Lieutenant Commander Nick Hammond MBE

Royal Navy

REA Survey Officer

Exercise and Operations Branch

Strategic Command Atlantic

����� Born in England in 1952, Nick Hammond was educated in the South East of England.� After graduating from Brunel University with an Engineering Degree in 1975, he went on to complete a Post Graduate course in Education at St. Lukes College, Exeter before teaching for four years.� He joined the Royal Navy in 1980 as an Instructor Officer, and as a Lieutenant he served in HMS ILLUSTRIOUS before being selected for training as a Meteorology and Oceanography (METOC) forecaster in 1983.� As a junior forecaster he deployed to the Falklands in 1984.

Promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1985, he was appointed METOC officer in HMS BRISTOL and deployed to the Mediterranean, U.S. East Coast and North Atlantic.� In 1988 he took up his first position in NATO at the Headquarters of Commander in Chief South Atlantic, in Portugal.

Subsequently in 1991 he completed the Royal Navy�s Staff Course at Greenwich.� This was followed by a very rewarding posting to HMS INVINCIBLE which included an eight-month deployment to the Far East as the Flag Ship of the �Orient 92� Task Force.� Countries visited include Kenya, Diego Garcia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, United Arab Emigrants, and Israel.� In 1994 he became the Chief of the NATO Militiary Oceanographic Centre at HQ NAVSOUTH in Naples, Italy.� During this three-and-a-half-year tour he helped pioneer a new approach to METOC data collecting, assimilation, and forecasting called Rapid Environmental Assessment, or REA.� For this he was awarded the MBE in the 1998 New Year Honours list.

In 1998 he joined the Ministry of Defence in London as a staff officer in the Directorate of Naval Surveying, Oceanography, and Meteorology and moved to his current posting on the staff of HQ SACLANT in Norfolk, Va., in 2000 where he is NATO�s REA Survey Officer.

Lieutenant Commander Hammond is married with two children at school in Virginia Beach in 4^th and 5^th grade.� He has played squash and field hockey for the Royal Navy and is a keen sailor.