of Commander-in-Chief Fleet as well as NATO Commander-in-Chief Eastern Atlantic and NATO Commander Allied Naval Forces North West Europe. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1999 Birthday Honours. In January 2001 he became First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In that role he entered into a contract to acquire up to 150 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for the UK's two new aircraft carriers. He was advanced to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 2002 Birthday Honours and retired on 3 December 2002. Later career In retirement Essenhigh became an advisor to Northrop Grumman and from 2010 to 2011 he was chief executive of its Information Systems Europe business, involved in the supply of command, control, and intelligence and counter-IED products to customers throughout Europe. He was also a non-executive director of Babcock International and Patron of Journey South 2007, an expedition to the South Pole. He has an interest in local matters and he remains a Deputy Lieutenant of Devon. His wife Susie is sponsor of the frigate HMS St Albans. As essayist On 13 June 2015, after the previous month's general elections, and together with Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce, Field Marshal Lord Walker and Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Squire, he painted the UK Armed Forces as "feeble" and said "We are appeasing our enemies and making the same mistakes as in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism." He characterised the status quo as "parlous", argued for a review that would be "policy-led" as opposed to "resource-driven" and closed with an appeal for a review that "must demonstrate to potential enemies that Britain continues to be a country that will not be coerced into submission through military weakness when diplomacy fails in the future, as it did in the Thirties." The essay garnered at least two responses: A journalistic report that restated Essenhigh's case, and noted that the Chancellor sought sweeping cuts, while Squire added that "Russia must now be the number one and major threat. What is going on in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine and so forth, could spill over into a major conflict" and Boyce reiterated that "Putin is behaving in a very aggressive and expansionist way and the Government does not seem to take it seriously because it is inconvenient to have to do something about it."