John Stubbington graduated from the RAF Technical College, Henlow, in 1961 as an Engineer Officer. His career became specialised in the fields of Electronic Warfare and Defence Intelligence. At various times he was with the Bomber Command Development Unit; the Electronic Warfare Support Unit; No 51 Squadron as Engineer Officer; Support Command Signals Headquarters; and the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. Intelligence appointments were with the UK MoD Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) and the US Air Force Intelligence Division (FTD) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He retired from the RAF in 1985 and worked for 20 years within the UK Defence Industry, the last 15 years as an independent consultant in Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Intelligence, Surveillance and Target Acquisition (C4ISTAR). For some of that time he was an International Consultant with Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems.

Retired in 2005, he began another career as researcher and author of books and presentations on WW2 Intelligence, Bletchley Park and Bomber Command.