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Almost all U.S. operating forces are assigned to unified combat commands, which plan military operations, direct exercises and combat operations, and have operational control of specifically assigned U.S. forces. The reorganization of the Department of Defense in 1958 established the chain of command of the operating forces from the National Command Authority (the President and the Secretary of Defense) directly to the commanders (then called commanders-in-chief), of the unified and specific commands. At that time, unified commands would have components from two or more military services, while specified commands contained forces from a specific service, an example would be the Air Force’s Strategic Aid Command.

The 1986 Goldwater-Nicholas Act dramatically increased the authority of the unified commanders greatly strengthened the role of the Chairman of the JCS and of the field commanders, essentially reducing the fellow members of the JCS to that of onlookers who simply provided the necessary forces. In the Desert Storm campaign, General Schwarzkopf (Commander-in-Chief, Central Command), was literally king of his domain. During the war, no serious attempts were made by any of the services to go around Schwarzkopf. A service chief could not even visit the Gulf without his permission.

Currently, there are nine unified commands. Five of these are responsible for specific geographic areas, and the remaining four have worldwide functional areas of responsibility. The unified commands are not fixed by law or regulation, and the number of commands and their responsibilities vary by the direction of the President and the Secretary of Defense.

The geographic commands currently consist of Northern Command (NORTHCOM); Joint Forces Command (JFCOM); Pacific Command (PACCOM), and European Command (EUCOM) have major forces assigned to them; Central Command (CENTCOM) and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) consist primarily of planning, command and control elements on a permanent basis, with specific formations reassigned to them from other unified commands during an exercise, a crisis, or in wartime. The most recent example is CENTCOM, which normally has a planning staff of several hundred personnel. When Operational Desert Shield began, CENTCOM assumed command of the buildup with over 500,000 U.S. military personnel with large numbers of ships, aircraft and ground units assigned. CENTCOM, in coordination with the Commander of the Saudi forces, directed Operation Desert Storm. CENTCOM also controlled the buildups, invasions, and follow-up combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002-2004.

“Overall, the unified command structure works well overseas, where CINCs with a geographic area of responsibility effectively direct their assigned forces in accomplishing a wide range of missions… But unification has never been achieved in the United States to the same degree as overseas. While forces based in the United States are assigned by law, to one CINC, many are assigned to overseas CINCs and have limited opportunities to train jointly with the overseas based forces they would join for military operations in crisis or war.” General Colin L. Powell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.