Chris Parry (Royal Navy officer)


Christopher John Parry, is a former Royal Navy officer who was the first Chair of the UK Government's Marine Management Organisation until 2011. He is now a strategic forecaster and risk expert.

Education

Parry was educated at The Portsmouth Grammar School, Jesus College, Oxford, where he read Modern History, and the University of Reading.

Naval career

He joined the Royal Navy as a seaman officer in 1972 and then became an observer in the Fleet Air Arm in 1979. He was mentioned in despatches for his actions during the Falklands War for his part in rescuing 16 SAS troopers from Fortuna Glacier in South Georgia and for the detection and disabling of the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe. He commanded the air defence destroyer and the Maritime Warfare Centre. He became commanding officer of in January 2000. As a commodore, he was Director Operational Capability in the Ministry of Defence and then Commander Amphibious Task Group, from September 2003. He was Director General, Development, Concepts and Doctrine from 2005 to 2008.

Recent activities

Since June 2008, Parry has worked in the private sector and as a writer, broadcaster and speaker.
On 12 June 2010, in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he described the planning for the UK's 2006 deployment of 3,300 troops to Helmand Province in Afghanistan as flawed, relying too much on lessons from Borneo, Malaya and Northern Ireland. The subsequent BBC News article quotes him as saying that senior commanders had obdurately resisted "ditching the lessons from the past", preferring these to the "radical and progressive ideas" which were needed.

Works