 Ieithio yn archif ymgyrch. Beth yna y gallu chymdeithas yn gygnatio, rwy'n edrych chi'n gwneud felly. Ychydig gan ychydigrannu os y tro, yr ychydig ar y rhesaith a phuedd ychydig ddatud i gydig i greu rhesaith, rwy'n credu chi'n cael ei gweithio, i gydig i'n gallu lleol. Mae'r argynchedd Yngrifwyr Wrthwynt ac am ychydig i'r rhwyng. Yn gyfrifenni am eu gweld trwy'r risaith os ychydig yn ysgol. across the School of Security Studies. So, we're delighted today to welcome, we've got two speakers, we've got Dr Ronald Tee and Yal Tocini, and I'll just take the liberty of introducing them both. So, Dr Ronald Tee, he's going to be presenting first as a final year doctoral candidate at DSD in the Defence Studies Department here, researching the NATO military logistic resilience at tactical units during NATO Article 5 large-scale combat operations. Ron completed an MA military history and strategic studies at Math University in Ireland, he's previously a health, force health protection specialist in the Australian Defence Force, as well as training in aviation medicine, underwater medicine, aeromedical evacuation, and for the past 20 years he's worked as a military medical logistician, if I can say that, and staff officer. So, his career has included seven operational deployments, three of those at the UN, and a Defence Corporation programme posting in Papua New Guinea, British Army overseas exchange, and appeared as a defence contractor in the Middle East and West Asia, so a really richly diverse background. You could say that. Ron, yeah. And then also delighted to welcome today Yata Sini. So, how is a PhD candidate at Sao Paolo State University and a visiting researcher in the Defence Studies Department at King's? He's a writer for the UK Defence Journal, covering issues related to British power and standing worldwide. He's a member of UNESCO's Defence and International Security Studies Group, the Navy Records Society and the Army Records Society. He holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from the Department of International Relations at Sao Paolo. And his current focus is the relative decline of the UK in the post-Cold War era and the British position within an increasingly competitive international system. So, some very contemporary, very timely topics today that both our speakers are going to be presenting on. And I think unless there's any questions, what we'll do is each speaker has got 15 minutes with around 10 for discussion or up to 10. And then I think for all those who are online, if you can just perhaps either put your hand up if you have a question, once we open for questions, or feel free to put them in the chat and I will monitor the chat. But I think that's it from me, very much over to you, Ron. Okay, thank you, Ellen, for that kind introduction. And thank you, Dr Chris Tuck, for me, my discussant. Okay, welcome, ladies and gents. Just 10 minute meeting is on presenting my earlier career research. And what you're seeing there is my PhD topic. Like most PhD topics, it's a little bit verbose. But in essence, I'm looking at what influences resilience at the tactical level in NATO military logistic units, and how we can establish this awareness at the tactical level to improve survivability in NATO Article 5, large-scale combat operations. So all of those out there, hopefully most of you, even if you don't have a military hat, that will actually all make some sense. So let's just go on. Okay, so just a quick slide here and a little bit of an intro just to say, folks, this is a little bit like, you know, the three minute thesis on steroids. So I'm going to do it over 10 minutes. I've actually given a previous new voices seminar. And that was actually a 40 minute talk where I talked about tactical level military logistic resilience. This is strictly going to be what am I actually researching. But if you've got any questions at the end, obviously, that's where we're going to pick it up. This slide is just to talk about NATO Article 5, just in case, you know, you're not aware of it, unlikely, which the famous Article 5, an attack on one is considered an attack on all. My opinion about this is that is all very well, but then people have actually got to agree there's an Article 5 situation. Large-scale combat operations is a US term from Field Manual 3-0. And I've deliberately used the US term because the US has major warfighting doctrine. NATO does not, in my humble opinion, by the way, all these opinions that I express in this talk are not the official view of the Department of Defence, the Ministry of Defence or King's College. Right, back to message. So I'm using large-scale combat operations because, as you can see from that definition there, there are words like lethal, brutal, fear, violence and enemies. And I haven't used NATO's MJO term, major joint operations because I think a lot of that NATO warfighting doctrine is watered down. So LSCO is used. My thesis actually originated from the thought of resilience. This was, I guess, first enunciated at the 2016 Warsaw Ministers Summit. And it's been promulgated through NATO, through a couple of agencies. But my main beef about resilience in NATO is that it's all strategic. There is nothing, well, I've got limited, but really there's nothing of application for operational-level military commanders. So it's all about infrastructure, it's all about power, it's all about public health, it's all about bridges. That's all very well. But we need to actually operationalise resilience and apply it at the sub-operational tactical levels. And that's what this research attempts to start doing. Just a quick word about resilience. What we have there is a fairly generic resilience curve. So on the y-axis you've got performance. On the x-axis you've got time. I'm sure, hoping, I'm sure that most of you have seen this curve. So basically you get on the curve the moment of disruption, which is in the case of my research, a NATO Article 5 attack. I'll rephrase that, an attack triggering NATO Article 5 from the east. It's not going to