The Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services () is the supreme commander of the Tatmadaw and all armed forces in Myanmar according to the constitution. The Tatmadaw, officially translated as "Defence Services",The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008) and its official English translation; Bilingual ; source: Constitutional Tribunal of the Union၁၉၅၉ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်အက်ဥပဒေ [The Defence Services Act, 1959] (Bilingual; English and Burmese) is an independent branch of government under control of the commander-in-chief and not answerable to the president of Myanmar, though certain actions of the commander-in-chief require the approval of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC), which is chaired by the president. According to the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar, the commander-in-chief is appointed by the president upon nomination by the NDSC; the commander-in-chief is also a member of the NDSC.

The Constitution frames the commander-in-chief as an expressly political office, stating he "participates in the national political leadership role of the state". Accordingly, he has expansive governance powers under the Constitution, including the ability to appoint the leadership of the Home, Border, and Defence ministries, the right to appoint 25% of the members of both houses of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (which appoints the president), the ability to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, as well as having effective voting control on the NDSC. One of the most significant executive powers retained by the president is discretion in calling meetings of the NDSC. Article 418 of the 2008 Constitution allows the Commander-in-Chief broad authority over the government if the president declares a state of emergency in coordination with the NDSC. This happened after the 2021 coup d'état: military-installed acting president Myint Swe declared a state of emergency and transferred power to Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who then formed a military junta—the State Administration Council.

The current Commander-in-Chief is General Ye Win Oo, since 30 March 2026.

History The position was created as "General Officer Commanding (GOC) Burma Army" () on 1 May 1947.

After the establishment of the War Office in May 1948, the GOC was the head of the combined military forces of army, navy, and air force. For this broader authority, the term "Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All Armed Forces of the Union of Burma" (ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံလက်နက်ကိုင်တပ်ပေါင်းစုံစစ်သေနာပတိချုပ်) was also used.၁၉၅၂ခုနှစ်၊ ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်၌ စစ်ဥပဒေခေတ္တထုတ်ပြန်ကျေညာမှုအက်ဥပဒေ။ [Shan State Temporary Military Law Proclamation Act, 1952]စစ်သေနာပတိချုပ်၏အမိန့်ကြော်ငြာစာအမှတ် ၃၃ [Notification No. 33 of the Order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief]၁၉၅၄ ခုနှစ်၊ ကင်းလွတ်ချမ်းသာခွင့်နှင့် တည်မြဲရေးအက်ဥပဒေ။ [The Indemnity and Permanence Act, 1950]

On 28 September 1955, with the unification of Burma Army (ဗမာ့တပ်မတော်; Bama Tatmadaw), Burma Navy (ဗမာ့ရေတပ်မတော်; Bama Ye Tatmadaw) and Burma Air Force (မြန်မာ့လေတပ်မတော်; Myanma Le Tatmadaw) into a single Tatmadaw or Defence Services, the position was renamed as "Chief of Staff, Defence Services" (ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်) and given all powers previously held by the GOC Burma Army, the CO Burma Navy, and the CO Burma Air Force.

On 10 May 1989, the position was further renamed as "Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services" (တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်) in 1989.၁၉၅၉ ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်အက်ဥပဒေကို ပြင်ဆင်သည့် ဥပဒေ [The Law Amending the Defence Services Act, 1959]; in Burmese and English

List of GOC/CS/C-in-CDS (Dates in italics indicate de facto continuation of office)

Portrait Name Term of office Notes Took office Left office Time in office General Officer Commanding, Burma Army * Major-GeneralLechmere Cay Thomas 1 May 1947 4 January 1948 Previously served as Inspector General. His appointment as GOC is recorded in the military's official history but he is not acknowledged as the first person in the official list of CS/C-in-C DS. Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All Armed Forces of the Union of Burma;General Officer Commanding, Burma Army 1 Lieutenant GeneralSmith Dun 4 January 1948 31 January 1949 Ethnic Karen, forced to retire due to the Karen conflict. Listed as the first CS/C-in-C DS in the official list even though he had retired before 1955. 2 GeneralNe Win 1 February 1949 28 September 1955 Oversaw the unification of Burmese armed forces. Chief of Staff, Defence Services (2) GeneralNe Win 28 September 1955 20 April 1972 Later became president and chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). 3 GeneralSan Yu 20 April 1972 7 March 1974 Later became president. 4 GeneralTin Oo 8 March 1974 6 March 1976 Later became vice-chairman of the National League for Democracy (NLD). 5 GeneralThura Kyaw Htin 6 March 1976 4 November 1985 6 GeneralSaw Maung 4 November 1985 10 May 1989 Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services (6) Senior General Saw Maung 10 May 1989 24 April 1992 7 Senior GeneralThan Shwe 24 April 1992 30 March 2011 8 Senior GeneralMin Aung Hlaing 30 March 2011 30 March 2026 years 9 GeneralYe Win Oo 30 March 2026 Incumbent

Timeline

List of other historical C-in-C and IG Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All Burmese Armed Forces Portrait Name Term of office Notes Took office Left office Time in office Head of the State;Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All Burmese Armed Forces 1 Ba Maw 1 August 1943 19 August 1945 The only civilian commander-in-chief of the military. The Head of the State was the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Burmese Armed Forces according to the Constitution of Burma, 1943. ဗမာနိုင်ငံတော်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးစည်းမျဉ်းပြုလုပ်သော ဥပဒေ [CONSTITUTION FOR GOVERNMENT OF BURMA] 1943

Supreme Commander-in-Chief of PBF Portrait Name Term of office Notes Took office Left office Time in office Supreme Commander-in-Chief 1 Major GeneralAung San 27 March 1945 29 December 1945 Founder of modern Myanmar Army, leader of Thirty Comrades, father of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Inspector General of the Burma Army Portrait Name Term of office Notes Took office Left office Time in office Inspector General, Burma Army 1 Major-GeneralLechmere Cay Thomas 29 August 1945 1 May 1947 Became the General Officer Commanding, Burma Army, on 1 May 1947.

Existing positions named C-in-C and CS Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Commander-in-Chief (Army) Chief of the General Staff (Army, Navy and Air) Commander-in-Chief (Navy) Commander-in-Chief (Air) 7. Chief of Staff (Army) Chief of Staff (Navy) Chief of Staff (Air)

Notes

References