Renaming 'Department of Defense' to 'Department of War' is playing with old divisions, debates & issues that today's nation has little knowledge & understanding of. Beware, nightmares of a kind unparalleled in modern defence are contained within the past.

www.jameswesmith.space/p/a-note-abo...

You can read my review of the UK 2025 Defence Review in the August edition of Warships IFR [18 July 2025]. I continue to advance the argument 'strategy is dead' and defence organisation isn't working.

Update on my progress as the Laughton-Corbett Research Fellow.

www.kcl.ac.uk/people/james...

Learn a little more about Research impact King’s College London, which, as a research fellow, I help enable as part of a community of thinkers and doers.

My article 'Restore the British Way of War & Keeping the Peace' is now in-print and in-digital with the May 2025 Warships IFR Magazine.

Please support publishing where you can.

Island nations have no choice but to confide in their navy. When Britain did, the Royal Navy delivered. For English sailors and Royal Marines in 1805, it was the satisfaction of doing something where honour and reward could be found by taking pride in the profession of arms.

The places that maritime strategic research take you.... From seabed to space it's about expanding understanding of why a maritime perspective of the world and beyond is a useful model. It's always what has driven my research.

Excerpt from SIr Patrick Stewart's 2023 biography 'Making it so' below. It connect's how predominatley science fiction uses naval history & maritime roots like the Royal Navy, US Navy & Lord Nelson as a future template for #space.
(Currently: 'Space Power' 2 words & not 'air spacepower'.)

“Sir Julian Corbett’s masterful study of the campaign of Trafalgar was to less focus on the battle, instead setting it in the context of a #nationalstrategy, one where #maritimestrategy was central & one based on centuries of both #nationalpolicy and military experience.“ Excerpt from my PhD thesis.

In memory of #LordNelson #TrafalgarDay
"...That & no less was what the campaign of #Trafalgar achieved. It was not merely that it secured the British Isles from invasion. The ramparts it built stretched to the ends of the Earth." #RoyalNavy
––Corbett, J S. The Campaign of Trafalgar

If you are interested in the 'Art of Admiralty' you can read:
📑 jameswesmith.substack.com/p/what-is-th...
📑 www.geostrategy.org.uk/britains-wor...
📑 www.naval-review.com/news-views/t...
🔜My forthcoming publication on the "Abolition of the Admiralty and the creation of the 🇬🇧 Ministry of Defence.'

"And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by".

–With thanks to the #Startrek fan community for making USS Julian S. Corbett happen.

Happy 65th Birthday NASA!
A few weeks ago at the U.S. Naval Academy I presented research based on newly declassified original documentary evidence that showed just how vital the US Navy, CNO and a conversation with the Admiralty/Royal Navy helped create NASA, against various naysayers.

▶️Space is a maritime domain.
▶️We need better military space history.
▶️Start of space history needs to be moved back from 1957.
▶️We need the foundation of good space history from which to analyse experience [& with other domains] to build better thought on space, rather than assumptions & guesswork.

From '#seabed to #space', the vital task is to continually build the body of scholarship, research & intellectual forum to think about #national defence #strategy using #appliedhistory as its foundation. The #maritime lens: the commons of human activity is powerfully relevant.

It's a great pleasure to lecture this week at the US Naval Academy with some new research (from new evidence) about the #maritime, maritime strategic & #naval foundations to #space #spacerace #spacepower.
Paper: "The U.S. Navy, Royal Navy and Maritime Influence on the Future of 'Space Power' 1945–"