The National Command Authority () is the apex Government-led command to oversee the employment, policy formulation, exercises, deployment, research and development, and operational command and control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenals. The National Command Authority was established in 2000 as a successor to Air Force Strategic Command which was established by the then-Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Anwar Shamim in 1983. The National Command Authority is charged with joint-space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare), missile defense, internal and external command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), and strategic deterrence, and combating weapons of mass destruction. The National Command Authority oversees the operations of the Pakistani Army, Air Force, and Navy's Strategic Commands, along with their functional basis. The unified military strategic command structure is intended to give the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Pakistan a unified resource for greater understanding of specific threats (military, nuclear, chemical, biological, radiological, conventional, and non-conventional, and intelligence) and the means to respond to those threats as quickly as possible to prevent the collateral damage. The civilian Prime Minister is the Chairman of this Command, with all military assets, components of NCA, and strategic commands directly reporting to Chairman of their course of development and deployment. Chairman Joint Chiefs of staff committee , Service Chiefs , and DG ISI are members of NCA , and DG SPD is the ex officio secretary of NCA , with SPD functioning as the NCA’s secretariat Organizational structure The NCA consists of the following nine ex officio members: The Director-General of the NCA's Strategic Plans Division (SPD) is the ex officio Secretary of the NCA and the SPD functions as the NCA's secretariat. The current Secretary of NCA is Lt. General Yusuf Jamal. Decision making in the NCA takes place through consensus and, in the event that consensus is not achieved, then through voting, with each member having a single vote. Background The Government of Pakistan felt the need to establish an administrative authority after Pakistan's first publicly announced atomic tests, Chagai-I and Chagai-II, in late May 1998 at the Ras Koh weapon-testing labs in the Chagai Hills range of Chagai District, and the Kharan Desert of Balochistan Province. The roots of such mechanism traced back to the 1970s when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto authorized the atomic bomb project to keep the projects safe from being exploited, politicized, or infiltrated