BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) will release a special Forces News interview with First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, on 8 July 2026.
In a frank and in-depth interview with BFBS’ Tim Cooper, General Sir Gwyn hosted a rare tour on board HMS Daring, as he discussed his vision for the future of the Royal Navy, including plans for a hybrid navy, recruitment and retention, morale, warfighting readiness, submarine readiness, the work of the Joint Expeditionary Force, and more.
Key takeaways from General Sir Gwyn’s interview include:
On morale:
- “Morale is remarkably high across the Navy. We’re growing as a Navy for the first time in decades. And that is because people are gripped by the sense of purpose of the times we live in and the belief in what the Royal Navy can do.”
On HMS Daring soon being back at sea after nine years:
- “I think what I see now across the Navy is a scale of investment that we haven’t enjoyed for 30 years.”
- “And this [HMS Daring] is testament to that.”
- “This is the Phoenix ship.”
- “This is the ship that was dormant for too long, is now getting back to sea, is now a home for sailors, is now going to go on operations.”
On Warfighting readiness:
- “It’s not optional.”
- “There’s no choice in this.”
- “It was ordered in the defence review.”
- “You only have to look at the state of the world.”
- “You only have to understand the role of NATO in protecting the UK and you realise that we have to be ready for war fighting.”
- “If we’re ready for war fighting, we can genuinely establish deterrence. We need to prove that we can fight and win in order to avoid the war we don’t want to have to fight.”
On submarines:
- “…decades of underinvestment in our nuclear business, has left us with an availability challenge in our submarines.”
- “My job is to turn that around…”
- “This is a unique piece of UK capability that keeps us safe.”
- “Now that we’ve turned a corner, now that we have investment in the defence nuclear enterprise, we can absolutely solve this problem.”
On the Joint Expeditionary Force:
- “What JEF gives you is the freedom to move in crisis whilst NATO might take a little longer to decide what it is it wants to do.”
- “What we’re trying to do is really raise that up and make that a more capable, more credible force than it has been today…”
- “In November, we’ll have our carrier in Oslo, and we will host all the JEF nations, and we aim to sign a commitment towards the operational level ambition for what we can do with JEF navies.”
On the Hybrid Navy (speaking onboard the experimental platform XV Patrick Blackett)
- “If we want to be a credible warfighting Navy, we’ve got to be as autonomous as we can.”
- “That is a mantra that we’re adopting in our future hybrid Navy plans, which will see large autonomous platforms operating alongside our warships.”
- “I think the key lesson for us is that people, our sailors, have a very important role in all of this as well, though.”
- “We’re not swapping the machines for our people.”
- “What we’re doing is augmenting our people with the machines.”
The episode will be released on 8 July on Forces News YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@forces_news
For general updates, follow BFBS Forces News on forcesnews.com, Facebook, Instagram and X.
