Major General Timothy Cross, CBE (born 19 April 1951) is a retired British Army officer and military logistics expert.

[1] He was commissioned in 1971 into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps and went on to serve in Germany, Northern Ireland and Cyprus, interspersed with staff duties and further education.

During his tour with KFOR, he was responsible for co-ordinating multinational troops and civilian agencies in establishing refugee camps in the aftermath of the Kosovo War.

He serves as an advisor to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee and to several private companies, and is a visiting lecturer at several British universities.

[2] He joined the Army Cadet Force in 1964[2] and, after his secondary education, was accepted to study at Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College, before attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1969.

[4] His first tour was in West Germany, with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in 1971, after which he undertook an in-service degree at the Royal Military College of Science.

[3] Promoted to captain in 1977,[6] he went on to train as an Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO) and was posted to Northern Ireland in 1978, where he was involved in explosive ordnance disposal along with inspection duties.

[3] Returning to the BAOR in 1979, Cross served as Adjutant to 1 Ordnance Battalion,[7] before a tour in Cyprus, attached to the United Nations peace-keeping force in 1981.

He was tasked with commanding multinational troops, as well as coordinating the humanitarian efforts of personnel from the British Department for International Development, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and multiple non-governmental organisations.

[13] In recognition of his service in the Balkans, Cross was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours List.

While Director General, he was responsible for the establishment of the United Kingdom's Joint Force Logistic Component for the forthcoming operations in Iraq and became involved in planning for the invasion of the country.

[7][10] In early 2003, he became the British representative to the United States Department of Defense's Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later the Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion, and one of three deputies to American Lieutenant General Jay Garner.

He praised the military campaign and went on to talk about the challenges of rebuilding the country, saying "I think in relative terms we are not as badly off as we might have feared", but agreed that there were insufficient "people on the ground" to ensure security in the aftermath of the invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein's government.

However, he was never "overly concerned" by warnings from aid agencies of a massive humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the invasion which, in the event, never materialised, though he admitted he had been too optimistic about the state of the Iraqi infrastructure.

[17] In a 2009 interview, Cross praised the planning for the invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein, but said that he "was very keen that we thought through carefully the postwar aspects of what we were going to do once the military campaign was over.

Cross told Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, that preparations for Iraq after the removal of Saddam Hussein were "woefully thin".