come on NATO from Australia, I can tell you. It'll come from the east. And at that point there is a first response. And you get the classical stages of resilience known as absorption, adaptation, transformation. In my literature research from my PhD, it's generally agreed across all the disciplines, materials engineering, systems engineering, supply chain management, ecology, that this is a generic resilience curve. Complex adaptive systems theory is stuck there because one of the original contributions deloged in my thesis is that military logistic systems are complex adaptive systems. Now, while that may be intuitive, no one's actually written it down until now. So even though we recognise that fighting wars and armies and warfare itself is a complex adaptive system, there actually isn't any literature that I can find that documents this. Sidebar military logistics is a surprisingly understudied topic. And I think part of the reason for that is it's taken up between supply chain management, which is not military logistics, and that's an academic discipline. And I think the other half of it is actually trade journals. So you'll get things like the US Logistic Journal or Army Logistic University. It's mostly opinion pieces, excellent opinion pieces, by professional military officers, but it ain't research. So this thesis, I'm intending that it occupies this central area between professional trade journals and academic research. Here are my three research questions. I'll give you time to quickly read through that as I'm speaking, but you can see that basically I'm proposing to ask what factors influence resilience or make up resilience, question to what theoretical approach. No prizes were guessing that, complex adaptive systems. And with research question three, I actually used a hybrid methodology in a novel way to improve awareness of resilience during a NATO article five collective exercise, more on that later. But there are the three research questions that this research has set out to answer. The research itself was constructed as an exploratory sequential series. So I constructed research based on stage one and stage two. I didn't amend the slide, it's a very early slide. I actually used mixed methods in both stages. I used qualitative methods in the form of interviews, and I used quantitative method in the form of a survey. Stage one looked at the first research question, which is that one, what are the key input factors? And stage two looked at the third research question. Can we apply a hybrid methodology to increase awareness? The two link together form an exploratory sequential series. So the stage one research methodology, as I mentioned, was it's a mixed methodology. It means you're using bits of both types of research collection methodology, qualitative and quantitative. With the data collection, I applied interviews, I coded that, I used EnViva coding software. There are a number of products on the market. I then also used reflexive thematic analysis to analyse all the interviews. And for the quantitative part, I actually used descriptive and inferential statistics. Pretty basic stuff, weighted mean, median standard deviation. So I looked at measures of central tendency, and I looked at measures of spread. And the population was a population of 14 NATO military logistic officers in a given rank range, who were professional military logistic officers in a NATO military. So, for instance, the British interview is that I did, had recently retired from the military. So they weren't subject to ethical approval through the MOD. So it was a N of 14. Regarding the conceptual framework for military logistic resilience, I found that there were three principle resilience input factors, individual factors, organisational factors and what I call battle space factors. And where these have come from are out of my literature review and my research evidence, which is the data I collected from research. Now, looking at that, it all seems pretty intuitive. Of course, individuals have an influence on resilience. And of course, the organisation does battle space. What is battle space? In that, I'm talking about things like the dispersal of a unit, the mobility of a unit, the management of the electromagnetic signature of a unit, the use of offensive fires. And in particular, I considered Russian artillery doctrine, which looks as at intense area fires. When you actually look at those three factors, it's fairly intuitive and you might say, well, of course these are the three factors, but it isn't stated anywhere. So that's the first original contribution to knowledge. By stage two research methodology, I actually ran a medical logistic tabletop exercise. So what I did was I ran two war games with Estonia Ministry of Defence during the annual spring exercise called Kevad Turm in Estonia, which stands for spring storm. And I interviewed participants before the logistic tabletop and after the logistic tabletop. And the aim of this stage two was to try and prove that a hybrid methodology and the methodology was a qualitative data collection method, which was interviews coupled with a war game, the hybrid methodology, could get the result that I wanted. And I basically analysed that data in the same way as I've indicated in the previous slides. I had an N of 10, which is actually five military logistic officers before the event and five after the event. Now, I don't have time to explain how the war game was run, but it was a war game that actually simulated the movement of medical supplies. You know, in the Australian Army, we use a 10 item logistic system, class eights, if you're an American or Australian New Zealand or Belgian or Portuguese out there, but NATO uses a five item logistic classification. So they're really class twos, but this war game, which I designed and put together can actually be used with class threes fuel, class fives ammunition or class ones food and water. Whatever logistic item you put in the system, you can war game that. Why did I use blood? Because I'm a military medical logistician and two blood is the least resilient logistic item in all of the NATO stock numbers that any logistic unit can hold. So I used blood because it's so unreal resilient. So if you put a bag of blood on the table within an hour, two hours, the platelets don't clot anymore. All you've got is a bag of protein that does nothing. The logistic war game was done, as I said, during the annual Estonian military exercise. I ran two war games. I reported only on the first for the PhD research because the second was actually a civ mill exercise that I did not write up for this PhD. That was a bit of the payoff to the Estonians. I ran the first war game to help their military and to help my research. The second war game was actually to start a national resilience conversation on their strategic blood supply, and I had participants from all the groups that you see there. So EFP battle group Estonia for those who don't know is the enhanced forward presence battle group in Estonia that is led by the UK. SJF HQ is standing joint force headquarters UK, which is also responsible for the joint expeditionary force. 84 Metsup, that stands for Medical Supply Squadron. Nine log regit RLC stands for the Ninth Logistic Regiment Royal Logistic Corps, and RAN, yes, it does stand for what you thought it does, the Royal Australian Navy. So here's a happy snap of the directing staff with myself in the middle with the slouch hat, and the civvy was the Royal Australian Navy officer. And as you can see it was a very low fidelity exercise held indoors. And again, I won't go into the, you know, long winded explanation of how this was done, but the essence of it was showing battle maps. So a typical battle map would be shown to the training audience. And then after a certain period of time, I would advance that battle map. And we then, as I've described, did pre and post war game interviews to see if the awareness had increased, which it did. So there are three original contributions to knowledge from my research. My research confirms that the resilience conceptual framework that I proposed is in fact comprised of those three factors. Individual, organisation, battle space. The second original contribution to knowledge is that based on literature view and theoretical analysis, not empirical, I demonstrated that mill log systems, military logistic systems display all the essential characteristics of complex adaptive systems. The third original contribution knowledge is I demonstrated that the hybrid methodology that I've skipped over really quickly, which was qualitative data analysis, sorry, correction, mixed methods analysis, and a war game did increase resilience awareness. Now the so what of all this just quickly is that if we understand that mill log systems are CASAs, complex adaptive systems, we can better understand their behaviour and we can better manipulate them to be more resilient. The first original contribution knowledge is obviously a touch point where we can operationalise resilience. Interestingly, one of the observations I found was the knowledge of Russian offensive doctrine amongst the training audience was at points abysmally low. For instance, very few NATO military logistic officers mentioned the importance of electronic signature management, which is a critical factor in survivability in Ukraine. The third original contribution knowledge about the wargaming and mixed methods actually validated a low cost, low fidelity training solution without actually having to put troops in the field. So that's my name, that's my King's College email. I welcome you to reach out with any questions and that's basically my three minute thesis done in eleven minutes. So I'll stop presenting now and I will leave it to my discussant, Dr Tuck. Thank you. Thanks very much Ron. That was really interesting and a really important topic. So I mean I think that the research that you engage in I think is clearly relevant and significant, not least first of all because you're looking at logistics, which very often is neglected or in fact not entirely ignored in thinking about contemporary and future war. And of course as we've seen in Ukraine, the foundation for the effective prosecution of combat operations is logistics, it's a logistics flow. It is the foundation which everything else flows. I think what's also interesting to me and important is your focus on resilience because thinking on contemporary and future war is often very much focused on what it is that we will do to our adversaries. So manoeuvre warfare for example is founded on this idea that we will be inflicting systemic shock and dislocation upon them, ignoring the fact that war is a fundamentally relational activity. So in order for us to be able to inflict harm or to impose control over an adversary, we also have to be able to protect those things that they will also be trying to attack. And I think also that focus on large scale combat operations because clearly that is the flavour, I say the flavour of the month and that sounds dismissive, it's not, that is the main focus of western militaries at the moment. So I think that what you're doing is really important. So it's just some observations which in fact I think are really questions. The first issue for me I think would be the issue of that large scale combat operations context. We seem to be trapped at the moment in terms of our thinking about future war in debates that are between the poles of everything has changed. You know, we're now in the middle of an information based military revolution, everything is changing, it's an inflection point in the fares and on the other hand those would argue that nothing really has changed at all. And so for me one question would be to what extent can you generalise about your large scale combat operations context given that we have an ongoing debate about what that context might actually look like. There's a lot of theorising which has led to concepts and doctrines related to multi-domain operations. There's a lot of assessments of the various sorts of