Pakistan’s Parliament has, for the first time in the country’s history, legally granted a single officer command over the army, navy and air force together. The Defence Forces of Pakistan Act, 2026, cleared the National Assembly in late August and created the post of Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). With this, Field Marshal Asim Munir has become Pakistan’s first CDF, a post he will hold along his existing position as army chief.
No previous law has ever given one officer this much formal authority over all three services at once, making it the most significant restructuring of Pakistan’s military command since 1976.
Until now, the closest equivalent was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, created in 1976 to coordinate between the services. That post had no legal authority to command the navy or air force, and the last time it went to a non-army officer was 1997. The new CDF role is different in kind, not just degree: it carries statutory operational command across all three services, reporting directly to the federal government, with the power to enforce decisions the old post never had.
A retired three-star general based in Rawalpindi told Al Jazeera the law creates a properly written chain of command from the prime minister down to units on the ground, something that never existed on paper before. Retired general Naeem Khalid Lodhi said the CDF is now “a real commander”, a description that would not have fit the old coordinating post.
