Colonel Rob de Wit

Commanding Officer Operational Units The Netherlands Marine Corps

Rob de Wit - born March 10th 1972 in Snelrewaard in the Netherlands – joined the Royal Netherlands Naval Academy in Den Helder in 1990 as a midshipman for the Netherlands Marine Corps. After a successful completion of the academy in 1995 he was commissioned as first lieutenant and appointed to command an infantry platoon within the 1st Marine battalion. After one year he moved to the Marine Training Wing, training Marine recruits. Directly after this he became the Mortar Officer of the 2nd Marine battalion.

In 1997 he was promoted to captain and became the companies 2nd in command of the key-company of the 1st Marine battalion. With this unit he was deployed to Kosovo as part of NATO’s Strategic Reserve Forces. In 2001 he attended the Amphibious Warfare School in Quantico, USA. In 2002 he returned from the US to conduct the Captains Close Support Course in Larkhill, UK. After successful completion of this course he became an artillery observer within the NLMC.

In 2003 he was promoted to major and became the Amphibious Operations Officer on board of HNLMS Rotterdam. With this warship he went to Liberia in 2003 under UN command. In 2005 he moved to the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) within the Netherlands armed forces. Within DMO he became a project leader of the Soldier Modernisation Program.

In 2008 he was appointed company commander of the 13th company (Special Operations Capable), 1st Marine battalion. In the winter of 2009 he was appointed CO NLD Detachment Chad. When he returned from Chad he moved back to the 13th company SOC in order to prepare for operations in Uruzgan, Afghanistan in 2010. With his company he took part in combat operations in Uruzgan.

After return to the Netherlands he was appointed lecturer on Amphibious Warfare at the Netherlands Defence Academy as part of the branch Military Operational Science. In July 2013 he went to the United States to attend the Naval Command Course (NCC 14) at the Naval War College. After successful completion of this course, he was appointed commanding officer of the 2nd Marine Combat Group (2MCG) in July 2014. On completion of this command in September 2016 he became a senior staff officer of the plans department of the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. In May 2019 he became the head of the strategy department of the Royal Netherlands Navy. In May 2020 he was appointed commanding officer operational units Netherlands Marine Corps.