trends that are generating, you know, more transparent or lethal battlefield and hyperactive battlefields. But we know that every war is different so to what extent can you generalise about this LSCO context when it comes to the challenges it's posing. So that would be the first issue. The second issue and I guess it's related to that would be, so you mentioned your focus on Russian artillery doctrine and their approaches there in terms of attack. Would different adversaries change the resilience problem? Would a different mix for example between mass or precision fires or between kinetic attack and non-kinetic attacks, cyber for example, would that change the nature of the resilience problem? What impact might that have? My third observation is related to the sort of theoretical approach that you've taken here and you've looked at a variety of different literatures which I think are really interesting. And I think an interesting corrective to I think someone like me who would have a particular approach to this problem. But I was wondering to what extent you have looked at the academic literatures on military adaptation in innovation. And I asked that question because you talk about in relation to complex adaptive systems issues of absorption, adaptation, transformation. But what that literature does do is to highlight the ways in which different organisations are variable in their receptiveness to change. So in terms of the extent to which organisations can absorb and then adapt or transform might depend on issues to do with things like military culture, civil military relations, intra service and inter service rivalries. And so I think that's important I think because you talk about a generic resilience curve and in terms of your implications you talk about individual, organisational and battle space resilience. But the extent to which individuals and organisations make themselves more resilient might depend to a certain extent on attributes of those organisations or other factors. So it would be the variability I suppose in the ability of individuals and organisations to actually absorb, adapt and transform. It would be interesting to have your views on that. And then my final point I think is also linked to that and that's the very interesting point you're focusing on NATO which I think is really interesting because I think often there tends to be a national focus or look at British perspectives on this or US perspectives or have you're looking at the NATO perspective. And I wonder then the extent to which that has implications for your conclusion. So by facing at the NATO level you're looking at a collection of states so to what extent does a resilience problem vary between different NATO actors and coming back to issues of absorption, adaption and transformation to different countries have different problems or are more adaptive. I don't know. And then also the extent to which you're focusing on individuals and organisations. So we know that the levels of war interconnected issues that will manifest at the tactical and operational level will have implications further upwards, but also presumably although you're focusing at the operational tactical levels and the organisational and individual levels, presumably features of that strategic level context would cascade downwards and have implications. So I'd be interested to know to what extent focusing on NATO as an organisation might produce varied conclusions depending on which of the NATO members you're looking at or indeed if when we're looking at a different organisation or a national structure whether your conclusions might differ. The characteristics of NATO is a multinational organisation. Does that have implications for your research? So a really interesting scheme of research, Ron, and I will be really fascinated to read the final thesis. So thank you very much for that, but those are my observations which I think are also questions. So thanks very much for that. Thank you so much Chris. Ellen, do I reply at this point or do we run out of time? No, I think if you reply Ron and just sort of respond to Chris's observations, I think just in the interest of time because how's disgustant has to be but 130, I think we'll start the second presentation around five paths. So just for five or six minutes if you'd like to respond and then what we can do is if there's questions that come up we can always take them later on. Roger that. Okay thank you Chris for your really thoughtful points and thank you because these are the sorts of points my examiners are probably going to ask me in London in October. Taking them in reverse order, why NATO, will there be variability at the national level? Absolutely. I picked on NATO because it's a super national organisation and NATO does issue its own doctrine and the resilience teaching has come from NATO. What I guess colours all of my replies to you is that a PhD is a piece of research but it's a piece of research that has to be achieved with measurable progress in a reasonable time and I think of all those four questions you've asked me they are all open to further research which I'm considering doing postdoc and certainly the operationalisation of resilience principles for NATO is one of those questions that needs to be answered and I certainly found in my research there was definitely cultural variability so with my populations of 14 and five it's produced for a PhD with the greatest respect but it needs a much bigger research sort of population. I think also what is the other the variety of different locations yes you are talking about you know how do organisations adapt, how do cultures input into organisations and so on they are all things that you can drill down from these three essential elements that have identified individual organisational battle space. Battle space factors were what I loosely defined as things happening in the battle space so Russian offensive doctrine was a battle space input factor and in part of my research I actually identified the dynamic between mobility