Chiefs of Staff Committee (India)

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. 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.

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. As such, it exists primarily as an advisory body, endowed with no executive command authority.

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.

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.