The Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services (Burmese: တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်, romanized: Tatmadaw Kakweyay Uzigyoke) is the supreme commander of the Tatmadaw and all armed forces in Myanmar according to the constitution. The Tatmadaw, officially translated as "Defence Services", 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.
Contents
History
The position was created as "General Officer Commanding (GOC) Burma Army" (Burmese: ဗမာ့တပ်မတော်စစ်ဦးစီးချုပ်) 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.
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.
List of GOC/CS/C-in-CDS
(Dates in italics indicate de facto continuation of office)
List of other historical C-in-C and IG
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)