dispersal artillery command and control and I was able to actually graph this on an x y axis and create a relationship from it that may actually be manipulatable in the future but they were all things that yes obviously can lead to further study and can be drilled down but again for a PhD to look at inter-service rivalries that's a level of granularity I just didn't have space for in a PhD and certainly yeah this PhD is localised at live scale combat operations I mean to what extent is that referable to anywhere else good point part of the early part of my PhD I actually talk about operations on the spectrum of warfare so large scale combat operations occupy one extreme of the spectrum according to field manual 30 and peace support and peace keeping operations are the other factor so obviously along this entire spectrum all these resilience factors and influence will be variable so I had to try and make my PhD as narrow as possible practical but as deep as possible so I went for narrowness specificity and depth I hope I've kind of answered those questions and I'm conscious of the fact that it's a couple of minutes and I think I will stop there yeah and the one about the second question about um you know does resilience vary with different adversaries absolutely so I have established a basic set of input factors that requires granularity so underneath organisation one can consider things like culture inter-service rivalry defence policies um you know religious context perhaps there are all sorts of things that you can look at but what we have here is very broad categories that can be drilled down later on obviously not in my PhD my last thought is this one very important exclusion in my PhD was I come from a force health protection background I didn't consider individual psychological clinical psychological resilience that is a huge volume of literature in the health sciences but I I deliberately excluded it because that's a PhD on its own and that's a health sciences PhD it's not really a defence studies PhD so I actually I actually parked that topic but there's a lot of stuff in it and my PhD pays recognition to to that huge kind of subfield of individual resilience I hope I've answered the questions there and I'm going to stop because I don't want to take time from the other speakers thank you Ellen and thank you Chris for your really intelligent comments and very helpful comments thanks very much Ron really interesting presentation thank you yeah thank you Ron I'll just echo Chris's observation there and and for your responses as well if people in the audience online do have questions for Ron that come just as we we go through please feel free to put them in the chat and hopefully we will have some time at the end to pick up any questions but we do have a second speaker today your presentation is on the strategic position of the UK and the Indo-Pacific from the early 1990s to the early 2020s. First thank you for having me here today my name is Ejuan Vitor Tocini I'm from the Brazilian student here as a visiting researcher at the King's College in London and this presentation here about the presence of the UK in the Indo-Pacific and South Atlantic is more a exploratory research it's in a very early stage one is partially a result of my master's degree especially the the points about the South Atlantic now in the PhD I'm studying is studying more about the UK in the Indo-Pacific so it's a article a project of an article that is still in its early stages a conception phase let's say so the what I'm trying to do with this article here is basically a overall exploratory analysis about the characteristics of the UK in those two regions mainly within the field of discussions about power projections and the role of the British overseas territories for Britain's power projection capabilities so as you can see my next slide here at this yes these are the current overseas territories of the UK Britain has around has currently 13 claims 13 territories overseas plus one claim in of the British Antarctic territory they're resulting in 14 territories overseas and as you can see in the next one in the next slide some of these territories overlap they overlap with some major British bases overseas mainly of course the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, Ascension Island, Gibraltar, the Sovereign base areas in Cyprus and the British Indian Ocean territory so advancing to the question this thing it is overlapping your ad shows what I'm trying to highlight in this article as well is as already as a preliminary conclusion that the UK the way of British warfare the way of British power projection is still relies at least in part on its overseas territories things haven't changed that much since the early 20th century in the sense that it's still necessary to have established bases overseas to really have a global reach so this is the main point about the overseas territories in this article and how this and the next one is how these territories provide Britain with a regional presence in the South Atlantic and to a lesser extent in the in the Pacific so the question of power projection of the UK and power projection since the 1990s is market is characterized by a few points that I should note before advancing to the specifics of British presence in the South Atlantic and the Pacific the main the main thing we should know about the UK capabilities since the end of the Cold War is mainly the effect and the consequences of the peace dividend and the return of the dictionary approach that result that that resulted in a few a few things first firstly you have the the British government in the post Cold War era much more with a willingness of increased willingness to commit British forces overseas meaning more deployments in the 90s than the decades before so that resulted with the peace combined with the peace dividend which is basically cuts to the defence budget for example we have in 99 a budget a British defence expenditure of 4.1% of GDP by 997 we have just 2.7% of GDP that's more or less