David Burton

Mr David Burton is the Director of ASW Barrier Smart Defence Initiative (SDI) 1.1271 a multinational initiative comprising: Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, UK, US. The SDI is sponsored by the NATO Maritime Unmanned Systems (MUS) initiative.
Prior to this David was Strategic Advisor to the UK’s NavyX programme and before this Director Strategy for NATO’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), an executive body of NATO’s Science and Technology where he was instrumental in the formation of the Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative.
Before joining CMRE, Mr David Burton was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency during the Afghanistan War. Here he was responsible for driving programmatic and technical coherence of capability programmes across NATO, developing strategic and technical roadmaps for change, and liaising closely with nations and national industries to support the implementation of NATO Network Enabled Capabilities. Since July 2009 Mr Burton worked within the NATO C3 Agency (NC3A) that merged with other NATO organizations into the NCI Agency on 1 July 2012.
Before joining NC3A, Mr Burton served as a Commodore in the Royal UK Navy in the post of Director Change within the Information Systems & Service Directorate of the Defence Equipment and Support Organisation of the UK Ministry of Defence. In this role he led a major transformational agenda across multiple lines of development.
At the UK Ministry of Defence, Mr Burton worked for the Chief Information Officer with responsibility for the UK Defence Information Exploitation and Enterprise Architecture
Programmes. Prior to this he held the position as NATO’s Network Enabled Capability Integrated Project Team Leader based at ACT, Norfolk Virginia.
A Physics graduate of Bristol University, Mr Burton joined the Royal Navy in 1980. After a variety of operational appointments at sea and with the Royal Marines, he attended the Royal Military College of Science, where he was awarded a Masters Degree in Design of Information Systems. Project Management experience followed in a variety of strategic Information Systems and organisational change programmes, including Programme Management of major Public Private Partnerships within UK defence. In the late 1990s, he filled a key role within NATO’s Maritime Command and Control Information System (MCCIS) Programme and was instrumental in establishing the C4I Programme Office.
Mr Burton is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered IT Practitioner, and Fellow of the British Computer Society.