Chief of the Air Staff ( United Kingdom ) The Chief of the Air Staff ( CAS ) is the professional head of the Royal Air Force and a member of both the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Air Force Board . The current Chief of the Air Staff is Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford . He succeeded Air Chief Marshal Stephen Dalton as Chief of the Air Staff on 24 July 2013 . History . The post was established in January 1918 , just prior to the official formation of the RAF , and its first occupant was Major - General Sir Hugh Trenchard . Following Trenchard ' s resignation in March 1918 after disagreements with the first air minister , his rival Major - General Sir Frederick Sykes was appointed . With Churchill ' s post - War appointment as Secretary of State for War and Air , Sykes was moved sideways to head up the nascent Civil Aviation ministry and Trenchard returned as Chief of the Air Staff . In the early 1920s Trenchard had to fight to keep the RAF from being divided and being absorbed back into the Royal Navy and the British Army . After Lord Trenchard retired in 1930 there were still suggestions that the RAF should be broken up , but Trenchard ' s foundations proved solid . By the time World War II broke out in 1939 , the then occupant of the post , Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall , had a service that had been undergoing the most rapid of expansions during the British rearmament programs of the late 1930s . Newall gave way in 1940 to Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal , who led the service for the rest of the war . Portal was a tireless defender of the RAF and extremely able in administration and strategy . Postwar the RAF was reoriented to perform the dual roles of defending the shrinking British Empire and possibly fighting against the Soviet Union in a Warsaw Pact verses NATO war over Germany and the United Kingdom . The Chiefs of the Air Staff of the day had to fight a constant battle to keep the British aircraft industry alive . In the end only minimal success was achieved , with only a rump aviation industrial base left by the 1970s . The first eight chiefs of the air staff were originally commissioned in the Army , with four coming from the infantry , two from the artillery and one each from the cavalry and the engineers . Of these both Lord Trenchard and Sir John Salmond each held the post over two separate periods . By the early mid - 1950s sufficient time had elapsed for officers originally commissioned in the British air services of World War I to have risen through the ranks to RAF ' s senior post ; Sir John Slessor had originally served in the Royal Flying Corps while Sir William Dickson was commissioned into the Royal Naval Air Service . In 1956 Sir Dermot Boyle became the first chief to have originally been commissioned in the RAF . Supporting staff and honours . The Chief of the Air Staff ' s deputy is the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff . From 1918 to around 1968 , the Chief of the Air Staff ' s deputy was the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff . They also appoint the Chief of the Air Staff ' s Warrant Officer who is the most senior Other Ranks member of the RAF . The Chief of the Air Staff is normally appointed an Air Aide - de - Camp to the British sovereign . Chiefs of the Air Staff . The following list gives details of the chiefs of the air staff from 1918 to the present :