List of directors of Joint Staff directorates

The Joint Staff was established in 1947 to provide the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a small staff drawn equally from each of the armed services and supervised by the director of the Joint Staff. Initially the Joint Staff was organized as interservice committees held over from World War II, but in 1958 it was expanded and reorganized to form the numbered directorates of a conventional military staff: J-1 (personnel), J-2 (intelligence), J-3 (operations), J-4 (logistics), J-5 (plans and policy), J-6 (communications and electronics). Two more directorates were added in 1987: J-7 (operational plans and interoperability) and J-8 (force structure, resource, and assessment).^[2]

• The J-1 directorate was abolished in 1976 but reestablished in 1982.^[3]
• The J-2 directorate was abolished in 1963 and its functions were turned over to the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was reconstituted as a full Joint Staff directorate in 1991 and upgraded to three stars in 2021.^[4]
• The J-3, J-4, and J-5 directorates were upgraded to three stars in 1964.^[5]

• The J-6 directorate was abolished in 1976 but reestablished in 1979 as the C3S (command, control, and communications systems) directorate, a three-star billet that was redesignated J-6 in 1987. The directorate was abolished again in 2011 and supervised by the J-8 director during the wind-down, but was revived a few months later.^[6]
• The J-7 directorate was downgraded to one star in 2002 after much of its work was absorbed by Joint Forces Command (JFCOM). When JFCOM was disestablished in 2011, most of its functions returned to the J-7 directorate, which was upgraded to three stars.^[7]
• The J-8 directorate was upgraded to three stars in 1996.^[8]