what Britain expands now or which is around 2.2% of GDP so this resulted of course in smaller forces than compared to the time that Britain deployed to the South Atlantic against Argentina in 1982 but it also meant that Britain was now returning to its traditional with expeditionary focus that expeditionary capabilities in the 90s now we have as a consequence of that return to its expeditionary approach for example the carrier the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers have their inception in these years but that also led to a military overstretch Britain committed itself to operations in Sierra Leone in the Balkans in the Middle East and by the end of the decade military overstretch meaning increased commitments with a downgraded conventional capability in the sense of manpower in sense of size resulted in that kind of overstretch and of course with decreased military assets the relevance of already established bases and territories only increased and then and that's the point within the discussion that I'm going to analyse that that's the discussion about the South Atlantic and the Pacific that I'm going to explore more in depth here for example why is that the case is that the case mainly because in the South Atlantic Britain's presence there is based completely without exception on its overseas territories Britain has the Ascension Island has Santa Elena has the Falkland Islands and all the British military presence in that area revolves around the defence policy of maintaining British sovereignty so it's a defensive one but despite that despite its defensive stance in the South Atlantic the United Kingdom has a very comfortable position in that region mainly due to the one factor and that is Britain is the only major power including for example the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that has a permanent military presence in that region along with a territorial presence not even the United States has that kind of military presence there to in that is highlighted by the fact that the United States and Britain share a base a a military facility on Ascension Island and since the war in the South Atlantic we have a sharp increasing British military presence in that area and the normalisation of relations with Argentina in the 90s didn't change things a lot actually we see you can point to a decrease of overall presence but the overall British military presence in that area remain stable of course the cuts to the military budget have they have consequences to overseas military presence and the South Atlantic and the British case in the South Atlantic is not an exception we see some cuts some cuts to the naval forces deployed there for example the Atlantic patrol task in south which was performed by a major Royal Navy surface vessel meaning a destroyer or a frigate no longer occurs so in practice the Falkland Island patrol ship currently HMS 4th operates in the South Atlantic carrying out the duties of both tasking that both tasking forces so in that case we can see some changes to overall presence in that region in part we can say that investments in military infrastructure compensated that that's through Britain invested continue to invest on its military assets on the Falklands and on Ascension Island the airport in Centralland that opened in 2016 also contribute in part to the air bridge to securing the air bridge between Britain and the Falklands and that leads to the conclusion about South Atlantic that we have a stability in overall numbers since the late 1990s and also a very comfortable position strategic position for the United Kingdom meanwhile in the sub-Indian pacific we have a much more complex situation Britain is not only is not the only one the only major power there actually Britain is it we could say that is the United Kingdom is a returning power to the region in the sense that now it has some sort of some sort of a long-term strategy within the discussions about global Britain and the British tilt to the Pacific which it didn't have mainly after the 70s the withdrawal from east of Suez in 1971 which also as well we should point out that the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 marked the end of the United Kingdom as the major European power in those regions it doesn't I when I say that I'm not trying to say that the UK had a very important role in strategic role in that region it had Hong Kong it had and the consequent military assets deployed there for the for the fence purposes but it also meant that compared to other European powers the UK had a permanent position in the region which changed after 1997 between 1997 and the mid 2010s the UK engagement especially especially when we talk about the fence engagement with the region and military deployments were very scarce facilities under the bridge flag there remain readily used which is the case we can point to the case of Singapore the Singapore support unit and the facilities the training forces in Brunei and Kenya they were used as not as a part of a regional engagement as a regional approach to the region but but instead employed as tools for British training and deployment elsewhere mainly in the Middle East so their purpose there their main objective that Britain had with those facilities was not of a one of a regional engagement but as a source of power elsewhere of engagement elsewhere so that change that start to change in the mid 2010s we have a resurgence resurgence in the British engagement with the region and consequently of British military presence so as a contrast to South Atlantic why we have a stable presence in that region in the pacific we have a rapid spending presence in in terms of numbers and military facilities Britain opened a large bases in Oman started to use with more frequency the support unit Singapore in Singapore Brunei in Kenya or now considered within with possible engagements regionally for example in the integrated review of 2021 the British government indicated the possibility of expanding the way its presence in Kenya is handled