# Joint Chiefs of Staff The **Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)** are the most senior uniformed leaders of the U.S. military — the **Chairman** (the nation's highest-ranking officer and the principal military adviser to the president and the Secretary of Defense), the Vice Chairman, and the chiefs of the Army, Navy, [[Air Force]], Marine Corps, [[Space Force]], and the [[National Guard]] Bureau. A crucial point of constitutional design: under the **Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986)**, the Joint Chiefs are **advisory only**. They are *not* in the operational chain of command — which runs President → Secretary of Defense → the [[Combatant Commands]]. The Chairman advises; he does not command troops in the field. For the KB, the JCS is the focal point of the second term's **politicization of the officer corps** — the effort to replace the professional military's norm of nonpartisanship with personal loyalty to the commander in chief. ## The February 2025 officer purge On **February 21, 2025**, Secretary of Defense [[Pete Hegseth]] and President Trump removed a swath of the military's most senior leaders in a single action widely described as a purge: - **Gen. Charles Q. "CQ" Brown Jr.** — the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (and only the second Black officer to hold the post) — was **fired**. - **Adm. Lisa Franchetti** — the Chief of Naval Operations, the first woman to serve as a service chief and on the JCS — was removed the same day (see [[United States Navy]]). - The Air Force Vice Chief of Staff and the **Judge Advocates General** (top military lawyers) of multiple services were also dismissed. Many of those removed had been associated, in the administration's framing, with **diversity, equity, and inclusion** initiatives; critics described the firings as a political loyalty test that swept away the senior ranks' independence. To replace Brown, Trump nominated **Gen. Dan Caine** — a retired three-star general recalled to active duty, confirmed by the Senate 60–25 and sworn in on April 14, 2025. Caine is the first JCS Chairman who had never served as a four-star officer before his nomination, and his selection (Trump had spoken admiringly of him for years) underscored the shift toward personal rapport with the president as a qualification. ## Why the advisory role matters Because the Chairman advises rather than commands, the deeper stakes of the purge are about **norms and counsel**, not operational control: a JCS staffed for loyalty is less likely to push back on unlawful orders, to give unwelcome professional advice, or to defend the military's nonpartisan tradition. The operational chain itself runs through the civilian Secretary and the [[Combatant Commands]] — which is why control of the SecDef ([[Pete Hegseth]]) and the combatant commanders matters as much as the Chairmanship. ## See Also - [[Civil-Military Relations]] — the theory, the statutes, and the case studies - [[Mark Milley]] — the previous Chairman - [[Department of Defense]] - [[Combatant Commands]] - [[United States Navy]] - [[Pete Hegseth]] - [[Federal Agencies]]