Commander of the Royal Netherlands Army

Lieutenant General Leo Beulen started his military career in 1978 at the Royal Military Academy in Breda. In 1982, he was sworn in as a Second Lieutenant with the Defence Artillery and posted as Platoon Commander to 12 Armoured Anti-aircraft Artillery battery in Nunspeet. He then had several command and staff functions up to 1991 with 15 Section Armoured Anti-aircraft Artillery in ‘t Harde.

From 1991 to 1993, he attended the Staff Service Course and Advanced Military Studies at the Netherlands Defence College. Major Beulen was then appointed Head, Operations Office, G3 Section with the staff of 1 (NL) Corps, where he worked mainly on large corps exercises, the preparation of units for deployments, and the amalgamation of the Netherlands and German corps.

From 1995, Major Beulen worked as the Chief Assistant to the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. In 1997, he attended the General Staff Course at the Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas (US). In 1998, Lieutenant Colonel Beulen returned to the Netherlands, where he became a teacher at the Netherlands Defence College, and chairman of the NATO working group Allied Joint Publication 3 (Operations). In 1999, Lieutenant Colonel Beulen was appointed commander of 25 Section Armoured Anti-aircraft Artillery. In 2000, he joined the staff of 1 Division as Head of Section G3, from where he was deployed to Bosnia Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia in 2002.

After his return to the Netherlands, Lieutenant Colonel Beulen was posted to the General Policy Division of the Army Staff. In 2003, he was promoted to the rank of colonel and he became sub-project leader in the Consolidated Plans Branch of the Defence Staff Reorganisation project group. In 2005, Colonel Beulen was appointed Commander of the Air Defence Artillery Command, where he supervised the amalgamation of the school and the operational units of the Air Defence Artillery and the move of the Air Defence Artillery Command to the Peel region in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant. In December 2007, Colonel Beulen was appointed Head of the J3 Operations Division of the Directorate of Operations of the Defence Staff.

In October 2009, he was promoted to Brigadier General and posted to the NATO Forces headquarters in Heidelberg as Director of the Joint Coordination Centre. In this function, he was deployed for a year as Head J3 of the ISAF Headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan. In May 2012, General Major Beulen returned to the Defence Staff as Director of Operations. In October 2014, General Major Beulen was appointed Deputy Commander of 1 (GE/NL) Corps in Münster, Germany. On 24 March 2016, he became Commander of the Royal Netherlands Army in the rank of Lieutenant General.

Lieutenant General Beulen is married to Annemiek. They have a daughter and two sons.