Naval Intelligence: The Origin Foreign Intelligence Services
Charles W. King
Perhaps the most famous peace-time shipbuilding program in modern history was the Royal Navy’s ‘Two-Power Standard’. While it has been the informal objective of the Royal Navy since the 1850’s, the Naval Defense Act 1889 enshrined the standard in official policy and committed £21,500,000 over five years for the Royal Navy’s expansion. From 1889 onward it was the official policy of the United Kingdom that the Royal Navy would maintain a fleet of battleships at least equal the combined number of battleships to the next two largest navies, France and Russia in 1889.
However the Two-Power Standard raises an important issue, how would an organization like the Royal Navy know how many ships of what kinds the French, Germans, Russians, or Japanese were constructing? The answer was an organized system of Naval Attachés at embassies abroad reporting on the construction and movements of foreign flagged vessels. The United Kingdom created the Foreign Intelligence Committee in 1882, which was renamed the Naval Intelligence Department in 1887. The NID was responsible not only for gathering intelligence on foreign navies through naval attachés and the reports of British merchant marine captains and other sources, but also for strategic planning. By giving the NID these responsibilities the British Admiralty directly linked the both long term shipbuilding planning, and strategic war planning to the intelligence gathered by the NID on foreign naval assets and movements.
The late nineteenth century saw the creation of a number of the forerunners of NATO’s current foreign intelligence services, many of them directly associated with naval affairs. The United States’ first intelligence service was also founded in 1882. Like its Royal Navy counterpart the Office of Naval Intelligence was created alongside a new shipbuilding program and had its responsibilities including the monitoring of foreign naval construction and movements. Imperial Germany’s Nachrichten-Abteilung, known as ‘N’, was not created until 1901 due to the internal politics of the Imperial Navy, but it would also have the remit to monitor foreign shipbuilding and naval movements, focusing on the Royal Navy. Prior to the World War One despite a public hysteria about German spies there were very few German agents working in the U.K.. This is in part because Imperial Germany’s intelligence operations remained split between the Army and Navy. Those German agents that did operate in the U.K. prior to and during World War One were almost exclusively operatives of N, responsible for monitoring naval construction.
Even before the advent of dedicated naval intelligence operations beginning in the 1880s, such information was deemed of critical importance during both peace and war time. The Union carefully monitored British shipyards during the American Civil War for the construction of potential warships for the Confederacy. Members of nation’s merchant marine were relied upon to report when and where they saw foreign vessels in port and who had purchased a hull being laid down in dry-dock was prized information.
Today the intelligence operations of the United States and others are focusing more and more on direct action and covert operations, but historically the origins foreign intelligence services is strategic rather than operational. Naval intelligence efforts remain essential to both current naval operations and planning for future construction and potential conflicts. Human and signals intelligence about foreign military movements and capabilities are of immense strategic value and should remain a major focus of intelligence operations.