Meet the Board
Meet the Team
Careers
"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(American author, poet and philosopher)
Meet the Team
Denis Thornton – Principal Consultant NEC
Denis Thornton joined the British Army in 1991 and, after training at the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, was commissioned into the Royal Signals. He
built on his qualifications as a Computer Programmer and Systems Analyst
with early experience on field communications systems such as PTARMIGAN and
the design and deployment of Divisional and Brigade Headquarters.
In 1996 Denis finished in the top third of the Army Pilots’ Course, resulting in immediate selection for Counter-Terrorism duties flying Lynx helicopters in Northern Ireland. His tour coincided with the Omagh Bomb atrocity in 1998 and, in his then role as South Armagh Air Operations Officer, he planned the aviation segment of the operation to arrest the alleged suspects. He volunteered for a second two-year tour in Northern Ireland, where he specialised in manned airborne surveillance, becoming an instructor on the CHANCELLOR surveillance asset and a Subject Matter Expert to the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA, subsequently DSTL) on human factors, ergonomics and system capability during the successor OXBOW surveillance capability Concept and Design phases. As the political climate developed toward the end of the nineties and the opportunity for ‘on-the-job’ training receded for new pilots, Denis was instrumental in delivering realistic Air/Land Counter-Terrorist training during the Exercise SWIFTHAWK series of manoeuvres at a mainland UK location. Having flown over 900 hours on Counter-Terrorism missions, qualified as an Electronic Warfare Instructor and been promoted from co-pilot to aviation patrol commander leading up to eight aircraft at a time, Denis left Northern Ireland with the award of the Accumulated Campaign Service medal for serving over 1000 days on operations.
Denis attended the Junior Command and Staff Course at the Joint Services Staff
College and in 2001 was subsequently posted to the Command Support Development
Centre in Blandford to work on the BOWMAN tactical communications network. During
this time he led a team of Subject Matter Experts associated to the BLD IPT
to provide user advice to both contractors and the MOD. The experience
gained at CSDC on a variety of future communications programmes, including
SKYNET and FALCON led to a temporary six-month post without portfolio to the
Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicles IPT during the $1bn WATCHKEEPER UAV four-to-two
potential prime contractor down-selection. Here, Denis established himself
as the team’s expert on sensor to shooter links and was promoted into
a permanent post as the SO2 Requirements Manager where he remained for an additional
two years. With a view across all tactical UAV programmes, he specialised
on WATCHKEEPER bid scrutiny and its integration with other communications and
ISTAR projects and led the negotiations for the Tactical Party Vehicle selection. He
authored over twenty papers on NEC applications, focussing on quick-wins in
constrained budgets. He was the first to identify, in 2003, a secure
Beyond Line of Sight solution to enhance the GENERAL DYNAMICS APACHE BOWMAN
COMMUNICATIONS (ABC) unsolicited proposal and his paper remains the most cost-effective
solution to achieve this. He lectured
extensively on Network –enabled ISTAR and was a regular contributor
to RUSI Defence
Systems and Unmanned
Vehicles magazines. He left the project just after contract award
to THALES having had the rare experience of involvement at the centre of a
Category A acquisition project that went from four potential primes to contract
award and flying hardware in under two years.
Denis returned to flying duties in 2005 where he authored a paper on UK Homeland Security Aviation. His career as a freelance writer continued with a commission from BBC Focus magazine for an (open-source) article on Government surveillance capabilities. During this time he expanded his knowledge on NEC, Cyber Warfare (including ‘Grey Hat’ Hacking and Social Engineering threats) and Space/Near Space applications. Denis subsequently volunteered for an operational tour in Afghanistan as the Operations and Plans Officer for the British Joint Helicopter Force. Directing operations of the British fleet of CH-47, Lynx, Seaking and Apache assets throughout the Regional Command (South) area, his achievements during this tour included the aviation assault on MUSA Q’ALA of 550 troops at H-Hour, D-Day in order to retake the town from the Taliban; the first deployment of British aviation into Western Afghanistan; the relief of FOB ANACONDA in North URUZGAN; support to a large number of special operations; and the extraction of over 300 casualties. This intensive operational experience also informed two Urgent Statements of User Requirement written during the tour.
An expert in Air/Land integration issues, Denis is a leader in his field, able to combine first-hand experience at the extreme end of Peace Enforcement operations with a comprehensive knowledge of what fails and what succeeds in Defence Acquisition, from concept to impact.
| Rotary Division | Fast Jets Division | Human Factors Division |
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| ISTAR Division | Radar & EW Division | Air Transport Division |
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| Maritime Air Division | Intelligence Division | |
 
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