Portuguese Armed Forces

The Portuguese Armed Forces are the military of Portugal, made up of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, other unified bodies and three service branches, the Navy, the Army and the Air Force. The President of the Republic is Supreme Commander, while the government runs defence policy through the Minister of National Defence. The branches themselves are much older than the joint structure: the Navy has been a permanent force since 1317 and the Army a standing army since 1570. Portugal only began to treat them as one unified organisation in 1950, when the posts of Minister of National Defence and Chief of the General Staff were created, and the Air Force became a separate branch in 1952. The forces fought the Overseas War in Africa from 1961 to 1974, ended conscription in 2004, and today serve in national defence and in NATO, United Nations and European Union missions abroad.