The Royal Navy has selected its first female admiral in its history as Commodore Jude Terry is promoted to Rear Admiral.
The new Rear Admiral will start in the role in August next year.
She told the Telegraph:
“I’ve never ever thought about being female in the services. If you deliver, you get the credit for it. If you don’t deliver, you have to redeem yourself. Someone’s got to be first. There will be others.”
According to the Royal Navy, Commodore Terry was born in Jersey, graduating from the University of Dundee in 1997. She joined Britannia Royal Naval College later that year and went on to a degree in Defence Studies at Joint Services Command.
According to the Tepegraph, her career has seen her move up the ranks from a Royal Navy Logistics Officer to the Deputy Director of People Delivery. Jude Terry has also worked with the MoD as an operational planner, a branch manager for Navy Command HQ and Assistant Chief of Staff at the Standing Joint Force HQ.
Royal Navy Ranks
These are the official Royal Navy Officer ranks ordered by rank.
Good for her and RN! I look forward to the day that this isn’t news.
Yep me too – yawn.
This is a positive step in the right direction and the more people ‘yawn’ at it the more it shows there is a long way to go before it is not note worthy
Well done that Lady.
Just a thought, how broad do your shoulders have to be to wear an Admirals “boards”? They’re huge!
Typo first line, read admiral
Yes, I thought full Admiral too.
IC books and comics???
Do they use road or rail when they are delivering people? In the Telegraph there is a comment from that the admiral has a plan to recruit more females to make the navy more representative of society as a whole.
Now before somebody ha s a pop at me for being sexist I’m perfectly happy for a woman to serve ( my god daughter is a Lt Commander but people should be recruited and promoted on merit, not as a balancing act
The new world order where social media and people that riot and burn cities shape policy. Ugh
The new world order where people are given a chance regardless of which protected characteristic they identify as having. Can you honestly say you have never heard anyone in a position of power (especially those who recruit others) saying a sexist/racist/homophobic thing? If they have, it must be within the realms of possibility to think that they may be negatively biased against minorities? The military needs to attract the best people and to do that it cannot seem like a closed shop for a certain type of person.
Yes I read that, a little depressing. I would like to think that the number of people of any sort of defined characteristic serving in our navy is not one of the highest priority areas for attention. That said, I’ve a sneaking suspicion this new admiral is just playing a soundbite, and having appeased god knows who, will get back to things that are actually important. Still, kudos for her, bet she’s chuffed to bits.
Geoffrey, I don’t understand the road or rail comment. Secondly, are you seriously suggesting that this officer has not been selected for promotion on merit?
First bit was a joke Graham. Until recently the Admiral’s job was DD of People Delivery. Second was her comment about recruiting more females to more equally reflect society.My argument is and always will be you recruit the best people for the job. 100 per cent men OK…100 per cent women OK. or obviously a mix. It shouldn’t have anything to do with recruiting by gender just to make up percentages.
Only 9% of the RN is female, so she has a point. And they all go through the same selection procedure, and training. So if the girls pass, they deserve to be there.
Spot on with your sentiment Geoffrey. Put the right person in the job every time, regardless who and what they are. Filling quotas will end up in disaster one day and will only end up alienating other, potentially more worthy but less fashionable candidates in the process. Parts of society are trying to correct the nepotism of old with something equally divisive.
I don’t think that means they will turn down men who want to apply, simply try to attract more interest from women and girls, who are less likely to have even considered a career in the Royal Navy – or any other branch of the armed forces.
To be honest it’s only a positive if it ends up increasing the number of people – male or female – who are interested in a career in the navy. Few enough people seem interested, regardless of gender.
To he honest, the promotion systems promote all the wrong people anyway so even if they did tilt it to favour females or BAME, and so some “underserving” got promoted, it’d be no different from now.
So two wrongs do make a right then?
Eh? Being differently wrong is not two wrongs. The promotion process promotes many arselicking, risk averse “yes” people who excel at internal politics, because those skills get them good reports and they never fk up because they never do anything difficult. They then go on to stymie middle management effectiveness and cause hige amounts of nugatory activity that harms and hinders everyone else for the rest of their existence, and if they go further rank wise, can cause serious damage (e.g. “strike” or “Warrior uograde”). Biological promotion does not favour these people, and indeed without the pressure to behave in… Read more »
See below, or above. The formatting here defeats me.
