Speakers
Keynote
Jeroen Hodes was born in Borne, the Netherlands, in 1969. At the age of 19, he began his naval career by attending officer training (engineering department) at the Royal Naval College in Den Helder (KIM). After he had successfully completed his training at the KIM, in 1993 he was posted on board HNLMS Kortenaer. During this posting, he also graduated in mechanical engineering at the Faculty of Production and Organisation Management of the University of Twente in Enschede.
After his first operational years on HNLMS Kortenaer and HNLMS Crijnssen, he was posted to the Royal Netherlands Navy technical training unit (KMTO) to set up job-specific training courses and to provide training in propulsion systems.
In 1999, Hodes was posted as Deputy Head of the Engineering Department on board HNLMS Rotterdam, the first Royal Netherlands Navy amphibious transport ship. This marked the start of a challenging time in which new technologies such as electric propulsion, controlled sinking and the day-to-day operation of an unmanned control room had to be brought together. All of this took place in a dynamic period, in which the ship was deployed to the UNMEE mission off the coast of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
From 2001 to 2005 he worked on shore, at first as the Head of Technical Support of the Mine Countermeasures Service, and later with the military supervision unit for the East Netherlands region. In support of the latter position, he followed a higher professional education course in Utrecht to become a quality engineer. He then returned to sea as Head of the Engineering Department on board air defence and command frigate HNLMS Evertsen, a new class on which shock testing was carried out during his time on board.
He was then posted to the Requirements Section of the Defence Staff as a staff officer for marine engineering, where he was one of a team drafting the requirements for the Joint Support Ship (JSS), which later became HNLMS Karel Doorman. During this posting, he was deployed to Afghanistan for six months, where he was posted to the headquarters of Regional Command South in Kandahar. He then successfully completed the Advanced Defence Studies course. After this course, he returned to Den Helder, where, after a brief stint with the Directorate of Planning and Control, in 2011 he started working in the materiel logistics domain.
His first position was Head of the Incidental Maintenance Subdepartment. As a sub-project leader, in the following period he was closely involved in the amalgamation of the RNLN Materiel Logistics Department and the Naval Maintenance and Sustainment Agency, making him one of the founding fathers of the current Directorate of Materiel Sustainment. After this project, he assumed command of the Maritime Sustainment Group for Frigates and Oceangoing Patrol Vessels.
As an added extra to his operational career, from 2015 to 2018 he held the position of Head of the Engineering Department on board the then new Joint Support Ship HNLMS Karel Doorman. With this ship he participated in, among other things, the Hurricane Relief Mission close to the Caribbean islands of Sint-Maarten and Domenica.
From 2018 to 2022, he held the position of Head of the Maritime Sustainment Division, where he was responsible for the Materiel Logistics Business Operations Authority, while he was also the senior member of the Technical Department. Since March 2022, he has been the Director of the Directorate of Materiel Sustainment.
Commodore Hodes is married to Marloes. They live in Delden, and together they have three children, Sanne, Stijn and Merel.