[6] The President of the Republic is the head of the Portuguese military, with the title of "Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces" (Comandante Supremo das Forças Armadas).

The Armed Forces are charged with protecting Portugal as well as supporting international peacekeeping efforts when mandated by North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations or the European Union.

Recent external operations include anti-piracy action in the Gulf of Aden, the conflicts in the Central African Republic and in Afghanistan, the peacekeeping missions in East-Timor, Lebanon, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the air policing of Iceland and the Baltic States.

However, the service branches lobbies for the maintenance of their autonomy – represented by their separate government departments – politically opposed and were able to block this reorganization for the next couple of decades.

[31] To the CEMGFA were given almost all the responsibilities until then assigned to the majors-generals of the Navy and of the Army (service branches military commanders), whose roles were at the same time extinct.

As part of this integration, the role of commander-in-chief was established in each of the Overseas territories, as a permanent unified commander of the local forces of the three branches.

Unlike the other services which had their own separate ministries, the Air Force was under the fully dependency of the Minister of National Defense via the Under-Secretariat of State of the Aeronautics.

[34] Several armed independence movements, most prominently led by communist parties who cooperated under the CONCP umbrella and pro US groups became active in these areas (especially in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea).

[35] The Portuguese Armed Forces were able to maintain a large military campaign for 13 years, in these three different theaters of operations, thousands of kilometers apart from each other and from the European mainland.

Thus the three branches of the military were able to achieve a high level of operational integration, allowing for an effective cooperation between them, the optimization of their scarce assets and the ability to fight as a single cohesive force.

The logistics side however was not able to reach such high levels of integration, mainly because each service branch continued to be administered by its own government department with its own supply chain and different standards.

With the war's evolution, these assumed almost all of the mobile and offensive operations, with the more conventional forces remaining responsible mainly for the defensive assignments.

[39] The Portuguese military also counted with a number of paramilitary forces, including the Special Groups (Grupos Especiais) and the Arrows (Flechas).

[40] On the morning of 25 April 1974, the Armed Forces Movement (MFA, Movimento das Forças Armadas) – consisting mostly of junior officers of the three service branches – launched a coup d'état, known as the Carnation Revolution, which would bring an end to the New State regime and shortly the Overseas War.

The forces connected to the extreme left-wing launched a further coup d'état on 25 November but the Group of Nine, a moderate military faction, immediately initiated a counter-coup.

The Group of Nine emerged victorious, thus preventing the establishment of a communist state in Portugal and ending the period of political instability in the country.

It was the Revolution Council – created in 1975, consisting only of military officers and chaired by the President of the Republic – that had the full control over the Armed Forces, which meant these were completely independent from the civilian administration.

Recent Defense policy confirmed the assumption that most considerable operations would be undertaken under international organizations mandates, with Portugal not entering alone in a major military engagement since the 1961–1974 overseas conflict.

This operations was mainly aimed at the rescuing of thousands of Portuguese and other foreign nationals caught in the middle of the civil conflict that erupted in Guinea-Bissau and included the deployment of naval and air forces, the landing and occupation of the Port of Bissau by Portuguese Marines, amphibious and helicopter landings in several places of the Guinean coast for the rescuing of civilians, medical and humanitarian aid to the civil population and the support to the peace talks between the two antagonizing parties.

A Military Program Law (Lei de Programação Militar) was launched in 2002 to start the complete modernization of the Armed Forces.

Considerable re-equipment of the military started in 2003, led by Defense Minister Paulo Portas, who managed to launch a series of re-equipment programs, including those of new submarines (Tridente-class), frigates (Bartolomeu Dias-class) and off shore patrol ships (Project NPO 2000 / Viana do Castelo class) for the Navy, of armored vehicles (Pandur) for the Army and of heavy helicopters (EH-101) for the Air Force.

The bodies of advisement are intended to support the decision of the chiefs of staff in special and important matters regarding the preparedness, discipline and administration of the branch.

The main branches were the arms of cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineering and communications and the services of health, military administration, materiel and transportation.

The Portuguese Air Force was established as an independent branch of service in 1952, when the Military Aeronautics arm was completely separated from the Army, at the same time starting to control the Naval Aviation that was part of the Navy.

It is responsible for the preventive policing of most of the rural areas of the country, the patrolling of the major highways, the customs enforcement and the coastal control.

It also performs some special missions like the providing of ceremonial military State honor guards, the security of the Presidential, Parliament and Foreign Ministry palaces, the environment and nature protection and the rescue and forest firefighting.

Admission to this career requires the graduation in one of the higher education service academies for officers or in one of the military technical schools for non-officers.

Special RC regimes with the duration of up to 20 years are foreseen to be created for roles whose training and technical demands make desirable long periods of service.

Accordingly, with their level of responsibility and authority, Portuguese military personnel are divided in three categories: officers (oficiais), sergeants (sargentos) and other ranks (praças).

For the sergeants, the arms are infantry (INF), artillery (ART), cavalry (CAV), engineering (ENG), communications (TM) and parachutists (PARAQ) and the services are military administration (AM), materiel (MAT), medicine (MED), pharmacy (FARM), veterinary (VET), music (MUS), clarions (CLAR), personnel and secretariat (PESSECR), transportations (TRANS), Army general service (SGE) and amanuensis (AMAN).