Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson KBE CMG DSO MC (1916–1992) was a British military officer and counter-insurgency expert.
Thompson was commissioned into the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1936. He fought as a Chindit in the Burma Campaign during World War II, being promoted Flight Lieutenant in 1943 and Squadron Leader in 1945. He was senior RAF air support adviser to the brigade commander. In the 1950s he served as Permanent Secretary of Defence for...
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Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson KBE CMG DSO MC (1916–1992) was a British military officer and counter-insurgency expert.
Thompson was commissioned into the Royal Air Force Reserve in 1936. He fought as a Chindit in the Burma Campaign during World War II, being promoted Flight Lieutenant in 1943 and Squadron Leader in 1945. He was senior RAF air support adviser to the brigade commander. In the 1950s he served as Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya with the local rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and, working closely with General Gerald Templer, was a major player in the defeat of the communist insurgency during the Malayan Emergency.
In September 1961 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan appointed him head of the newly established BRIAM (British Advisory Mission) to South Vietnam - and by extension Washington. Thompson conceived of an initiative he called the Delta Plan but when he saw the effects of the strategic hamlets initiative, begun in February 1962 he became an enthusiastic backer,...
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