The military power of the United States shall be exercised only as provided by this Constitution and by laws made in pursuance thereof. The armed forces of the United States shall exist to defend the Nation, protect the constitutional order, repel invasion, fulfill lawful national defense obligations, and perform such other duties as this Constitution expressly permits.
The military shall at all times remain subordinate to the civil authority established by this Constitution. No member of the armed forces, no military department, and no military commander shall govern the United States, any State, or any civil population except where temporary and narrowly necessary authority is lawfully invoked under this Constitution and remains subject to civilian control, judicial review, and prompt termination.
The President shall serve as Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States only within the limits and conditions established by this Constitution. Command shall not include authority to initiate war, continue unauthorized hostilities, suspend constitutional rights, disregard lawful appropriations, evade legislative control, or use the military for personal, partisan, or unlawful ends.
The Legislature shall have power to raise, organize, support, maintain, regulate, and discipline the armed forces of the United States; to provide and maintain land, naval, air, space, cyber, intelligence-supporting, logistical, reserve, and other defense forces as law may establish; to make rules for their governance; to provide for the calling forth and regulation of reserve components and militias where lawfully recognized; and to provide for the common defense of the Nation.
No military force shall be raised, maintained, equipped, deployed, supplied, or continued except through appropriations made by law. No military fund, account, transfer, contract, inventory, procurement, disbursement, or obligation shall be concealed from the lawful accounting, audit, and certification processes established by this Constitution. Military secrecy shall not excuse fraud, waste, unlawful expenditure, or concealment from the constitutional organs authorized to review such matters under secure procedures.
No declaration of war shall be valid unless enacted by law. No sustained or substantial use of armed force abroad shall occur except pursuant to a declaration of war or a specific authorization enacted by law, except as narrowly necessary to repel sudden attack, rescue United States persons from imminent danger where no time exists for prior authorization, or respond immediately to an actual or imminent armed assault upon the United States, its territories, its armed forces, or its lawfully protected installations.
Any use of armed force initiated without prior legislative authorization shall cease within the time prescribed elsewhere in this Constitution, and in no event may such use continue beyond fourteen days unless expressly authorized by law. No claim of inherent power, national interest, protective action, international commitment, or executive necessity shall enlarge that period.
No military action shall be continued, expanded, renamed, fragmented, funded through alternate channels, or otherwise structured for the purpose of evading the requirements of legislative authorization. No covert action, intelligence support, advisory mission, private contract force, cyber operation, proxy support, or other related undertaking shall be used to accomplish what this Constitution forbids as undeclared war.
The armed forces of the United States shall not be used for general domestic civil law enforcement. Domestic use of the armed forces may occur only in narrowly defined circumstances of invasion, insurrection, unlawful seizure of constitutional government, catastrophic breakdown of lawful order beyond the capacity of ordinary civil authority, or other emergency expressly recognized by this Constitution and by law. Any such use shall be temporary, strictly limited by necessity, recorded in writing, and subject to immediate judicial review and legislative oversight.
No military person, military department, intelligence component operating with military authority, or armed force of the United States shall interfere with, direct, alter, suspend, delay, intimidate, or control any civil election, legislative proceeding, judicial proceeding, ratification process, or peaceful transfer of civil power, except as narrowly necessary to protect such process against violent attack or unlawful seizure and only under lawful civilian direction.
All members of the armed forces shall swear or affirm to support and defend this Constitution and to obey lawful orders issued under it. No oath shall be required to any person, party, faction, ideology, officeholder, or cause inconsistent with the supremacy of this Constitution.
No member of the armed forces shall be required to obey an order that is manifestly unlawful under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, or the law of armed conflict as recognized by law. Congress shall provide by law for training, reporting procedures, review mechanisms, and protections sufficient to ensure that unlawful orders may be questioned, refused, and reviewed without retaliation, subject to discipline for bad-faith abuse of such protections.
Members of the armed forces do not cease to be persons possessed of rights by reason of service. The military may impose only those restrictions on liberty, speech, privacy, association, movement, and conduct that are narrowly tailored to military readiness, discipline, security, command integrity, operational necessity, or lawful mission performance. No service member shall be deprived of pay, liberty, status, property, health care, family notice, or legal process except in accordance with law and due process.
Service in the armed forces shall be governed by standards of merit, discipline, readiness, fitness, constitutional loyalty, and lawful qualification. No person shall be denied entry, advancement, protection, pay, benefits, or fair treatment in military service on grounds prohibited elsewhere by this Constitution or by laws consistent with it. The armed forces shall remain nonpartisan institutions and shall not be used to advance party, candidate, or faction.
Congress shall by law establish a uniform system of military justice consistent with this Constitution. Military justice shall preserve discipline, readiness, and lawful command while securing fair notice, impartial tribunals, due process, access to counsel, review procedures, and protection against cruel, degrading, arbitrary, or retaliatory punishment. Jurisdiction of military tribunals over civilians shall not be permitted except where civilian courts are genuinely unavailable in circumstances of invasion or actual war and only to the narrow extent provided by law and this Constitution.
No person held by or under the authority of the armed forces of the United States shall be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, collective punishment, disappearance, medical abuse, or punishment without lawful process. Congress shall provide by law for detention standards, registration, access, oversight, and accountability consistent with this Constitution and with the law of armed conflict.
All military procurement, contracting, logistics, and supply systems shall be governed by law, public accountability, secure but reviewable audit standards, and strict prohibitions on fraud, profiteering, corruption, concealed obligations, and unlawful enrichment. No emergency, classification, or combat necessity shall authorize theft, falsification of records, diversion of appropriated funds, or concealment from lawful constitutional oversight.
