Joint Chiefs of Staff

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) is the principal government agency that formulates U.S. military strategy and promotes integrated operations among all branches of the U.S. armed forces. Its membership consists of the Army chief of staff, the chief of naval operations, the Air Force chief of staff, and the commandant of the Marine Corps, as well as a chairman and vice chairman. Selected from any of the four military services by the president, the chairman serves as the nation's highest-ranking military officer and principal military adviser, with additional duties that include presiding over the JCS and its support staff. Since its informal creation during World War II and its legal formalization in 1947, the JCS has experienced profound changes in its responsibilities.

The origins of the JCS trace back to World War II and the need for greater coordination among Allied war planners. Because the United States lacked a comprehensive war planning institution similar to the British Chiefs of Staff [Page 392]Committee, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt directed Gen. George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff; Adm. Ernest J. King, the commander in chief, U.S. Fleet; Adm. Harold R. Stark, the chief of naval operations; and Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the Army Air Forces chief of staff to assemble in January 1942 for the purpose of coordinating Allied planning and operations. With the consent of the president, the officers became the principal American military war strategists and also the de facto heads of all U.S. armed forces during the war. While serving on the Combined Chiefs of Staff with their British counterparts, the American military heads additionally assumed the interservice mandates (conferring, discussing, and formulating recommendations for all measures calling for cooperation among the services) that were first assigned to the Joint Army and Navy Board in July 1903. The service chiefs collectively commanded the development of U.S. military strategies in both the Atlantic and Pacific, and controlled the management of all U.S. military operations.

During World War II, naval membership within the JCS changed shortly after its first official meeting on February 9, 1942. Following Admiral Stark's March 1942 departure to Europe for his new position as theater commander of U.S. naval forces, Admiral King assumed additional responsibilities as chief of naval operations by order of the president. The need soon arose for an additional naval officer to balance Army–Navy membership. On July 20, 1942, in an effort to achieve this end, President Roosevelt appointed Adm. William Leahy to the JCS as chief of staff to the commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. For the rest of the war Marshall, Arnold, King, and Leahy compromised and acted as a Joint Chiefs of Staff, although no formal legislation ever recognized them as such.

This lack of statutory identification changed shortly after the end of the war. Signed by Pres. Harry S. Truman, the National Security Act of 1947 marked the first legal recognition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the nation's primary military advising body. In addition to unifying all the U.S. armed forces into a single Department of Defense, the 1947 act designated the Army chief of staff, the chief of naval operations, and the chief of staff of the independent Air Force as JCS members, specifying each of them as principal military advisers to the president and secretary of defense. To further facilitate cooperation and coordination among the various services, the legislation stipulated that the entire JCS had to provide unanimous consent before any JCS military counsel reached civilian decision makers. Responsibilities of the service chiefs included military planning, establishing unified field commands, managing joint staff activities, and creating joint Army–Navy policy.

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