Pakistan has recently created the post of Chief of the Defence Forces (CDF) through the 27th Constitutional Amendment, appointing Field Marshal Asim Munir as the first CDF of Pakistan, holding the appointment of COAS concurrently. The post was long overdue, as nearly all modern armed forces of the world have already taken that route, albeit creating a higher defence organisational structure tailored to their own needs. The colonial bequest of three CinCs in 1947 featured a one-star ranked CinC from the Navy who was upgraded as a local two-star after independence, and a two-star ranked officer from the Air Force, leaving the Army in command of a four-star, i.e. General Frank Messervy.
The three CinCs continued working in silos until March 197,6 when Prime Minister Bhutto created the post of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC). The post and its under-command Joint Staff Headquarters (JS HQ), however, remained merely a ceremonial entity without an effective command and coordinating role over the three services, which kept operating in silos led by their respective service chiefs, renamed as COAS (Army), CAS (PAF) and CNS (Navy). Later, after the establishment of the Special Planning Division (SPD) and National Command Authority (NCA), charged with the responsibility of managing the nuclear assets of the country, the responsibility of their oversight was assigned to the JS HQ.
Other than the above, there was little meaningful role of the JS HQ in war planning or conduct, which rested with the specific service headquarters. So effete was the command and control of the JS HQ over the three services that certain aspects initially assigned to the three services jointly for the achievement of economy were also progressively weakened by the respective services. These aspects included Military Engineering Services (MES), Medical Services, Public Relations, and Procurement, where the respective services kept on adding their own flavour by continually instituting their own human resource and control measures.
There was a time when the jointness in professional education and training was institutionalised in the form of the Joint Services Pre-Cadet Training Course (JSPCTC) and Joint Services Staff Course, but all these initiatives slowly petered out. Except for a few vacancies on individual services’ command and staff courses, there was no meaningful professional interaction until the Armed Forces War Course and National Defence Course (now known as the National Security and War Course after merger). The three services kept ploughing their lone furrow in peacetime and came together in wartime through loo,se informal coordinating arrangements like the National Command Centre, while the actual command remained vested with the service chiefs.
Due to the peculiar trajectory of civil-military relations and concomitant civil-military imbalance in Pakistan, the COAS kept wielding more clout as a de facto National Security Adviser of the country, with the service chiefs of the PAF and Navy acting as second fiddle. A weak Ministry of Defence further abdicated the civilian oversight role to the largest protagonist in the military power matrix, i.e. the COAS, with the appointment of CJCSC relegated to a ceremonial role. The civil-military imbalance and tri-service dissonance came to a head during the Kargil conflict when the PAF leadership refused to introduce air power in the Kargil sector due to operational preparedness reasons. There was a visible lack of coordination and friction between the three services that led to several problems during the conflict.
The desired unity and jointness cannot come with the three services operating in their respective silos, duplicating efforts and wasting resources
Similar inter-service friction was evidenced on the part of India when their Army Chief General V. P. Malik took over four weeks during the Kargil conflict to convince Air Chief Marshal Tipnis to induct the Indian Air Force in support of Indian Army troops attacking the mountain posts of Pakistan. The Kargil Review Committee, led by K. Subrahmanyam, which was constituted to review the poor performance of the Indian intelligence apparatus and border troops that had led to the undetected loss of territory, deliberated over all aspects of the war-fighting and came up with a comprehensive set of recommendations six months after the conflict. One of the recommendations of the committee was the creation of the post of Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), which was to harmonise the command and control functions of the three services through a single command slot on top of the three services.
The Indians put this idea into practice in 2019 with the appointment of General Bipin Rawat as the first CDS in India. The CDS acts as the single point of military advice to the political leadership as the principal military adviser, besides heading the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), charged with the responsibility to integrate the training, operations, procurement, and development strategies of the three services for bringing jointness and synergy into the military operations of the three services. The concept of unified tri-service commands in India is a consequence of the above jointness fostered through a common military head in the shape of the CDS. All other modern armies, including the USA, Russia, and China, have a similar tri-service integrated structure.
Modern warfare is all about multi-domain integration, where the land, sea, air, space, cyber, cognitive (media/information), and nuclear domains would need integration for celerity of response and the efficacy of the joint military punch. A foretaste of future warfare was given in the Indo-Pak standoff in May 2025, where the network-centred Pakistani response leveraged air, space, ground, and cyber domains to achieve information, decision-making, as well as firepower advantage over the platform-centric, fragmented response of the Indian military. In short, Pakistan shortened the decision-making loop referred to by military experts as the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) effectively due to better multi-domain synergy.