The United States owes a duty of faithful care to those who serve in its armed forces and to those injured, disabled, or made vulnerable by such service, and to the families of those killed or gravely harmed in such service. Congress shall by law provide for pay, equipment, health care, rehabilitation, burial, transition support, survivor protections, and veterans’ benefits sufficient to honor that duty. No person lawfully entitled to such care shall be denied it by administrative neglect, concealment, or unlawful delay.
Congress may by law provide for reserve forces and for the organization, discipline, and call of militia forces lawfully recognized under this Constitution. The States may maintain State defense institutions and militias as permitted by this Constitution and by law, provided that no such force shall operate contrary to the constitutional order of the United States. When called into national service, such forces shall be governed according to the laws of the United States.
Military information may be classified only where necessary to protect legitimate national defense interests as defined by law. Classification shall not be used to conceal illegality, corruption, waste, failed policy, unconstitutional conduct, or false statements to the People, the Legislature, the courts, or the Censorial Branch. Public reports concerning significant military actions, casualties, expenditures, treaty commitments, domestic deployments, detentions, and emergency operations shall issue regularly, with only such redactions as are lawfully and narrowly required.
The armed forces and all military departments, commands, and instrumentalities shall preserve records sufficient to provide a faithful account of orders, deployments, expenditures, procurements, detentions, casualties, intelligence-supported military actions, disciplinary actions, and other official acts. Congress shall by law provide archival duties, retention schedules, audit access, reporting standards, and penalties for concealment, destruction, alteration, or falsification of military records.
No private army, private navy, private air force, private military corporation, mercenary force, or armed organization shall exercise war-making, occupation, detention, policing, or battlefield functions on behalf of the United States except to the narrow extent that law may authorize contractors for support services under direct public control and without transfer of core sovereign military powers. The use of private actors shall not be employed to evade constitutional limits, public accountability, or the law of armed conflict.
Military bases, commands, arsenals, shipyards, installations, research facilities, and strategic systems may be established and maintained only by law. No permanent military presence within a State shall diminish that State’s civil government except as this Constitution expressly permits. Congress shall by law regulate environmental responsibility, land use, compensation where required, and the relationship between military installations and surrounding civil communities.
Congress shall by law regulate the development, production, possession, deployment, and use of the weapons, systems, and methods of war maintained by the United States, including emerging technologies capable of mass destruction, automated force, cyber disruption, biological hazard, or catastrophic civilian harm. No weapon or method of warfare shall be employed in a manner prohibited by this Constitution or by the law of armed conflict as recognized by law.
No treaty, alliance, security guarantee, basing arrangement, or international commitment shall supersede this Constitution. No international arrangement shall authorize the Executive to place the United States in a condition of war, occupation, or continuing hostilities without the legislative approval required by this Constitution. Congress may by law require periodic reauthorization, disclosure, and review of foreign military commitments.
No civil or military officer shall knowingly present false military grounds, false casualty figures, false intelligence, false readiness claims, false legal justifications, or false accounting to obtain war powers, appropriations, secrecy, or public support. Congress shall by law provide penalties, removal consequences, and civil or criminal remedies for such deception.
Any person who, under color of military authority, commits treason, corruption, torture, unlawful killing, unlawful detention, fraud, theft of military funds, concealment of records, use of the armed forces for private or partisan ends, or other grave violation of this Constitution shall remain subject to impeachment where applicable, removal, court-martial where appropriate, criminal prosecution, civil liability where otherwise authorized by law, and such further consequence as law may provide.
The armed forces shall obey the lawful civil command of the President exercised within the bounds of Article II and of this Article. No officer may rely upon presidential command as authority for unconstitutional action. Military obedience is owed to lawful command alone.
The military shall remain subject to legislation concerning appropriations, organization, discipline, reporting, war powers, transparency, veterans’ obligations, reserve components, procurement, justice, and oversight, as provided by this Constitution. No military custom, directive, doctrine, secret policy, or executive order shall prevail over a law enacted pursuant to this Constitution.
The military shall remain subject to judicial review in all cases and controversies properly arising under this Constitution and the laws of the United States. No claim of military necessity shall place any person, detention, punishment, seizure, domestic deployment, or executive use of force wholly beyond review by the courts.
All military finances, appropriations, accounts, contracts, assets, inventories, transfers, audits, certifications, and disbursements shall remain subject to the lawful accounting, audit, reporting, and enforcement powers of the Censorial Branch, including secure procedures for classified matters. No military department or officer shall obstruct, falsify, or refuse constitutional audit and certification processes.
Martial law shall not exist except where actual invasion, active war within the territory, or complete collapse of civil authority renders ordinary civilian courts and institutions incapable of functioning in the affected place. Any martial law shall be geographically limited, temporary, publicly proclaimed, reviewable by the courts, terminable by the Legislature, and incapable of suspending rights beyond the narrow necessity of the emergency.
Except as expressly permitted by this Constitution in a genuine emergency, no territory, State, district, city, or civil institution of the United States shall be governed by military rule. The ordinary government of the People shall remain civil.
The service of those who lawfully defend the United States shall be honored, but the armed forces shall not become a caste apart from the People. Military office is a public trust, not a source of independent political authority, private enrichment, or exemption from law.
The Legislature shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying this Article into execution, provided that no such law shall enlarge military power beyond the bounds fixed by this Constitution, diminish the rights of the people, weaken civilian supremacy, or evade the limits established by this Article.