Future Maritime Operations Conference is the title of a conference at RUSI, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET on November 22 and 23.
Focusing on emerging trends in maritime security, and looking at recent case studies highlighting the role of maritime forces in the global security network, the conference will examine the span of maritime operations and assess future requirements for the Royal Navy and partners and allies.
Organisers say that the conference will seek to establish the evolving role of maritime forces within the global security context. The first day will examine the conceptual context for the use of maritime force. The UK Government sees the Royal Navy as a force for good in the world. In military terms, with questions raised increasingly about the availability of access, basing and overflight rights for land-based assets, forces deployed at sea in a joint sea base provide a ready means of projecting appropriate influence at sea or ashore at the place and time of choice. In security terms, the current global security environment is characterised by the increasing use of the sea by potential adversaries as a means of moving people and materials, but with coalition and commercial assets which use the sea also seen as potential targets. In broader political terms, forces based at sea are often seen as international representatives of their respective governments, and often have as much a political role as a purely military one. Such presence is, arguably, the unique and enduring tenet of maritime forces.
Having set the conceptual context for future maritime operations, the second day of the conference will move on to assess the capability requirements and challenges facing contemporary and future navies in delivering effects in and from the maritime environment. From the UK’s perspective, the conference will look at the implications of the Defence Industrial Strategy, one year on, for future maritime capabilities: here, it will focus on the implications of the Maritime Industrial Strategy in particular. The conference will finish with an assessment of the likely capability requirements for versatile future surface combatants.
Invited speakers include: Admiral Sir Ian Forbes KCB CBE, Associate Fellow, RUSI; Commodore Luke Van Beek, DEC AWE, Ministry of Defence, UK; Professor Hew Strachan MA PhD FRSE FRHistS Hon D.Univ (Paisley), Chichele Professor of the History of War; Brian Wadsworth, Director, Logistics and Maritime Transport, Department for Transport, UK; John Grubb CBE FRSA, Deputy Director Maritime & Land, TRANSEC – Transport Security Department for Transport UK; Dr Norman Friedman, International Naval Consultant and Author; and Professor Sarah Palmer BA MA PhD FRSA FRHistS, Director, Greenwich Maritime Institute, Maritime Branch of the International Terrorism and Organised Crime Group.
