilities such as armoured vehicles, helicopters or dismounted infantry that take longer to produce and thus replace which is why survivability is key. They are fundamental to achieving land manoeuvre and critical to missions such as seizing and holding terrain by maintaining Command and Control (C2) as well as Communication Information Systems (CIS) coherence.
    Surrounding them will be a distributed layer of reusable uncrewed 'Attritable' (40%) platforms. They will cost less than those in the Survivable layer and are designed to operate at extended reach whilst still having significant technologically lethality. Thei...
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    9 m
  • A Cold War Crisis: Assault on The Rock!

    A Cold War Crisis: Assault on The Rock!
    Mar 4 2026
    The following work is an eye-opening insight into some peak Cold War contingency planning: how to defend Gibraltar – gateway to the Mediterranean and critical British military hub since 1713. Whilst (like all such plans) it may seem utterly far-fetched, the threat – however small – was real.
    The latest in an increasingly hefty and impressive portfolio of work focusing on declassified archive material, veteran Wavell Room author and Thin Pinstriped Line blog titan "Sir Humphrey" sets out the very real measures taken to defend 'The Rock'. Regular readers will enjoy the delightful (and oftentimes farcical) similarities with UK defence matters across the decades… Editor.
    Simmering Tensions
    In the early hours of May 1982, following indications that a Spanish amphibious force, ostensibly on exercise, had begun sailing closer to Gibraltar, the Governor exercised powers to sortie armed Royal Navy warships, and deploy the Army onto the streets of the rock, to defend it from potential Spanish invasion. This sounds like the plot of a poor Cold War thriller but nearly happened for real. This article is about how in the 1980s the UK actively planned to defend Gibraltar from both Soviet and Spanish aggression in the most unlikely of circumstances.
    In 1982 the UK and Spain had strained relations over the issue of Gibraltar since the Spanish closed the land border in 1969. Throughout the 1970s there was genuine concern that Spain could attempt some kind of military operation, leading to elaborate plans being developed to defend 'the Rock' against attack for long enough for cooler heads to prevail. The invasion of the Falklands by Argentina was a particular concern, given the vital military role played by UK military facilities in Gibraltar supporting the Task Force.
    In April 1982 the Service Chiefs urgently reviewed plans and capabilities were needed to keep Gibraltar safe, both from Argentine attack and to deter the Spanish from taking advantage of a distracted UK both in the short and medium term. The plans to reinforce the Rock were known as Joint Tactical Plan (JTP) 52 existed to reinforce against the risk of Spanish aggression, but as the Chiefs noted "the plans concerns reinforcement of Gibraltar to meet a direct threat to the Rock, not a contingency plan for a war with Spain. Naturally should events escalate to such an unfortunate level, appropriate forces would be assigned as the situation dictated"!
    There was an immediate concern about the presence of a Spanish amphibious force, with 4000 marines embarked operating barely 35 miles from the colony from 26 April to 4 May. While the threat was seen as extremely unlikely, it could not be ruled out. To reduce this risk two RAF Jaguar ground attack jets and an RN Lynx helicopter were dispatched to provide a level of anti-ship capability against Spanish vessels that posed a risk to the Rock.
    The CINC in Gibraltar was sufficiently concerned about the risk from this exercise, however unlikely it may have been, to formally put in place "covert preparations to deal with any attempt, admittedly extremely unlikely, at an amphibious assault on Gibraltar".
    These measures included covertly preparing and arming Royal Navy warships to be ready to sail at short notice to monitor the force if it moved eastwards out of the exercise area towards Gibraltar. If it continued, then the Army units would be brought to very high readiness, and aircrew in their cockpits. The proposed ROE stated that the Royal Navy would not engage until "enemy opens fire or have landed in Gibraltar and opened fire".
    Spain did not, of course, invade, but it led to an urgent MOD reappraisal of the defences needed for Gibraltar to defend against "the situation in which a local Spanish commander might decide to attempt an unsupported and unauthorised adventure against the Rock". The conclusions were that there was insufficient anti-aircraft artillery, relying on WW2 40mm bofors guns to defend the airfield, insufficient counter bat...
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    14 m
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