General Sir Roly Walker KCB DSO (1970–): Chief of the General Staff and the Drive to Double Fighting Power

On 23 July 2024, a little over a month after taking command of the British Army, General Sir Roly Walker stood before the Royal United Services Institute's Land Warfare Conference in London and gave the new head of the Army's first public speech. It was, by common consent, the bluntest address by a serving Chief of the General Staff in a generation. Britain, he said, had three years to prepare for war. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, an increasingly aligned axis of upheaval, would be ready to challenge the West by 2027. The Army, he said, would double its fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade, not by growing larger but by fighting differently, exploiting artificial intelligence, drones and new technology to make a smaller force far more lethal. He had, he said, just enough time to prepare, act and re-establish credible land forces. The speech set the tone for his tenure. Walker, a former Special Air Service officer and Director Special Forces who had commanded soldiers in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, had come to the Army's top job with a reputation as a fighting soldier and a reformer, and he intended to use it.

General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the General Staff, in Multi-Terrain Pattern uniform. Credit: Ministry of Defence, Open Government Licence v3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Early life and commissioning

General Sir Charles Roland Vincent Walker was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on 14 May 1970, the son of Patrick Walker and Daphne Walker, née Armour. His mother later married Frederick Conyngham, 7th Marquess Conyngham, in 1980. He was educated at the Dragon School, a preparatory school in Oxford, and then at Harrow School, where he was in The Grove house. Sponsored by the British Army as a university cadet, he studied at the Royal Agricultural College, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree, and later studied at Cranfield University, graduating with a Master of Arts degree.

Walker was commissioned into the Irish Guards as a second lieutenant on probation on 9 September 1990 as part of his undergraduate cadetship. His commission was confirmed in September 1993, and he was promoted to lieutenant with seniority backdated to 11 August 1992. He began active service with the Irish Guards in 1993, and saw operational tours in Northern Ireland and Iraq. He was promoted to captain on 11 August 1995. In 1997, he joined the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, the Army's special forces regiment, beginning a long association with the United Kingdom Special Forces that would shape the rest of his career. He was promoted to major on 30 September 2000, attended the Advanced Command and Staff Course from 2001 to 2003, and between 2003 and 2007 undertook multiple operational tours in Iraq. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on 30 June 2008.

The Grenadier Guards and Afghanistan

In November 2008, following his time with Special Forces, Walker transferred from the Irish Guards to the Grenadier Guards. He served as commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, from 2008 to 2010, and took the battalion to Afghanistan. The tour was among the hardest fought by any British battalion in the Helmand campaign. During the tour, the Ridgeback protected patrol vehicle in which Walker was travelling was blown up by an improvised explosive device. All six soldiers inside escaped uninjured, but the vehicle was thrown into the air, had its wheels blown off and its armour shredded.

Walker was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order in September 2010, in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Afghanistan during the period 1 October 2009 to 31 March 2010. The award, gazetted on 24 September 2010, recognised his command of the Grenadiers in Helmand. In 2010, after returning from the tour, Walker said his battle group had been engaged in 1,300 firefights with the Taliban, and had suffered 15 soldiers killed and 69 wounded in action. Five of his soldiers, including the battalion's regimental sergeant major, had been shot dead by a rogue Afghan policeman. The figures give a measure of the intensity of the fighting his battalion faced, and of the cost it paid. Walker established a reputation among his soldiers as being, in the words of one report, easy going and ruthless, a commander who looked after his men and demanded the highest standards from them in return.

Brigade command and Director Special Forces

Walker was promoted to colonel on 30 June 2012. He commanded the 12th Armoured Infantry Brigade from 2013 to 2015, and was promoted to brigadier on 30 June 2014. He then held staff appointments at Army Headquarters and in the Ministry of Defence. He was promoted to major general on 8 March 2018 and appointed Director Special Forces, the officer responsible for the United Kingdom Special Forces, including the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. He held that appointment until 2021. During his time as Director Special Forces, United Kingdom Special Forces were engaged in the campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, and Walker managed the special forces contribution to that campaign. The details of special forces operations are not publicly disclosed, and this account does not speculate about them. What is a matter of public record is that Walker, a former SAS officer who had served on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, was trusted with the most sensitive command in the British Armed Forces at a time of intense operational demand.

