High flyer not afraid to tell top brass what’s what

Brigadier Ian Langford is one of the army’s most respected and decorated leaders, having received three Distinguished Service Crosses.

Brigadier Ian Langford has a PhD in philosophy.

Brigadier Ian Langford is one of the army’s most respected and decorated leaders, having received three Distinguished Service Crosses.

The former 2nd Commando Regiment commander has a PhD in philosophy and writes extensively for military journals.

He was director of the Chief of Army’s select internal think tank, known as the Initiative Group, and is currently the army’s director-general of future land warfare.

In a 2016 presentation attended by the Chief of the Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, Langford warned that leadership failures could result in “atrocities” such as those at My Lai during the Vietnam War and at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

“Situational ethics are highly contextual and drift will occur without one transformational factor, and that’s leadership,” he said. “Leadership is the action … that keeps that kind of behaviour within the bounds of what is lawful, what is ethical and what is moral.”

Langford’s standing suffered in 2019 when he told an inquest he sent a soldier who later committed suicide on two combat deployments knowing he was suffering mental health difficulties.