| Unit Name: | Chiefs of Staff Committee |
| Start Date: | 15 August 1947[1] |
| Country: | India |
| Branch: | Armed forces |
| Type: | Military staff |
| Command Structure: | Indian Armed Forces |
| Garrison: | Ministry of Defence, New Delhi, India |
| Garrison Label: | Headquarters |
| Commander1: | General Anil Chauhan |
| Commander1 Label: | Chairman |
| Notable Commanders: | Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw General Bipin Rawat |
| Identification Symbol: | COSC |
| Identification Symbol Label: | Abbreviation |
The Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) is an administrative forum of the senior-most military leaders of the Indian Armed Forces, which advises the Government of India on all military and strategic matters deemed privy to military coordination, direction and policy between the country's three armed services.[2] By organization, the COSC is comprised several key members, namely, Chief of Defence Staff - who acts as the Committee's Permanent Chairman,along with the Chief of the Army Staff, the Chief of the Naval Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff - all of whom are also additionally supported by the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff.[3]
By function, the COSC has two principal responsibilities: one, to inculcate and implement jointness through integration of, inter alia, the doctrine, logistics, and operations of the three armed services; two, to apprise to the nation's civilian leadership i.e., the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, on all matters related to the nation's security.[4] As such, it exists primarily as an advisory body, endowed with no executive command authority.[5]
To execute its mandate, the COSC is closely supported by the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) and other inter-service bodies under its patronage that specialize in facets such as intelligence, personnel, operations and training. Comparably, the forum is identical to the United Kingdom's Chiefs of Staff Committee and Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.[6]
From 1947 to 2019, and briefly from 2021 to 2022 - the leadership of the COSC was rotated amongst the service chiefs (or Chiefs of Staff) of the three armed services, with the senior-most chief serving as Chairman-COSC with no fixed tenure; however, since 2020, the mantle of the COSC's chairmanship is held by the Chief of the Defence Staff, a separate office that functions independent of the service chiefs.[7]
The current membership of the Chiefs of Staff Committee:
| Office | Photograph | Incumbent | Incumbent since | Service | Command Flag | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chief of Defence Staff (Permanent Chairman) | GeneralAnil Chauhan | September 2022[8] | ||||
| GeneralUpendra Dwivedi | June 2024[9] | |||||
| AdmiralDinesh Kumar Tripathi | April 2024[10] | |||||
| Air Chief MarshalAmar Preet Singh | September 2024[11] | |||||
| Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Non-voting member) | Lieutenant GeneralJohnson P Mathew | April 2023[12] |
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is the principal military authority and senior-most appointment of the Indian Armed Forces.[13] Introduced in 2019, the CDS operates on a status of primus inter pares i.e., first among equals with the Chiefs of Staff and functions as the COSC's Permanent Chairman, independent of the Chiefs of Staff.[14]
As Permanent Chairman-COSC, the CDS maintains the following responsibilities within the forum:
The service chiefs (also referred to as the Chiefs of Staff) of the three services are, namely, the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), the Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) and Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) - all of whom are customarily four-star officers.[18]
As voting members of the COSC, the Chiefs of Staff function in the undermentioned manner:
However, their mandate of the Chiefs of Staff are not formally defined by statute, and are obfuscated by the undermentioned:
In addition to its aforementioned core members, the COSC's functioning is supported by the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), which functions as the COSC's principal arm and secretariat.[23] The IDS, which by role also acts as an inter-service interface for coordinating the armed services, is led by the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CISC) - a three-star officer, who is a non-voting member of the COSC.[3] Functionally, the CISC operates with the unofficial role of vice-CDS, to act as an adjudicator towards fostering inter-service coordination between the Service Headquarters (SHQ) of the three services.[23]
To support the Chairman-COSC, the CISC undertakes the following roles:
Before India's attainment of independence in 1947, the military organization in the then-British Raj had been constituted as a theatre of operations, wherein the policymaking for the colony's defence affairs emanated from the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), which oversaw the formulation of military strategy for the overall British Empire.[5] Following the dissolution of the Raj, India's inaugural Governor-General, Lord Mountbatten, sought to establish an administrative structure for the management of the armed forces of the new country.[5] Consequently, Mountbatten selected his chief of staff, Lord Ismay, to execute the task.[5]
Ismay, in his own stead, had spent a significant portion of his military career as a staff officer: he had served in the CID in a secretarial role during the 1920s-1930s with the responsibility of military planning, and had later served on the British Chiefs of Staff Committee during the Second World War; these postings thus allowed him to gain rich expertise in defence administration and subsequently, Mountbatten's choice.[25]
As such, Ismay formulated a practical model for India's higher defence management, comprising a three-tier higher defence organization:
The COSC, which formed the third-tier of Ismay's formula, consisted of three Chiefs of Staff, who would serve as professional advisors to the civilian government wherein their mandate was to render guidance on military planning and operational matters. The COSC, which would come to be a part of the Military Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat, was thus to be led by the Chiefs of Staff on a rotational basis, with the senior-most Chief serving as Chairman-COSC.[27]
Additionally, Ismay formulated a series of several sub-committees that would address the functioning of the COSC and coordination between the three services, staff both by civil servants and uniformed officers; some of them were:
† Died in office.
|-style="text-align:center;"|colspan=8|Vacant 8–15 December 2021|-style="text-align:center;"|colspan=8|Vacant 30 April 2022 – 30 September 2022