Commodore (Rtd) Peter Olive OBE

Peter Olive is a former Commodore in the Royal Navy. His early career included tours in the Gulf and Indian Ocean, to Sierra Leone for Operation BASILICA, as well as with NATO during Operations SHARP GUARD and ALLIED FORCE. Peter commanded the minehunter HMS LEDBURY in the opening phase of the 2003 Iraq War (Operation TELIC 1), for which the ship received the Al Faw battle honours. Later he would command the Type 23 frigate HMS ARGYLL on operations in response to a resurgent Russia.

Peter subsequently specialised in operational and strategic command and planning, including lead for the military contribution to the 2012 London Olympic games. Later, he would serve as Chief of Staff to the European Union’s counter-piracy mission, Operation ATALANTA, also deploying to Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa to help build regional capacity. Peter has undertaken two tours in the Standing Joint Force Headquarters (SJFHQ), established in 2016 in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. His duties included operationalising the Joint Expeditionary Force and Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, as well as global contingency responses. As Chief of Staff, he also oversaw SJFHQ’s support to the British Overseas Territories during the Covid-19 pandemic.

He has been an Indo-Pacific specialist for over a decade. In addition to regional strategy development, he led deployments in support of the Five Powers Defence Arrangements and also to South Korea, the latter during a period of heightened tensions on the Peninsula. Peter also led a PACFLEET mission on operations across the Western Pacific, Southeast and East Asia. Peter’s final role in Defence was to lead the production of Global Strategic Trends edition 7, a key document informing the 2024-25 Strategic Defence Review.

Peter is now a Senior Advisor to Herminius Strategic Intelligence, a Senior Adjunct Fellow with Pacific Forum, and serves on the Council of the Nautical Institute.

He holds a master's from Cambridge University, is an alumni of the Higher Command and Staff Course and Royal College of Defence Studies, and attended the US CAPSTONE course. He has received operational awards from NATO and for his service in Iraq, and was appointed an ‘Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ (OBE) in 2012.