Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services

Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
ဒုတိယတပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ် (Burmese)
Flag of the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
Incumbent
General Kyaw Swar Lin
since 30 March 2026
Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Army)
Member ofNational Defence and Security Council
Reports toCommander-in-Chief of Defence Services
ResidenceNaypyidaw
AppointerMilitary Appointments General
PrecursorDeputy Inspector General, Burma Army
Formation1947 (as DGOC);
1989 (as DC-in-CDS,C-in-C(Army))
First holderSmith Dun (as DGOC);
Than Shwe (as DC-in-CDS,C-in-C(Army))
Unofficial namesဒုကာချုပ်၊ ဒုချုပ်

The Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services (Burmese: ဒုတိယတပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်) is the second-highest military appointment in the Tatmadaw, the unified armed forces of Myanmar, also known in English as the "Defence Services".[1][2][3] After the unification of Myanmar's Army, Navy, and Air Force in 1955,[4]: 128  the Tatmadaw used the Chief of Staff system, with three branches of the armed forces led by the Vice Chief of Staff (Army), Vice Chief of Staff (Navy), and Vice Chief of Staff (Air).[5] In 1989, this was reorganized into the current system, under which each branch is led by its own Commander-in-Chief.[6][7] Since then, except in the special case of a 26-day period in 2026, the positions of the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services and Commander-in-Chief (Army) have been traditionally combined and only one officer is appointed at a time.[a][8][9]

List of DGOC/ VCS/ DC-in-CDS

(Dates in italics indicate de facto continuation of office)

No. Portrait Name
(born–died)		 Term of office Notes Ref.
Took office Left office Time in office
Deputy General Officer Commanding, Burma Army
* Colonel
Smith Dun		 1 May 1947 4 January 1948 248 days His appointment as DGOC is recorded in the military's official history but he is not acknowledged as the first person in the official list of VCS/DC-in-CDS,C-in-C(Army). Later became the first military chief of independent Burma as GOC [10]
* Brigadier General
Saw Kyar Doe		 14 April 1948 30 July 1949 1 year and 107 days Ethnic Karen Officer, then named "Deputy General Officer Commanding". Saw Kyar Doe moved to the post of Chief of Operation but forced to retire due to civil war with Karen Listed as the first VCS/C-in-CDS,C-in-C(Army) in the official list even though he had retired before 1955 [8]
* Major General
Ne Win		 1 August 1948 1 February 1949 184 days Listed in the official list of VCS/DC-in-CDS,C-in-C(Army) even though his term of office was before 1955. Promoted to GOC in 1949; subsequently became the first Chief of Staff of the unified Tatmadaw, the Defence Services, in 1955 [8]
Vice Chief of Staff, Defence Services (Army) 28 September 1955 10 May 1989 33 years, 224 days The three Vice Chiefs of Staff from Army, Navy and Air branches enjoyed equal status as deputies to the Chief of Staff, Defence Services [4]
Vice Chief of Staff, Defence Services (Navy)
Vice Chief of Staff, Defence Services (Air)
Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
1 General
Than Shwe		 10 May 1989 23 April 1992 2 years, 349 days Previously titled Vice Chief of Staff (Army). Later promoted to the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services [8][6]
2 Vice-Senior General
Maung Aye		 24 April 1992 30 March 2011 18 years, 340 days [8]
3 Vice-Senior General
Soe Win		 30 March 2011 30 March 2026 15 years, 0 days transferred the CinC(Army) position to Ye Win Oo on 4 March 2026; remained as DCinCDS after that [8][11]
4 General
Kyaw Swar Lin		 30 March 2011 Incumbent 15 years, 150 days [8]

Existing positions named C-in-C and CS

  1. Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
  2. Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
  3. Commander-in-Chief (Army)
  4. Chief of the General Staff (Army, Navy and Air)
  5. Commander-in-Chief (Navy)
  6. Commander-in-Chief (Air)
  • 7.
    • Chief of Staff (Army)
    • Chief of Staff (Navy)
    • Chief of Staff (Air)

Notes

  1. ↑ Official documentations show only one list of "Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, Commander-in-Chief (Army)" and notably, the 26-day appointment of separate Commander-in-Chief (Army), in 4 – 30 March 2026, is not included in the list.

References

  1. ↑ The Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008) and its official English translation; Bilingual; source: Constitutional Tribunal of the Union
  2. ↑ ၁၉၅၉ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်အက်ဥပဒေ [The Defence Services Act, 1959] (Bilingual; English and Burmese)
  3. ↑ ၁၉၅၉ ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်အက်ဥပဒေကို ပြင်ဆင်သည့် ဥပဒေ [The Law Amending the Defence Services Act, 1959]; in Burmese and English
  4. 1 2 တပ်မတော်သမိုင်း [Tatmadaw History]. Vol. 4. Office of the Defence Services Registrar and Defence Services Museum. 1996.
  5. ↑ ၁၉၅၉ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်နည်းဥပဒေများ [The Defence Services Rules, 1959] (Bilingual; English and Burmese)
  6. 1 2 ၁၉၅၉ ခုနှစ်၊ တပ်မတော်နည်းဥပဒေများကို ပြင်ဆင်သည့် နည်းဥပဒေများ [The Rules Amending the Defence Services Rules, 1959]; in Burmese and English
  7. ↑ Selth, Andrew (2002): Burma's Armed Forces: Power Without Glory, Eastbridge. ISBN 1-891936-13-1
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 DSMuseum (30 March 2026). "ဒုတိယကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်/ ဒုတိယတပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ် ၊ ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်(ကြည်း) တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့သူများ" [Individuals who have served as the Vice Chief of Staff/ Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, Commander-in-Chief (Army)]. Defence Services Museum (in Burmese). Defence Services (Army, Navy, Air Force) News Techonlogy Department. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
  9. ↑ Maung Aung Myoe (1999). Building the Tatmadaw. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 73. ISBN 9780731527427.
  10. ↑ တပ်မတော်သမိုင်း [Tatmadaw History]. Vol. 3. Office of the Defence Services Registrar and Defence Services Museum. 1995.
  11. ↑ "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီးရဲဝင်းဦး ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်(ကြည်း)ဖြစ်လာ" [General Ye Win Oo has become the Commander-in-Chief (Army)]. BBC (in Burmese). British Broadcasting Corporation. 4 March 2026. Retrieved 22 April 2026.
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