Chief of Defence Staff (India)

The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is the principal military authority and senior-most appointment of the Indian Armed Forces. Deemed the overall professional head of India’s three armed services, namely, the Indian Army, the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force, the CDS is the highest-ranking military officer in service, responsible for overseeing inter-service jointness across all disciplines related to military functioning. Primarily, the office operates on a status of primus inter pares i.e., first among equals with the chiefs of the three services, and functions as the Permanent-Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) – the inter-service syndicate responsible for ensuring the establishment-cum-preservation of military integration.

Statutorily, the CDS is the presiding secretary of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), the foremost civil-cum-military entity responsible for fostering professional coordination between the services, and by extension, is also the principal military advisor to the nation’s civilian leadership i.e., the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on affairs privy to inter-service integration; as such, the office exists primarily as an advisor-cum-adjudicator position, endowed with no operational command control.

Since its formal creation in 2020, the CDS is officiated on a rotational basis by four-star officers nominated from either of the three services. Domestically, the office ranks 12th-overall in the Indian order of precedence, and is the status-equivalent of the Chief of the Army Staff, the Chief of the Naval Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff; internationally, it is functionally identical to Pakistan's Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the United Kingdom's Chief of the Defence Staff, and the United States' Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.