Chris Parry (Royal Navy officer)

Rear Admiral Christopher J. Parry CBE is a British former naval officer who was the first Chair of the UK Government's Marine Management Organisation until 2011. He is a well-known strategic forecaster, author and commentator.

Education
Parry was educated at Royal Naval School Tal-Handaq, The Portsmouth Grammar School and Jesus College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.

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 during the Falklands War for the rescue of 16 SAS men from Fortuna Glacier, South Georgia, and for his role in detecting and disabling the Argentinian submarine ARA Santa Fe. He later commanded HMS Gloucester, HMS Fearless and the United Kingdom's Amphibious Task Group. At sea, he was known for his use of unconventional tactics, original thinking and innovative methods, as well as his trademark motto 'old dog, new tricks' and the high standard of training of his ship's companies. His motivation was "to give my ship and her ship's company the best chance of success and survival".

On promotion to Rear Admiral, he became, in 2005, the Ministry of Defence's Director General of Development, Concepts and Doctrine.

Today, he is one of the UK's leading experts on strategic forecasting and geo-strategic trend-spotting and a noted thinker on all aspects of the current and future maritime and marine environment.

Independent Schools Council
After leaving the Navy, he became Chief Executive of the Independent Schools Council. In June 2008, he spoke about the divide between the independent and state sectors of education and the injustice and continuing inadequacies of state provision. Wishing to concentrate more on his strategic, academic and military activities and studies, he left that post soon afterwards.

Recent Activities
Since June 2008, he has worked as a writer, broadcaster and speaker, establishing a considerable reputation as one of the country's leading military theorists and strategists, with his remarkably prescient views and penetrating presentations about the future of geopolitics, security and warfare.

From 2009-10, he was the first Chair of the UK's newly Marine Management Organisation, the planning, licensing and regulatory body for the UK's offshore zone, balancing social, economic and environmental. The formation of the MMO and its introduction into service was described by the UK Treasury as 'exemplary' and by Ministers as, 'an example of how an Arms-Length Public Body should be run'.

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. He was also critical of Army commanders who sought to make the Afghanistan operation the Army's 'Falklands Moment' and the UK Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2010, which, he said, was fiscally driven, incoherent and the basis for a 'strategic deficit'.

As the Managing Director of Merl House, he continues to work in the fields of strategic forecasting, risk and leadership and advises banks, companies and governments about future trends, innovative approaches and dynamic change management. He is also active at Board level in promoting new ideas about governance, leadership and competitive advantage.

On 16 February 2012, he published his diary from the Falklands War, 'Down South: A Falklands War Diary' with Viking Penguin, described by the historian Niall Ferguson as a 'gripping historical document' and by other commentators as 'a first-class, contemporaraneous account of the conflict, which offers fresh insights into what have seemed, until now, familiar events'.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security and the Chartered Management Institute.