Is Maritime ISR Transforming Naval Warfare?
Tim Ripley
06/08/2026
When the British naval commander, Admiral Horatio Nelson, famously put his telescope to his blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 and declared, "I see no ships", he was using a supposed lack of intelligence on enemy warships as an excuse to disobey orders he disagreed with.
Nelson's ships continued to battle the Danish fleet and soon won a famous victory, despite his orders to disengage by his superior commander.
The incident has entered naval folklore, but it also said something profound about the state of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or ISR, in the age of sail. Then, ships' captains had little more than a telescope to try to spy out the position of the enemy fleets. Fast forward 115 years to the Battle of Jutland: the British and German battlefleets boasted airships to look for warships, signals intelligence to triangulate the position of opponents' radio transmissions, and scout submarines to lurk outside enemy harbours. In less than 25 years, maritime ISR had developed at an even more rapid pace.
The Long Evolution of Maritime ISR
https://www.defenceiq.com/naval-maritime-defence/articles/is-maritime-isr-transforming-naval-warfare
