General Sir Nick Carter joined the Army in 1977 and commissioned from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst into The Royal Green Jackets. During his early career he served in Germany during the Cold War, in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, in Cyprus with the UN and in command of a battalion on operations in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Latterly he has had tours of duty in Iraq as a brigade commander in 2003/4 and repeated tours of Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013. He commanded 55,000 NATO troops in Regional Command South during the Afghan ‘surge’ and in his last tour led the transition process with the now President Ghani as the Deputy Commander of the NATO mission.

Between these deployments he has had appointments in personnel policy and training, running the Army’s Resources and Programme in the Ministry of Defence, as the Director of Land Warfare, and he led the team that reorganised the Army following the 2010 Security and Defence Review.

He has been the Chief of the General Staff since 2014, leading the British Army through the most recent Security and Defence Review in 2015. He assumed the appointment of Chief of the Defence Staff in June 2018.