Vice-admiral Sir Robert Walmsley
MOD procurement chief who expertly handled the cutting-edge Joint Strike Fighter programme
VICE-ADMIRAL SIR ROBERT WALMSLEY, who has died aged 81, was an eminent nuclear submarine engineer; he coxed the Cambridge crew to victory in the 1962 Boat Race; and after retiring from the Navy was appointed Chief of Defence Procurement, overseeing the biggest military development project ever undertaken.
Walmsley won the post, responsible for the Mod’s £6billion-a-year equipment purchases, in open competition. The challenges he faced affected all three Armed Services, but he dealt with these so evenhandedly that it was a year before his Secretary of State (George Robertson) realised that Walmsley had been an admiral.
Among the problems he overcame was the troubled introduction into the Army of the Challenger 2 main battle tank, which had failed its acceptance trials. Under Walmsley, it passed a reliability demonstration and the first tank entered service in 1998; the last was delivered in 2002.
Perhaps his greatest success was the memorandum of understanding which he signed in 2001, agreeing to pay $200 million towards the Systems Design and Development phase of the Joint Strike Fighter programme to build aircraft for British and US forces. The supersonic stealth Joint Strike Fighter aircraft would combine, the defence secretary Geoff Hoon said, “the agility of a light fighter with the punch of a bomber”.
The agreement made the UK the only “level 1” partner in the programme and gave Britain a 15 per cent workshare of the estimated 3,000 F35 strike fighters to be built and sold worldwide, generating significant export revenue and supporting up to 25,000 jobs in the UK, “at the absolute cutting edge of aerospace technology,” as Walmsley said.
It was typical of his style that when grilled by the Public Accounts Committee about the troublesome and costly Bowman battlefield radio system, Walmsley wooed his inquisitors by producing a handset from his jacket pocket. Passing it round, the MPS were impressed by how small and light it was and how business-like it seemed, and the rest of his grilling passed in a friendly atmosphere.
When he retired in 2003, as the longest serving CDP, his brains and experience were much in demand by industry.
Robert Walmsley was born on February 1 1941 in Aberdeen, the son of the anatomist Professor Robert Walmsley and Dr Isabel Walmsley, a GP. He was educated at Fettes. He was inspired to join the Navy, and the submarine service, after his name was picked by a pin, during CCF camp at Portland, for a day at sea in the submarine Sleuth. He joined Dartmouth in 1958, and was sent to read Mechanical Sciences at Queens’ College, Cambridge.
Later he recalled that as cox of the winning Cambridge crew of 1962, “sitting at the start of the Boat Race was far scarier than anything else I ever did”. At first Oxford drew ahead, but the light blues took the lead when Walmsley forced the Oxford boat wide and into rough water. Cambridge won by five lengths.
Walmsley’s first ship was the carrier Ark Royal (1962–63) before he joined the “trade” – serving in the dieselpowered submarine Otus (1964–66). Otus was fitted with a prototype one-man-control which operated the hydroplanes and rudder, like an aircraft cockpit.
Fed up with others tweaking the controls in attempts to improve performance, which resulted in Walmsley being called upon to retune, he fitted a master knob, which he announced would do everything the other controls did. Only he knew that it was a fake, but it stopped others fiddling with the settings.
In 1968 he read nuclear science at the RN College, Greenwich, before appointment as weapons engineer officer in the nuclear-powered submarine Churchill, being built at Barrow. Then, after a spell in the MOD at Bath, he joined the nuclear submarine refitting facility at Chatham, and was project manager for the refit of Courageous (1976-78).
Immersed in the nuclear submarine programme, his intellectual gifts were recognised early, and he found the submarine service much to his liking. It proved a firm foundation for his later career.
In 1981-83 he was chairman of the Naval Nuclear Technical Safety Panel, showing a sure touch when dealing with the various regulatory authorities and using his firm grasp of the technology involved to ensure that the submarine programme was not only safe, but seen to be safe.
In 1985, when Peter (now Lord) Levene was parachuted into the MOD as Chief of Defence Procurement by Michael Heseltine, Admiral Fieldhouse, the First Sea Lord, sent his best man to assist. Like Levene, Walmsley was convinced of the need to do procurement better, and he became a leading member of Levene’s team, working effectively across the MOD and with industry, and earning a reputation as one of the Mod’s most effective and agile operators.
Returning to the Navy, as Director Operational Requirements (Sea) 1987–89, Walmsley was entrusted with a delicate diplomatic mission when visiting Aerospatiale, the French manufacturer of the Exocet anti-ship missile. After the Falklands War, the British carried out studies to determine quite how the Exocet had proved so deadly. Under the licensing agreement, British-bought missiles could not be disassembled to examine how they worked, but the agreement did not cover captured missiles.
At the same time, naval intelligence had noted that French ships were being fitted with a new aerial, suspected to be an electronic decoy.
Walmsley quizzed Aerospatiale about both the Exocet and the aerial. Initially his questions were greeted with shrugs and denial, but his hosts quailed under his scrutiny and, after a phone call, agreed to provide more information.
Promoted to rear-admiral, he was ACDS (Communications, Command, Control and Information Systems) 1990–93, and in 1993-94 he was Director General Submarines and Chief Naval Engineer Officer.
During his time as Controller of the Navy and a vice-admiral (1994–96), history was made when his wife Christina launched the frigate Sutherland using a bottle of Macallan’s whisky rather than the traditional champagne.
On Walmsley’s retirement from the procurement agency in 2003, the rules regarding business appointments were waived as he was urgently needed to strengthen the board of British Energy. In 2004 he became one of the first non-americans to join the board of General Dynamics, and he was on the board of several other trans-atlantic companies and a bank.
Knighted KCB in 1995, Walmsley was also, unusually for a naval officer, honorary colonel of a regiment, the 71st (City of London) Yeomanry Signals.
He applied his strong sense of public duty to many walks of life, not least as governor of St Mary’s primary school, Putney, though his urbanity was tested by work for the Department for Work and Pensions, whose programme board for the Universal Credit project he chaired from 2013-20. “Every four weeks I try to chair the programme board,” he wrote in 2019, “...[but] in six years, there have been six secretaries of state. Cor blimey!”
Walmsley was a private, modest man who drew out the best from his people. He kept his ear to the ground, and his clipped, soft voice was usually accompanied by a glint in the eye, revealing that he probably already knew the answer to his questions.
He married, in 1967, Christina Melvill. The marriage was dissolved in 2009, and in 2010 he married Alex Ashbourne. She survives him with two daughters and a son. His elder daughter, Dame Emma Walmsley, is chief executive of GSK.