and that would mean transforming the training unit in Kenya or spending its purposes to act as a regional hub for British forces and culminating all these changes within just a period of 10 years we could point out that this change starts around 2015 2014 we have the commitment to permanent naval deployment Britain didn't have that that kind of thing in the Pacific since the 70s with exception to the deployment to Hong Kong so it's a significant change in when we compared we compared it to the British presence in the decades before now within the early 2020s Britain's presence in the pacific is more considerable is more significant it's more significant than its presence in the South Atlantic and that is a novelty it was not the case until the mid 2010s we could point out that the Folklent contributed to a British presence in the South Atlantic that was second only to its own presence in Europe and the Mediterranean in the Euro Atlantic axis of NATO so that change we could argue as now finishing my presentation because of the 10 minutes I think I'm already going beyond the 10 minutes mark so that changed it and spite that those changes that we witnessed in the last 10 years the British presence in the South Atlantic still matches its own presence in the Pacific in the sense that in the Pacific Britain has a lot more challenges or challenges to its position and it relies on partners to have a regional position while in the South Atlantic if necessary and that's most of the case Britain relies on itself it has a sovereign presence through its overseas territories while in the Indo-Pacific Britain has as its territory there as remaining territory there only one which is the British Indian Ocean territory with the Anglo-American base of J. B. Garcy. So as a conclusion we have a rapid expansion of British force in the last 10 years in the Pacific a stability in the South Atlantic Britain's presence in the region in the region east of Sue is still a long way to go although the trend is one of expansion with the all-cause agreement etc and the overseas territories with the cuts to defence expanding and the reliance on even more commitments with the return to the Indo-Pacific or return to the east of Sue's regions these these territories are only growing relevance even the context of supporting the UK's global reach and position so I think that's more or less everything I have to say of course if you have any questions please feel free to answer that answer everything right thank you so much how Zino would you like to offer your observations and then as yeah please do pop questions in the chat if you have them everyone hello good afternoon can you see me yes thank you Ellen and Vitor thank you so much for this fascinating present presentation and by the way Vitor and I although I'm not Vitor supervisor and I'm his host here at King's so we've been talking throughout the year and I've also read some a shorter version of his dissertation and also some some draft some parts of it and I I think you're dealing with a very very important topic and and also I want to explain explain why and I think actually this is something that because you have laid out in the quite in details what's the situation on the ground perhaps explaining this context is also what might make not necessarily make this research more interesting but might emphasise even more why why matters why it is important and I think it is important because there is an ongoing discussion within British policy circles foreign policy circles about you know the future of British Britain UK foreign policy especially after Brexit especially when at a time when we there's a lot of talk about going to the Indo-Pacific but actually we have a lot of dilemmas when it comes to the Indo-Pacific I think most of this are caused by the the fact that we struggle to decide what to do with China how to handle China in different forums or with regard to different scenarios so it's not the Pacific tilt is not an easy one so I think perhaps this should this is an aspect that should come up come across more more explicitly in your presentation in your paper and and I think underline to your research what I perceive and that's that's why I think this is a very potentially you have a very policy relevant contribution there which doesn't mean it could not be published in in academic papers and I'll get to that I think there is an underlining question at least I see that way and this is what should the country prioritise at a time of limited resources and and I think this is something you could perhaps reflect more in depth in your paper could be at the beginning or could be at the end and clearly more clearly lay out what is the so what of this research so ultimately why are you why have you taken are you looking at these two regions why are you looking at this this time frame for example okay I get it it is after the cold war and the post-cold war years are the beginning of probably thousands thousands of researchers and and so that could come out a bit more more strongly and and also I think not only why you're doing that but also where is the main contribution because you're touching on first of all you're touching you're looking at two regions and you're looking at british foreign policy I think in a context of a changing world order because it's a long it's a fairly long it's we're looking at the last talking about the last 30 years and so also I think it would be important to emphasise what is the what are the main takeaways what what are the main contributions are you thinking of providing a theoretical contribution perhaps it doesn't sound so at this stage but that doesn't mean you could not do that you could infer it you could infer some theoretical reflections from your empirical studies or or you could spell more spell out more clearly whether this is a whether there is some new new data I think there are interesting data coming out of this research and so you're making a more empirical contribution and I think reflected on these issues also leads