Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CJCS

The service chiefs met as the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II, and the National Security Act of 1947 made the group permanent but gave it no leader. Amendments signed on August 10, 1949, created the post of Chairman, and the first chairman, an Army general, took office on August 16, 1949. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of October 1, 1986, made the Chairman, rather than the Joint Chiefs as a body, the principal military adviser to the President and created the post of Vice Chairman.

The Chairman is nominated by the President from among senior officers and confirmed by the Senate for a four-year term, and outranks every other officer in the armed forces. The Chairman is not in the chain of command, which runs from the President through the Secretary of Defense to the combatant commanders, but orders are usually transmitted through the Chairman, who oversees the Joint Staff, advises on strategy, budgets, and readiness, and may give the President dissenting views from other members of the Joint Chiefs. By law, the Chairman should have served as vice chairman, a service chief, or a combatant commander, though the President may waive this requirement.

Because the Chairman advises civilian leaders on the use of force, the office sits at the center of the principle of civilian control of the military and the tradition of a nonpartisan officer corps. In February 2025 the President removed the sitting Chairman before his term ended, along with other senior officers, and nominated a retired three-star general who was recalled to active duty and confirmed in April 2025 under a waiver of the usual experience requirements. Supporters said the President was entitled to choose military leaders who share his priorities, while critics said the removals risked politicizing the senior ranks.