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Interview With First Sea Lord Adm. Sir Nigel Essenhigh, Royal Navy

Senior Editor Gordon L Peterson interviewed First Sea Lord Adm. Sir Nigel Essenhigh for this issue oj' Sea Power.

Adm. Sir Nigel Essenhigh became the Royal Navy's first sea lord and chief of naval staff in January 2001. The appointment carries with it membership on the United Kingdom's Defence Council. After joining the Royal Navy in 1963, Essenhigh qualified as a "principal warfare officer" and specialized in navigation. He has spent most of his career at sea, serving in a variety of ships ranging from a patrol boat to an aircraft carrier, and commanded the Type 42 destroyers HMS Nottingham and, during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, HMS Exeter.

During his assignment as the assistant chief of defence staff (programs) four years ago, Essenhigh was closely involved in the United Kingdom's Strategic Defence Review. He subsequently served as the commander-in-chief fleet. As first sea lord, Essenhigh is the professional head of the Royal Navy, with responsibility for the service's current and future combat capability. He also serves as the Royal Navy's senior advisor on maritime strategy and policy to the U.K. secretary of state for defence and chief of defence staff within the Ministry of Defence.

Since 1992 the size of the Royal Navy has been reduced from 158 ships and 60,000 personnel to 124 ships and 42,500 personnel. As a result of the U.K. Strategic Defence Review, however, Essenhigh is now overseeing the comprehensive modernization of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers, surface-warfare combatants, attack submarines, and amphibious-warfare ships to support the United Kingdom's global requirements for robust expeditionarywarfare forces. As part of Operation Veritas, the United Kingdom's contribution to the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, the Royal Navy has deployed a large naval task group to Southwest Asia to support the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

Sea Power: Sir Nigel, once again the navies of the United States and Great Britain are deployed together during a time of conflict-in this instance, a war of extraordinary complexity and great challenge against the forces of international terrorism. Would you please describe the Royal Navy's operations during the early weeks of combat?

ESSENHIGH: The Royal Navy had a substantial force of ships deployed on exercise in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea region at the time. Some of these were withdrawn and committed to action in the operation. In particular, two U.K. SSNs [nuclear-powered attack submarines] fired Tomahawk land-attack missiles.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence recently announced additional British forces will be committed to the war. What will this entail for the Royal Navy and Marines?

ESSENHIGH: I am not prepared to speculate at this stage about what further military action we might take, but we intend to keep a number of Royal Naval Ships in the Indian Ocean on completion of Exercise Saif Sareea II, including Royal Marines with supporting amphibious shipping.

Today's momentous events are yet another demonstration of the "special relationship" between our two countries in the areas of diplomacy and national-security affairs. In what other ways has this relationship flourished between our navies?

ESSENHIGH: The relationship between the Royal Navy and the United States Navy is possibly the closest of all branches of our armed services. We have operated for years together in the Arabian Gulf conducting maritime-intercept operations, in the Caribbean conducting counterdrug operations, and in Europe and the Atlantic as part of NATO's Standing Naval Forces.

Our two navies conduct regular exercises, most recently involving the USS Enterprise carrier battle group in June. Royal Marines also frequently exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps, and they trained at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia on very short notice during our country's foot-andmouth epidemic earlier this year.

Our navies participate in a number of important scientific exchanges and high-profile projects-obviously the Trident [submarine-launched ballistic missile] program comes to mind, where we are totally integrated with the U.S. Navy. The Tomahawk cruise-missile system has been used in action-- an amazing example of cooperation during the Kosovo campaign and in the strikes against targets in Afghanistan.

And, of course, we're moving on to the SDD [system development and demonstration] phase of the Joint Strike Fighter [JSF]. I have had many discussions with Admiral Clark [U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark] and with General Jones [Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones] about the importance of the JSF program to the United Kingdom-both to the Royal Navy and to the Royal Air Force.

There is plenty of evidence that the relationship between our two navies is close. Speaking as a father, my own son is presently serving as the navigating officer of the [guided-missile destroyer] USS Winston S. Churchill-one of the many personnel exchanges between our two services.

He was selected for this assignment because he was the top graduate in his navigation course, correct?

ESSENHIGH: Yes-that was the prize actually, but we have 55 Royal Navy and Royal Marine officers and senior ratings on exchange service with the United States Navy and Marine Corps. This is the largest number that we have with any nation in the world.

Did you see evidence of the special relationship during your participation in the Gulf War?

ESSENHIGH: Yes, indeed. My own ship at the time, HMS Exeter, was fully integrated into a U.S. task group. We found it relatively easy to do. We were all part of the same alliance.

Are there challenges or problems in achieving high levels of interoperability?

ESSENHIGH: We do spend a lot of our time working in a purely national environment, and I think the presence of the Enterprise battle group in our joint maritime course was a very good reminder to us that we have to keep working at this business of interoperability.

The United States Navy and the Royal Navy are proceeding broadly down the same path in terms of our use of information-based technology for command, control, and communications, but the sheer scale of the U.S. Navy's part in this means that, to an extent, they are accelerating at a pace that we find difficult to keep up with.

What we've learned to do is to exchange information so we understand where the U.S. Navy is going. We also look at the niche market areas of the IT [information technology] business to make sure that we can at least act as a gateway between our own systems and those of the U.S. Navy. During a bilateral exercise with Oman in September and October, for example, we used web-based techniques for command and control in a manner very similar to that which the U.S. Navy has been doing for some while.

We have to recognize that our funds in this area are relatively limited by comparison with the U.S. Navy, but the openness of the relationship between our two navies is such that we understand where there are potential difficulties, and we cooperate to find work-arounds for them.

We place great importance on understanding how we can work together in NATO and in the various other sorts of coalitions where we find ourselves poised these days.

Despite its enormous capabilities, Admiral Clark told Congress last spring that funding shortfalls have resulted in the U.S. Navy being a "fleet at risk." Does the Royal Navy face similar challenges today?

ESSENHIGH: I suppose the answer is that we do and we do not. I think you need to look very carefully at what you think is the role of maritime forces in the new strategic environment we find following the end of the Cold War. We in this country are actually quite clear about what the role of our Navy is in the 21st century.

I liken it to the role that the Royal Navy had traditionally in the 18th and 19th centuries: that is, to "enable" land operations. Some people argue that the 20th century was an aberration in this process but, for example, I think that Admiral Lord Nelson and his admirals would easily recognize what we now describe as the role of the Navy in the 21 st century.

They would have understood very clearly the concept of ex

peditionary warfare. They would have understood very precisely the nature of maritime embargo operations, the nature of blockade, and the nature of taking the fight to the enemy to make sure it doesn't end up on your own shores. Navies have served as enabling forces for many centuries.

Much of that mission involved sea warfare. Sailors of old were quite clear that they had to be the best at fighting their ships at sea, but they knew that theirs was not necessarily a maritime campaign in its own right. It was as much to do with changing the course of events on land.