In April 2021, Walker was promoted to lieutenant general and became Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Military Strategy and Operations) at the Ministry of Defence. It was a central role in the direction of British military operations worldwide. During his three years in the post, he was responsible for advising on and directing new operations to support the government's response to the Covid pandemic, the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, the withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III, numerous evacuation operations, and most recently the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. It was, in the words of his official biography, a period in which he held joint command of global operations. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 2023 New Year Honours, and was thus granted the title Sir.

Lieutenant General Sir Roly Walker in 2023, when he was Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Military Strategy and Operations). Credit: Photograph by Leroy Council, US Army, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Chief of the General Staff

On 12 December 2023, the Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that Walker was to be appointed as the new Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, in succession to General Sir Patrick Sanders. Walker assumed the appointment on 15 June 2024, and on the same day was promoted to general and appointed Aide-de-Camp General to the King. He was also appointed Colonel Commandant of the Honourable Artillery Company on 30 May 2024, and is President of the Honourable Artillery Company, Army Rugby and Army Winter Sports.

His first public speech as Chief of the General Staff, at the Royal United Services Institute's Land Warfare Conference on 23 July 2024, set out his vision with unusual directness. He warned of the threat posed by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and said the United Kingdom must be prepared for a possible war with Russia by 2027. He said there were no winners in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, adding that it was an utter devastation for both sides and lost generations. He argued that with the current way of fighting, it would take Russia five years to control the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia that Russia claims as its own, and that it would cost Russia more than 1.5 million casualties. He said it did not matter how the war in Ukraine ended, because Russia would emerge from it probably weaker objectively, or absolutely, but still very, very dangerous and wanting some form of retribution for what Britain had done to help Ukraine.

The heart of the speech was his commitment to transform the Army's fighting power. He said he aimed to double the Army's fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade, by 2030. He said the Army would exploit emerging technologies fuelled by artificial intelligence to double and then triple its fighting power, and that it would do so without increasing troop numbers. He warned that the Army had struggled to shake off a big army mindset, in which some still believed that raw troop numbers alone determined fighting power. If called to battle before the new capabilities arrived, he said, troops would have to fall back on old hardware. He had, he said, just enough time to prepare, act and re-establish credible land forces. The speech was widely reported as the most serious warning by a serving military chief since the years before the Second World War, and it built directly on the warning issued by his predecessor, General Sir Patrick Sanders, who had described the British public as a pre-war generation and called for a citizen army.

Walker has since set out the detail of how the transformation is to be achieved. The Army is to be reorganised around a 20-40-40 model, recommended in the Strategic Defence Review, under which a future force would consist of around 20 per cent traditional crewed platforms, supported by 40 per cent reusable autonomous systems powered by artificial intelligence, capable of surveillance, navigation, targeting support and operating with varying degrees of human oversight, with the remaining 40 per cent made up of consumable weapons such as missiles, rockets and one-way attack drones. The model is designed to give the Army affordable mass, using swarms of drones and smart munitions to overwhelm a larger enemy, without increasing the number of soldiers. The Defence Investment Plan commits more than £5 billion for drones and autonomous systems, and nearly £2 billion for a Digital Targeting Web supported by artificial intelligence and software.

Lieutenant General Sir Roly Walker, then Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, with Lieutenant General Walter E. Piatt of the US Army during the Kermit Roosevelt Lecture Series at Conmy Hall, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, in 2023. Credit: US Army, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The test of the vision

Two years after the first RUSI speech, Walker returned to the Land Warfare Conference in 2026 to report on progress. He said that two years earlier he had set out a vision for fifth generation land forces, and had laid out that the Army would double its fighting power by 2027 and triple it by 2030. That, he said, was not a slogan. It was a commitment and a call to arms which had been met by the Army. The Strategic Defence Review, published in 2025, had raised the bar further, calling for ten times the fighting power by 2035. Walker said that by 2030, the transformation needed to be unmistakable.

Walker has also shown himself willing to confront difficult questions about the Army's past. As the new head of the Army, he expressed his full co-operation and support for the inquiry into alleged unlawful actions by British Special Forces personnel in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013, and wrote an open letter to officers, soldiers and veterans of the British Army on the subject. The inquiry, which examines whether a special forces unit had a policy of executing males of fighting age who posed no threat, concerns a period before Walker's appointment as Director Special Forces, but his public support for it as Chief of the General Staff was a clear statement of his approach to accountability.

