Rear Admiral Nick Wheeler

Rear Admiral Nick Wheeler was born on the Channel Island of Jersey in 1970. He was educated on the island and in Dorset UK before joining the Royal Navy in 1991.

Trained as a Warfare Officer, he specialised as a Submariner in 1996. Serving predominantly in nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), he also completed a number of strategic patrols in ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), gaining a wide range of operational experience at sea and ashore. He completed a tour as a J5 planner in a Joint Operational HQ in Basra, Iraq in 2007, before completing staff training at the UK Joint Command and Staff College. In 2010, he took command of HMS TORBAY, the submarine he had qualified in 14 years earlier, and delivered a varied and challenging operational programme. A further command tour followed in HMS TURBULENT, which included her final operational patrol before she was decommissioned in late 2012.

Staff roles followed in Portsmouth at Navy Command, managing a substantial budget, and then on the First Sea Lord’s staff in London, dealing with international relations with key partner navies in NATO and the Five Eyes. On being promoted to Captain in 2016, he took up the post of Deputy Commander of the NATO Submarine Command and Assistant Chief of Staff SM to MARCOM, delivering day-to-day NATO Submarine operations and managing UK Maritime contributions to the Alliance. Working closely with the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) and national authorities, he delivered a series of important NATO exercises, expanding the Alliance’s Anti-submarine warfare capability in the face of growing Russian submarine activity in NATO’s Area of Responsibility (AOR). He then completed an assignment at the UK Strategic Command, where he was responsible for the setting of policy and the delivery of new capability for the joint aspects of the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) element. He was promoted to Commodore in 2019 and was seconded to a different government department, where he was responsible for intelligence support to military operations.

On promotion to Rear Admiral, in July 2022, he became the Director of the NATO HQ Consultation, Command and Control Staff, renamed to NATO Digital Staff in August 2023.

Rear Admiral Wheeler lives in Brussels, with his wife and has five children. He remains a thoroughly obsessed, if often frustrated, windsurfer and an overly ambitious mountain biker, with listening to vinyl and dog walking taking up what little remains of his leisure time.