Dropping the pilot

In the famous Punch cartoon of March 1890, Otto von Bismark is seen leaving the ship (of state) having done so much to bring about the creation of modern Germany. As he leaves, he is watched by a young Kaiser Wilhelm ii. Perhaps the analogy is a little contrived, but dropping Keir Starmer who made Labour electable again, watched by a 'young' Andy Burnham, comes to mind.

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The Black Sea Fleet's progressive destruction since 2022 — examined in detail elsewhere in this series — has prompted a question that keeps recurring in defence analysis: why do capable military forces, confronted with evidence that their tactical assumptions are wrong, continue on the same trajectory until the losses become unsustainable? The Russian Navy faced the Neptune anti-ship missile, the Magura V5 unmanned surface vessel, and the Sub Sea Baby underwater drone in succession. Each system demonstrated that existing Russian countermeasures were inadequate. The institutional response was to add boom defences and helicopter patrols rather than to fundamentally reassess.

The French army at Agincourt in 1415 had faced the English longbow at Crécy in 1346 and at Poitiers in 1356. The institutional response was to add armour and more men. On 25 October 1415, on a narrow muddy field in northern France, the consequences of that failure to adapt became irrevocable.

Agincourt repays modern operational analysis not as colourful historical background but as a case study in exactly the failure modes that produce military catastrophe: terrain misread, command dysfunction, technology underestimated, and an enemy consistently undervalued until undervaluing him was no longer possible. The rhyme across six centuries is audible. What follows is an attempt to make it precise.

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The Black Sea Fleet - From Regional Power to Constrained Force

Part One: The Fleet, the War, and the Attrition Campaign

Curated by Robin Ashby, Chair, Eurodefense EU-Russia Observatory

The Inheritance of Sevastopol

Russia's Black Sea Fleet entered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 at the height of its post-Soviet capability. Sevastopol — seized, along with the rest of Crimea, in 2014 — had been transformed in eight years from a leased base operating on borrowed time into a heavily fortified naval complex. New submarines had been commissioned. New corvettes carrying Kalibr cruise missiles had replaced ageing Soviet hulls. Coastal defence batteries covered the approaches. The fleet's air component had been reinforced. By almost any measure, the Black Sea Fleet in early 2022 was the most capable it had been since the Soviet Union's dissolution.
It was also, as events proved, profoundly vulnerable to a form of warfare its commanders had not adequately anticipated.

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The Role of French Nuclear Deterrence in Fostering a New European Strategic Culture for Genuine European Strategic Autonomy

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"Events, dear boy, events"

Many Commentary readers will have been following the recent tribulations of the UK's Prime Minister. This is not the forum for any political partisanship, other than to reiterate the government's own words about defence being an engine of growth. The inertia which has gripped the government since it came to office in July 2024, as far as defence policy is concerned, has been well chronicled. It would seem that this frustration is shared by many.

The incremental announcements about equipment purchases by the MOD that have been wrung out of the government, along with the signing of security agreements with allies, is little short of performative window dressing. However, the current leadership process resolves itself, the 'new' prime minister – even if it is the present incumbent – must bring forward the Defence Investment Plan, and get a grip on the Treasury, to be more creative about how to fund the defence needs of the UK.

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Innovation, Sovereignty and Collaboration:

Lessons for the Allied Defence Industrial Base

Delivered by Robin Ashby at a Manchester Metropolitan University Security & Technology Conference, 16 May 2026

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The Signal

On the night of 8 April 1940 — the eve of Germany's invasion of Denmark — A.P. Møller, founder of what would become the Maersk shipping empire, and his son Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller faced a decision. They knew the invasion was imminent. Of the 46 ships in the Maersk fleet, 36 were outside Danish waters. Those captains needed instructions (writes Robin Ashby)

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On May 3rd 2026, Dr Hans-Christian Anderson delivered the sermon at the annual memorial service for Denmark's War Saiors (1940 - 1945) at St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne.

We have gathered today to celebrate the Danes merchant navy seamen who volunteered in 1940, to sail for the allies.

They defied orders from their government to return to Denmark. Instead, almost all of them sailed to allied ports and offered their ships and their services to the allies.

What followed, for most of them, was five years away from their homes and their families. Five years of sailing all over the world with all kinds of cargo, on all the world's oceans.

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