A clean sweep of the top command posts in the Armed Forces was announced yesterday with the appointment of three Service chiefs to succeed the heads of the Royal Navy, Army and RAF next summer.

General Sir David Richards, an advocate of stepping up attacks against the Taleban, has been named as the new Head of the Army. He succeeds the current controversial Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, who is due to retire in the middle of next year.

The 56-year-old indicated recently that he believed a "surge" of 30,000 troops was needed to fight the Taleban in Afghanistan, with 5,000 troops from the UK and rest from the United States and the newly trained Afghan Army.

Britain has about 8,000 currently serving in Afghanistan, and the total Nato contingent is more than 50,000, but most of these are far from the most intense fighting.

General Richards arrives in the role from his previous position of Commander-in-Chief Land Command, where he will be relaced by Lieutenant-General Peter Wall, a former commander in Basra. Between 2006 and 2007 General Richards was Commander of the International Security and Assistance Force in Afghanistan, in charge of Nato's troops in the south of the country and has been regarded as a rising star.

This week he has been giving evidence at the Old Bailey where Corporal Daniel James is on trial charged with spying for Iran.

In an interview with the BBC recently, he said: “I think militarily there is a case for more troops. They don’t all have to come by any means from the UK. Nato ISAF nations between them have a large number of troops, so I think perhaps we would be looking at others in the first instance."

However, a call for other Nato allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan is unlikely to find a receptive audience. Although Britain and the US have repeatedly called on other Nato countries to share more of the burden in Afghanistan, particularly in the dangerous south, their efforts have met with little success given the difficulties and controversy of the mission there.

Earlier this week, Britain’s most senior military commander warned the public should not expect “a decisive military victory” in Afghanistan. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith told the Sunday Times that the aim was to reduce the uprising to a level at which it could be managed by the Afghan army.

General Dannatt, the outgoing Army chief, has embarrassed ministers with his criticism of the treatment given to wounded British soldiers and his complaint that soldiers were paid less than traffic wardens. In a newspaper interview in 2006, he also said that the presence of British troops in Iraq was "exacerbating the security problems" there.

He was passed over for promotion to Chief of the Defence Staff earlier this year when Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup was asked to stay on in that role until 2011.

General Richards joined the Army in 1971 and studied International Relations at University College Cardiff. He was commander of British forces in Sierra Leone in 2000 and East Timor in 1999, and has also served in Northern Ireland and Germany. The General, who is married with two daughters, lives in Wiltshire and is a keen yachstman.

The other new military chiefs named yesterday were Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, who will be the next First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, and Air Marshal Stephen Dalton, who will make a substantial climb up the ladder to become a four-star air chief marshal and Chief of the Air Staff.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Clive Loader, currently Commander-in-Chief Air Command, would have been due to take over the top job but he is to retire.

The simultaneous changeover at the three Services is highly unusual, although the Ministry of Defence said it just happened that they were all scheduled to retire at the same time.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend