Jim Perks – What DACOS Ops do

Simon: What does it mean then? What is the role of …?

You’re running the Fleet on behalf of … for the Admiral.

Simon: All of the submarines.

And the Surface Fleet, all of it. It’s now done by the Surface Fleet guy ‘cos we’ve now got a Commodore that helps Com Ops. Com Ops is still a Submariner.

Simon: So, you’re then deciding … is it you’re deciding the Missions or you’re deciding …?

No, the day-to-day running. So, the Missions are done by another Captain, DACOS Plans or it was commitments back then, another great mate, in fact two great mates who were there for that.

So, they did the Planning, I did the Execution, and really it was you know, reacting to the real-world events. Reacting to requests for Forces, you know something happens in a country, do we react to it, do we not react to it.

I wouldn’t be the person that would make the decision, the Politicians would make the decision and others within the office would write the paperwork to support that process, but when the nod came back down the pipe, it would be my team that would day, “Right, get that ship to go there now, we’ll brief them on the way.”

Brilliant fun, really, really good, really good