in 1977. He attended the Staff College, Camberley in 1984. Promoted to major that year, he returned to 11th Armoured Brigade to command a field battery in 47th Field Regiment. He then served as the Chief of Staff of the Berlin Brigade for two years, before being promoted lieutenant colonel on 30 June 1989. He served as an instructor at the Staff College for three years, and was then given command of the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery. In 1994 Richards joined the Ministry of Defence as Colonel Army Plans. In December 1995, after completing the Higher Command and Staff course, he was promoted brigadier and then became Commander of the 4th Armoured Brigade in Germany. He became Chief of Joint Rapid Deployment Force Operations (soon shortened to Chief of Joint Force Operations) at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in March–April 1998. In this role, as the default commander for short notice expeditionary operations, he commanded the UK Contingent in East Timor as part of INTERFET in 1999 and twice commanded a UK Joint Task Force in Sierra Leone in 2000. In 2000, during the Sierra Leone Civil War, Richards was in command of Operation Palliser, ostensibly to rescue British and other foreign nationals but which he then independently transformed into a commitment to support the embattled national president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and lead the defence of his capital Freetown against the Revolutionary United Front. Although not initially sanctioned by London, the action was cited as a second example of the kind of liberal military intervention previously seen in Kosovo, and as such attributed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In April 2001 Richards became Chief of Staff of NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, with the rank of major general. He became the British Assistant Chief of the General Staff in 2002, and on 19 January 2005 became the Commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, which carried promotion to lieutenant general. In July 2006, command of the international forces (the International Security Assistance Force) in southern Afghanistan was passed to NATO forces under Richards's command and he was promoted to the acting rank of full general (4-star). During his tenure, he oversaw the formation of a Policy Action Group to coordinate ISAF with President Hamid Karzai and the Afghan government, as well as establishing Afghan Development Zones to provide targeted developmental aid. On returning from Afghanistan in February 2007, he