Ponder that to ensure two wrong turnings do lead you in the rightish kind of direction, 1, if not both, need to be very wrong…
Absolutely correct. We need equal M/F to show how politically correct we are. No promotion should be based on capability rather than gender or race.
Better late than never.
Greetings all. A question with reference to the ranks displayed in the piece. Is an Ensign not also a junior officer rank? Pardon my ignorance , as an ex Air Force officer type, I was unsure.
Ensign is the US equivalent of Midshipman (or woman), which is an “Officer under Training”, so not yet Commissioned, which is why it is often left off the list of ranks.
There is another rank also omitted, because it is rarely awarded (and is an Honorary Rank since 1995) – Admiral of The Fleet – which has 4 rings and one broad stripe. That really requires broad shoulders or long arms!
Thanks for the info Orcman – so no naval equivalent naval rank to an army 2nd lt or RAF pilot officer?
Yes, that’s Midshipman. Here’s a table of officer ranks with their NATO equivalents: https://military.wikia.org/wiki/British_Armed_Forces_Officer_Ranks
It is worth noting that Army 2nd Lt and RAF Pilot Officer are “OF-D” equivalent, also that (not shown) Royal Marines have seniority over equivalent Army ranks. On the other hand, the RAF and Army ranks at OF-D outrank the Midshipman until the Mid has sat the Fleet Board exams.
and thanks agian Orcman
Congratulations to Rear Admiral Terry. I am sure she deserves her promotion.
Here in South Africa,whilst I am happy to accept that some positive discrimination is necessary to right the wrongs of centuries of discrimination, in many cases promotions have been given in commerce,government and the military based only on the criterion of skin colour, with disastrous results.
Hi Geoff
Having served in the SAAF in the 80s, it’s sad to see what the the service has become. Here’s an anecdote to brighten up your day. From when I was a candidate officer before I was commissioned, herewith the order of things:
1. CSM berates the sergeant
2. Sergeant berates the airman
3. Airman kicks the dog
4. Dog bites the candidate officer.
😂Howsit Klonkie. Love it!! There are still some good individuals in the SADF but the top lot-politicians and Brass-there are no words. They have jobs, not careers. Back in the day a top Corporation official earned R 3000 per month,drove a Valiant and wore a Safari suit. Parks Board men gave their lives to conservation for a pittance. Nowadays Government jobs pay salaries and perks that private enterprise cannot match and service delivery has virtually disappeared!
Sad and down mainly to one evil man- JZ
..SANDF
How did it feel serving such a regime?
that is a particularly good question SD. I think it’s a mix of being young and believing the government line that this was a total communist onslaught against our way of life (which in fairness was partially true). Important to understand the ANC were a terrorist organization bombing, pubs, restaurants and a church (yes a church full of worshippers at even song). Kinda puts things in perspective. My family politics are center left (well, by RSA 80’s standard). And so I made my opposition known at the ballot box, voting for an English liberal party with an anti- apartheid mandate.… Read more »
Looking at her described career, she must have also polished up the knocker on the big front door!
when I was a lad I served a term as office boy to an attorney’s firm!
Well, a rear admiral is the naval equivalent of a ‘modern major general’.
From her words not from her sex expect the worse. Reality seem a bit off… How can she have a representative number of females when it is clear that they do not share same interest into Navy matters?
It is enough to sample the comments here or in other navy sites.
What is the female to male ratio in comments 1:100 1:1000 1:10000?
We don’t know from nom de plumes! But, I can only think of one that admits to being a woman….and she is Russian!
Precisely. As typical non curious journalists are no one asked how many related navy book there are in schools…and what she would do about it.
Hopefully the documentaries that they have made about Ocean and QE will garner interest. I understand that there are more to come…need to be on YouTube to get the youngsters!
I don’t consider the sex of a person, which nowadays covers a vast and not yet complete list of types, I just think the smaller the navy the more the admirals just like tinpot dictatorships. Two modern aircraft carries and a handful of fastjets with barely sufficient support fleet. There, it’s off my chest with due apologies to admiral Jude Terry.
Just wait for the first transgender BLM supporting pacifist Admiral.