In 2025, Walker was considered for appointment as Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the British Armed Forces, but was runner up to Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton. He remains Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the Army, with responsibility for developing and generating military capability from an integrated Army, Regular and Reserve, and for maintaining the fighting effectiveness, efficiency and morale of the Service. He is married to Kate White-Thomson, whom he married in 1998. They have three daughters and live in Herefordshire.

Assessment

Roly Walker is a soldier who has spent his career at the sharp end of the British Army's operations. Commissioned into the Irish Guards in 1993, he served with the Special Air Service from 1997, commanded the Grenadier Guards in Afghanistan in some of the hardest fighting of the Helmand campaign, directed the United Kingdom Special Forces, and then directed British military operations worldwide as Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. He has commanded at company, battle group, brigade and special forces group level, and has served on operations in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. The Distinguished Service Order he won in Afghanistan, and the knighthood he received in 2023, mark a career of sustained operational service.

As Chief of the General Staff, Walker has chosen to define his tenure by a single, measurable ambition: to double the Army's fighting power by 2027 and triple it by 2030, and now, under the Strategic Defence Review, to deliver ten times the fighting power by 2035. He has been frank that the Army cannot do this by getting bigger. It must fight differently, using technology to multiply the effect of every soldier. Whether the transformation he has promised can be delivered on the timetable he has set will be the test of his time as Chief of the General Staff. What is not in doubt is that Walker, a former special forces officer who has seen his own vehicle blown up beneath him in Afghanistan and who has buried soldiers killed under his command, understands what is at stake. His warning in July 2024 that Britain had three years to prepare for war was not the rhetoric of a staff officer. It was the judgement of a soldier who has spent his career preparing for war, and who believes the time to prepare is now.

Sources

1. GOV.UK, "General Sir Roly Walker KCB DSO", biography, Chief of the General Staff. https://www.gov.uk/government/people/roly-walker
2. British Army, "Chief of the General Staff", senior leaders biography. https://www.army.mod.uk/learn-and-explore/about-the-army/senior-leaders-biographies/chief-of-the-general-staff-biography/
3. GOV.UK, "General Sir Roly Walker appointed new Chief of the General Staff", news story, 12 December 2023. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/general-sir-roly-walker-appointed-new-chief-of-the-general-staff
4. Wikipedia, "Roland Walker", citing Who's Who 2024, the London Gazette, and the Daily Telegraph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Walker
5. The London Gazette, Supplement No. 59554, 24 September 2010, p. 18535 (DSO appointment). https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/59554/
6. The London Gazette, Supplement No. 63918, 31 December 2022, p. N2 (KCB, 2023 New Year Honours). https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/63918/
7. GOV.UK, "Chief of the Defence Staff speech at RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2024", 23 July 2024 (confirming Walker's doubling and tripling commitment). https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-the-defence-staff-speech-at-rusi-land-warfare-conference-2024
8. British Army, "RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2026: Chief of the General Staff keynote speech", 2026 (Walker's two-year assessment of the doubling and tripling commitment, and the Strategic Defence Review target of ten times fighting power by 2035). https://www.army.mod.uk/news/rusi-lwc-2026-chief-of-the-general-staff-speech/
9. National Security News, "Special Forces Officer Who Survived Taliban Bomb Chosen To Lead British Army", 17 August 2023 (Grenadier Guards in Afghanistan, 1,300 firefights, 15 dead and 69 wounded, five soldiers killed by a rogue Afghan policeman including the regimental sergeant major). https://nationalsecuritynews.com/2023/08/special-forces-officer-who-survived-taliban-bomb-chosen-to-lead-british-army/
10. Bernard Marr, "How AI, Drones And Autonomous Vehicles Are Transforming The British Army", 27 October 2026 (the 20-40-40 model: 20 per cent crewed platforms, 40 per cent reusable autonomous systems, 40 per cent consumable weapons). https://bernardmarr.com/how-ai-drones-and-autonomous-vehicles-are-transforming-the-british-army/
11. Action on Armed Violence, "New head of British Army expresses full support for Special Forces Afghanistan Inquiry", 2024. https://aoav.org.uk/2024/new-head-of-british-army-expresses-full-support-for-special-forces-afghanistan-inquiry/
12. Harrow School, "Old Harrovian takes up appointment as Chief of the British Army", 2024. https://www.harrowschool.org.uk/post/~board/latest-news/post/old-harrovian-takes-up-appointment-as-chief-of-the-british-army