you to another question which you should probably consider when certainly at this stage and also when you're going to submit the paper and this is the following are you looking at making a contribution to broadly speaking international relations debate or are you thinking more in terms of area studies I don't think this is a tremendously important question I think often is you know to to manage to the main thing for me is to manage to publish a good article get your ideas out there you know make provide your points clearly but that perhaps might have an impact on on the sort of people on the sort of scholars you're going to engage with over the years in your in your future careers after after the phd that means that you might get involved with this or that group of scholars and in this or that sort of special issues or conference or being invited to give talks in different places or institutions so I think that's something to consider further down the line anyway to sum up I think in terms of taking taking this forward as I said at the start I think I really see the possibility of a policy relevant contribution presented in in you know with academic rigor because that's what we have to do so I wonder whether you might consider tailoring your work not at this stage but further down the line you might consider there's different journals who would welcome a reflection on this on this very important subject to which I want to go back to in a minute survival ruzy the washington quarterly global global policy analysis which is one of the isa sponsor journals so I think these are all journals to to take in mind okay when when you know polishing your your research um and I think there are potentially there are two points I said before that the argument could come out more strongly I think there are two points you two contributions you could make um I think on the one hand you might challenge the consent the current consensus or think critically about the the general consensus that the UK is it should go to the Indo-Pacific and you wouldn't be the only one but I think this is still not explored academically there have been discussion in parliaments of course and that's why probably the pacific tilt of the UK is a little bit ambiguous and and there has been a tilt but not in with a sort of on the scale that perhaps the the idea of a pacific tilt implied at least many assume that it was going to be something more ambitious perhaps um but also you could you could use these reflections further down the line to think critically about this concept of global Britain which is meant to drive frame UK foreign policy after brexit I think until recently this has been defined as this has been associated to the UK going to the to the pacific there is an assumption that global Britain is mostly about that but actually perhaps you can offer some food for thoughts to policy makers and make them reconsider that perhaps I'll stop here Ellen and Victor thank you Zino thank you very much um did you want to respond so just very quickly because I know Dr Leon has just a few minutes left well first thank you for your comments and yes I agree with basically all your points the the question is that is the at this moment it's a very empirical research right now it's still a in the early stage I went after data about the British presence in the South Atlantic the British presence in the in the pacific and I'm and now I'm at the moment of this presentation I'm trying to insert the discussion this presence within the topic of power projection the role of the overseas territories and the the the position of the UK as a power with limitations with increasing limitations in the last decades but showing that even with those limitations I think that's the point I'm trying to make the one of the points actually the the overseas territories they cheapen the British presence overseas they act in a way that reduce the expenditures in some sense some sense some sense and then in the other way I was trying to go after that is after the the question of global Britain as well I think I have to explore more dedicate more time and more consideration about the ways of put of inserting the idea of global Britain of the British tilt within the the concept which I mentioned about the limitations of the UK in the 21st century so that's more in line of us trying to to to do that that's just reinforces what I had in mind and it's and it's I hope it did to send it send the article in a later stage and see what we have to as an opinion as your comments within a few weeks thank you Victor yes no I appreciate your points I guess it's also I guess some some of my I guess every every scholar reacts differently to what they read they read depending also on their background on what they research on so I know I have a tendency to look at the the bigger picture um so I totally understand that um perhaps I think providing some some context there to those very important points it's it's you know it will make your research more comprehensive also more understandable to those who are less familiar with um certain more technical aspects or more operational aspects and they will be able to relate to it to to link their expertise to um to to what we're trying to achieve truly one last point I was going to mention is the emphasis I need to make which I don't know if I meet it was clear or not the that the research is in the South Atlantic that Britain has a is able to obtain a relatively comfortable strategic position there it's so they already have been surpassed by the expenditures on the inter-Pacific and the results are not the same the results for the Britain's relative position in the inter-Pacific are not the same in the sense of the weight that Britain has in that region compared to its own position in the South Atlantic so that goes within the discussion you mentioned about the limitations and the costs of the British tilt and the returns of this tilt to Britain's national interests as well okay that's that's saying one of those points thank you very much