Joint Staff (U.S.)

((subpages}} Created by the National Security Act of 1947, the Joint Staff is a United States Department of Defense staff organization reporting to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under a three-star Director.

It was originally limited to 210 officers, and, although the subsequent Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 raised it to 400 officers, there remained a problem for the functions, such as intelligence, where it produced information rather than coordinated it. The Defense Intelligence Agency, under various organization plans, provided the intelligence staff function to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but usually had a special bureaucratic structure to avoid the limit on staff.