British defence policy since 1970 is studied using the device of distinguishing between stated, operational and industrial levels of policy making. In an ideal world these levels should be in line, or, if out of line, should be so as a result of deliberate policy rather than inadvertence.Failure to bring some of these levels of policy into line, in spite of attempts to do so, accounts for a variety of otherwise puzzling features of British defence policy - consistently high defence budgets (also the subject of a statistical annex) even when compared to France, a navy still virtually as large as the next two largest navies added together, and the 90 per cent of all armaments for British forces consistently purchased from British industry at a time of rapidly diminishing British industrial competitiveness. The intuitively important phenomenon of the defence review is placed in context as an act designed to resolve contradictions and inconsistencies between the different levels of policy.