Commodore Steven Jermy RN (Strategy for Action - Guiding the use of Force in the C21) is a naval aviator and career naval officer. He saw active service during the Falklands War and has subsequently commanded four of HM Ships, deploying during his later commands to support UK operations in the Caribbean, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In 2000-2002, he was Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staffs, the MoD directorate that wrote The Strategic Defence Review New Chapter (Britain’s strategy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks). In late 2002, he was responsible, as Commodore Fleet Air Arm, for preparing Fleet Air Arm squadrons for the Iraq invasion. Between 2004 and 2006, he was the Principal Staff Officer to Chief of Defence Staff, with a primary strategic focus on Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2007, he deployed to Afghanistan, as the Strategy Director at the British Embassy in Kabul, travelling widely throughout the theatre and conceiving the first comprehensive counter insurgency strategy for the campaign.

Steven Jermy has an MPhil in International Relations from Pembroke College, Cambridge and is, part-time, a Visiting Fellow at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London and on the Changing Character of Warfare programme at Oxford University. He has lectured widely on strategy-making in general, and on strategy in Afghanistan in particular, including at Oxford University, King’s College London, and the Royal College of Defence Studies.