Captain Des Hirons OBE RN

Durham (Des) Hirons joined the Royal Navy as a Warfare Officer in September 1997.

Early watchkeeping assignments saw service in patrol vessels conducting counter-terrorism and fishery protection duties around the UK before navigating a destroyer during TELIC before returning to the Gulf in 2004 as the Commanding Officer of a multi-national training team mentoring patrol boat crews of the newly established Iraqi Coastal Defence Force at Umm Qasr.

On return to the UK he commanded BITER and the Manchester and Salford Universities Royal Naval Unit (Oct 04 – Jul 06) before PWO course and ARK ROYAL with responsibility for communications and intelligence. Leaving when she entered refit in May 09 he joined the Maritime Operations Centre in Northwood as the Fleet Intelligence and Cryptologic Officer and deputy to SO1N2.

ALBION as the Operations Officer preceded SOMERSET as XO in May 12 in a period of generation from refit through to the completion of an Op KIPION deployment in the Gulf.

ACSC prepared him for a year as the Staff Operations Officer to COMATG including deploying to the Mediterranean for Cougar 15 and the conduct of the largest NATO maritime exercise for 20 years. On promotion to Commander he again deployed to the Middle East, this time for a six-month deployment as the RN Liaison Officer to the Royal Saudi Naval Forces Western Fleet HQ in Jeddah. He joined the MOD in Apr 17 as the maritime desk officer in the UK Operations team, a team charged with delivering the strategic HQ’s oversight of UK resilience and counter-terrorism operations, prior to assuming command of the MIXG at the end of Nov 18.

Seventeen months in Command of the MIXG included secondment to the National Maritime Information Centre for a six-month period with responsibility to improve cross-Governmental ways of working and deliver an improvement project to close the gap between information and operational coordination. This work expanded and he was extended at the nascent Joint Maritime Security Centre as the OF5-level Deputy Director (Operations) with responsibility for the delivery of both the Joint Maritime Operational Coordination Centre and National Maritime Information Centre. As BREXIT approached this period included being charged with establishing an operations room capable of delivering coordination of UK Maritime Security assets from across HMG agencies and Departments, the development of a national set of procedures to respond to maritime security incidents and improvement of maritime domain awareness across Government.

Handing the JMSC role over at the end of Jan 21 he joined the staff of CSF leading both the plans team and the CSF transformation programme. In Dec 21 CSF was charged with planning the Defence contribution to the national response to small boat illegal migration across the English Channel (Op ISOTROPE). Hirons led this work before proceeding to Folkestone as an Acting Captain to deliver the Chief of Staff role for the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force charged with delivering the operation.

Substantively promoted to Captain, he returned to the JMSC in Aug 22 as the Deputy Head and Deputy Director of operations and oversaw a period of growth both domestically and internationally as the importance of the non-Defence led tasks within maritime security became more widely acknowledged across HMG.

He joined RNMDA in Sep 25 in the newly established Deputy Director role.