Flying Officer Gareth Paddock – Assistant Liaison Officer to HQ ISAF NCSA

An IT specialist, Gareth has been working for the NATO Communications Services Agency in SHAPE, Belgium for the last year. It is unusual for someone to just have gained his or her commission at RAF Cranwell to go into this type of job straight away. However, Gareth is a talented comms engineer who has thrived on the challenge of providing better IT comms within the NATO level community.

Having got to grips with the NATO systems, Gareth was sent to Kabul on Valentine’s Day to work in the ISAF Headquarters to work on the ISAF Secret, NATO Secret and NATO unclassified systems, as a 5-month deployment within his SHAPE tour. This was not a move that impressed his girlfriend Emma, who felt a sense of abandonment on this most romantic of days. However he ensures his ability to provide effective comms is also applied to his personal life and he keeps in touch very regularly.

Greg confesses the job in Kabul has been a steep learning curve. “As soon as I arrived, my Colonel went on R&R and I was literally chucked in at the deep end”, he said. Greg acts as the eyes and ears to ensuring the IT systems in Afghanistan are plugged in effectively to the main system back in SHAPE. He also looks at technical design and makes sure that nations can talk to each other in theatre.

“We touch everyone in theatre”, he says, “it is my job to make sure a Brit in Camp Bastion can talk with an Italian in Herat”.

Editor: Sqn Ldr S N Moore.

Photography: Corporal Dave Blackburn RAF.