The Chief of Defence of Denmark, acting under the statutory responsibility of the Minister of Defence, is the chief of defence and commander of the Royal Danish Army, the Royal Danish Navy and the Royal Danish Air Force. The Chief of Defence is the principal military adviser to the Minister of Defence and the head of the Defence Command. The Chief of Defence is the highest-ranking military officer on active duty in the Danish Armed Forces and has the rank of four-star General (or Admiral if from the Navy) (OF-9), and supervises roughly 93% of all military spending in Denmark. The Danish Home Guard and Defence intelligence is directly under the Ministry of Defence, only in times of war will the Home Guard Command be transferred to the Defence Command, and thus come under the authority of the Chief of Defence. The job was traditionally rotated evenly between the army, navy and air force. This tradition was abandoned in 2012. There is no fixed length of time associated with the position, the contract however currently has to be renewed every 5 years.

List of officeholders

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" ! rowspan=2| No. ! rowspan=2| Portrait ! rowspan=2| Name (born–died) ! colspan=3| Term of office ! rowspan=2| Defence branch ! rowspan=2| Ref. ! Took office ! Left office ! Time in office Erhard J.C. Qvistgaard (1898–1980) Kurt Ramberg (1908–1997) Otto Blixenkrone-Møller (1912–2006) Knud Jørgensen (1919–1990) Otto K. Lind (1920–2000) Sven Eigil Thiede (1924–2005) Jørgen Lyng (born 1934) Hans Jørgen Garde (1939–1996) Christian Hvidt (born 1942) Hans Jesper Helsø (born 1948) Tim Sloth Jørgensen (born 1951) Bjørn Bisserup (born 1960) acting Knud Bartels (born 1952) Bjørn Bisserup (born 1960) acting Peter Bartram (born 1961) Bjørn Bisserup (born 1960) Flemming Lentfer (born 1964) Michael Hyldgaard (born 1964) acting

Timeline