Brigadier Nick English MBE PhD

Commander 1st Aviation Brigade Combat Team

Brigadier Nick English is a highly experienced combat aviator, leader, and strategist. He is Commander of the 1st Aviation Brigade Combat Team and Head of Profession for British Army Aviation.

Shaped by a career spent at high readiness, he has served operationally in Northern Ireland, four tours of Afghanistan, and most recently with NATO across Eastern Europe. He is passionate about delivering cutting edge aviation operations, developing aviation combined arms warfare, and building the empowered and resilient combat teams required to thrive on a modern battlefield.

He is a qualified Attack Helicopter Weapons Instructor, Electronic Warfare Instructor and Forward Air Controller and has commanded an Attack Helicopter Squadron, Regiment and Aviation Battle Group. In 2014, he was awarded the Hugh Gordon-Burge Memorial Award for his handling of an extremely rare tail rotor failure in flight.

On the staff, he has worked in Defence procurement, as Directing Staff at the Army Division of the Staff College, and in Finance and Military Capability in the Ministry of Defence. He led the Strategy and Force Design team in Army Futures where he was the architect of the new Army Futures directorate and was at the heart of developing the British Army’s new operating concept and future Army force design.

He holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Manager and a practitioner in both project and programme management. He also holds a doctorate in Behavioural Psychology, specialising in why military organisations find it difficult to cope with complex problems.

In between the demands of a busy family life, he keeps fit with traditional TaeKwonDo and Thai Kickboxing, is a passionate skier, and fly gliders competitively for the Army.