The Organization and Structure of the Military

IN THE UNITED STATES, every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine is under a chain of command that begins with the president. This chain of command is complex, to be sure, but the thread that runs from the highest elected official to the lowest-ranking soldier is never broken. The national chain of command encompasses two different branches (operational and administrative) and four different services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force). The services almost always conduct operations jointly within one of six geographic and four functional commands. The following description of the U.S. chain of command is stripped down to its bare essentials and is focused on the operational commands, because civilians are likely to encounter only operational personnel on the scene of a stability operation.

The National Command Structure

The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the President is the commander-in-chief of the military. The president is assisted in the management of the military by the Secretary of Defense (SECDEF), a civilian member of the cabinet appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to manage the Department of Defense (www.defenselink.mil).

The chiefs of the four uniformed services—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, separately appoints the chairman (CJCS) and the vice chairman of the JCS. The CJCS is the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 considerably expanded the responsibilities of the JCS as a whole and of its chairman and vice chairman in particular. A growing number of joint organizations, especially the unified and combatant commands (see figure 4.1), report through the JCS. However, the CJCS does not exercise military command over any of the armed forces.

The president and the secretary of defense are assisted by the CJCS, the National Security Council (NSC), and the Joint Staff (www.jcs.mil), and they are responsible to the American people for national defense and security. As figure 4.1 shows, authority over and command and control of the armed forces is exercised through a single chain of command that separates below the secretary of defense into two distinct branches: one operational and the other administrative.

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