Ukraine, without a recognisable Navy at the start of Russia’s 2022 full scale invasion, has achieved some remarkable successes in the Black Sea, but has it demonstrated revolution, or evolution and if so, what can it tell Naval planners about possible future trends of warfare at sea?

Commander Walton is the 2024-25 Royal Navy Hudson Fellow at St Antony’s College and a visiting research fellow at SST-CCW. He commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1992 from Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth and holds a Masters in Applied Security Strategy from the University of Exeter.

The African continent is marred by conflict. Although there is much attention to matters of war and peace in Africa, the underlying doctrines of African rebels and revolutionaries are usually overlooked. Rather than imposing Western theory on African developments, this presentation considers the contribution of African military thought to the changing global order. It does so by focusing on national liberation movements, which spearheaded the struggle for independence during the twentieth century.

Hybrid warfare in and around Ukraine has confronted Europe with a paradigm shift regarding security and defense since at least 2014. It began to dawn on Europe, that in an extreme case, existing military defense- and deterrence-postures might even be bypassed through hybrid strategies in a ‘downward or horizontal escalation mode’. With Russia's large-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the war entered a new, militarily escalating but no less hybrid phase. European countries in support of Ukraine incrementally came under hybrid attack.

At a time when we face unparalleled security dilemmas and technology is evolving at a pace where we are challenged to keep up, Defence has been struggling with how to innovate successfully and deliver novel technologies into the hands of the end user at scale.  This seminar will examine from both a theoretical and practical perspective, how that might be achieved, taking lessons from recent conflict and the civilian sector.

The story of Black Hawk Down is a familiar one. On 3 October 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation; the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation.

Following a recent simulation of a scenario where there was a ‘failure of deterrence’, Rob Johnson examines the implications of recent geopolitical developments, asking how accurate our analyses are. He examines the challenges of critical evaluation in this period of change in the international situation and how urgent it is for scholars to develop a better understanding of escalation, deterrence, and coercion.

How does Europe plan to defend itself amidst constrained resources and geopolitical uncertainty? This presentation explores the fundamental role of the European Defense Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) in providing materiel for a sustainable and credible deterrent, analyzing its status and challenges, assessing initiatives in progress, and providing potential options for policymakers.