But despite Pakistan’s clear victory in the short war, there is no resting on the laurels, as a protracted war could have led to a few unanticipated problems, like in Kargil, due to the absence of a single command and control headquarters and its leader, leading individual services to fight on their own in the absence of a common operating picture. India is creating unified tri-service commands primarily focused on Pakistan, and therefore, Pakistan needs to bring greater synergy and jointness in its operational response. The desired unity and jointness cannot come with the three services operating in their respective silos, duplicating efforts and wasting resources. It is time Pakistan exorcised the ghosts of a colonial military and adopted modern organisational structures according to the dictates of modern warfare.
It is therefore a good development that Pakistan has realised the value of jointness while confronted by an implacable foe that has resolved to carry forward the unfinished agenda of “Operation Sindoor”. Three important questions are worth answering here, which are both necessary to allay some uninformed concerns as well as outline the feasibility of an effective CDF Headquarters. The first question raised by some detractors of the concept is that the CDF would centralise the decision-making powers amongst the individual service components to the detriment of the professional autonomy of the other services.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as no constraints are being imposed on the initiative and command prerogatives of the Air and Naval Chiefs, who would continue to train, raise, and command their forces as earlier, except ceding some space for a beneficial oversight to a higher CDF HQ over aspects common to the three services, which could eliminate waste and achieve economy. The examples are MES, Medical Services, Procurement, Public Relations, and certain aspects of troops’ and officers’ welfare. So, any argument against the concept on that score is specious and ill-founded.
A head of armed forces who is to exercise control and provide guidance over paramilitary as well as intelligence outfits would be more effective if he comes from the service that dominates these outfits
Secondly, the concurrent appointment of COAS and CDF has to be understood in the backdrop of Pakistan’s threat environment and the structure of the armed forces. Externally, Pakistan’s geography dictates a land-centric military strategy where space, air, and naval domains would always remain important yet supporting components of the military response strategy both in the conventional as well as nuclear domains. Our main foe, India, would always seek sensitive spatial objectives to gain strategic politico-military dividends, exploiting the narrow geographical depth of the country. In order to address those vulnerabilities, a large land component comprising offensive as well as defensive elements is de rigueur.
On the internal security front, a large paramilitary (Rangers, Frontier Corps) force is required due to threats like terrorism, organised crime, and externally abetted insurgencies. The paramilitary forces are officered and trained by the regular army, and the ISI, being served by army officers in key slots, is still the leading counter-terrorism organisation despite the presence of several other organisations. A head of armed forces who is to exercise control and provide guidance over paramilitary as well as intelligence outfits would be more effective if he comes from the service that dominates these outfits.
Pakistan’s nuclear planning and development organisation, i.e. SPD, has always been dominated by the army on the planning, security, and administration fronts. In addition, the land-based nuclear deterrence apparatus that dominates Pakistan’s nuclear triad also comes under the army. A CDF who would control the nuclear triad’s planning, development, and employment aspects, therefore, should logically be from the army. The concept of tri-service integration would therefore be better served if the largest component of its armed forces embraces it with alacrity. It is for this pragmatic reason that the concurrent holding of COAS and CDF portfolios makes sense.
And thirdly, there is the big question about the size, staffing, articulation of command, and the organisation of the new CDF HQ. The efficacy of any command appointment is dependent upon the effectiveness of the command HQ. After the abolition of the old Joint Staff HQ, a lean yet effective CDF HQ is an essential requirement, which should have the proper staff to exercise joint operational planning, training, human resource development, air defence, and cyber warfare planning functions. While the service chiefs would run their services untrammelled by the intrusive oversight of the CDF HQ, the important oversight function would have to be performed by the CDF.
To achieve the above objective, the CDF HQ might have a three-star-ranked Chief of Staff, having two-star-ranked Director Generals dealing with operations, training, human resources, logistics, foreign military cooperation, MES, Medical Services, and Public Relations. These appointments would have to be career-incentive-based rather than the sinecure assignments held by relatively lower-profile officers in the old JS HQ. The CDF headquarters should have adequate tri-service representation for effective oversight and planning synergy.
To make the CDF’s appointment effective, the CDF should have oversight over HR policies of the respective services, have a say in the promotion boards and retirements of all officers above two-star rank belonging to the three services. And finally, the CDF would rightly be the principal military adviser to the Prime Minister, rendering advice about all military matters, including all three services as a single point of contact, instead of multiple inputs going without a wholesome picture of the defence needs and priorities.
Future warfare would feature unmanned aerial and ground platforms, robots, AI-assisted drone swarms, cyber-attacks, conventional missiles, and space-enabled networks of sensors, processors, and fire platforms that are altering the nature, grammar, as well as the character of warfare. The symbiosis of the multi-domain capabilities into a symphony by a war orchestra demands a central conductor. Our armed forces would be better served by an integrated mode of tri-service employment led by a puissant CDF and an equally effective CDF HQ.
Time to jettison the stultifying traditions and turf wars to embrace the new war-fighting paradigm of joint warfare through unity of effort and command.