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This thesis is an investigation of the factors relating to the translation of United Kingdom strategic direction into military capability. Concentrating on decisions taken below the political level, by the military officers and civil servants in the most senior positions within the Ministry of Defence and at the very top of the armed forces, it answers the question ‘why does the United Kingdom have the military that it has?’ In doing so, this thesis has identified the factors that have shaped capability choices and determined why those choices have had the effect that they have. Its analysis has drawn on historical trends and contemporary elite interviews to assess whether the nation’s current methodology to link strategic direction and the development and maintenance of military capability will fare any better than its predecessors. The thesis’ research methods were a combination of qualitative content analysis of relevant government policy documents together with associated policy analysis from the commentariat, and semi-structured elite interviews. A total of thirty-two interviews were analysed using constructivist grounded theory methodology. In the first instance, open coding was undertaken, with data points collected into a manifest, latent or global code. This was followed by selective coding to scale up the open codes into categories important to the research problem. At this point, insights from the content analysis were introduced. The final coding stage was theoretical coding, during which relationships between the categories were considered and confirmed, with the aim of identifying what is central in all of the data generated during the research and generating a substantive theory. The conclusions identified in this thesis are the result of the first detailed empirical investigation of how defence decision makers interpret defence policy and expend resource to achieve the government’s policy aims. This has developed a new understanding of the linkages between the articulation of strategic direction and the generation of military capability. Furthermore, through the application of constructivist grounded theory, this thesis has identified a core concept of the research and developed the following substantive theory. Strategic direction is translated into military capability to deliver fit-for-purpose armed forces through an open-ended collection of interacting activities involving the government and defence decision makers. These interacting activities are: defence policy formulated by government; resource allocated by government; identification of military capability required to meet to meet policy aims by defence; and allocation of resource to acquire and maintain required military capability by defence. Interaction of the activities is regularly disrupted by events and influences over which defence decision makers have either no, or only a limited degree of, control. These events and influences, or factors, can be grouped in five distinct categories: strategic context; politics and politicians; affordability of defence; single services’ conduct; and managing the defence enterprise. In order to counter the worst disruptions caused by these factors, defence decision makers must seek to maintain a balance across all of the interacting activities involved in the translation of strategic direction into military capability activity because, whilst in balance, these interacting activities afford the best chance of operating on or above the level that delivers fit-for-purpose armed forces.