General Luís Vasco Valença Pinto,
Portuguese Chief of Defence
General Luís Vasco Valença Pinto (PO Army) was born in Lisbon in February 1946. He was promoted to his
current rank on the 6th August 2003, when he assumed office as Chief of Staff of the Army, a post he held
until
5
December
2006,
when
he
took
up
the
position
of
Chief
of
Defence.
He joined the Army as a Cadet in 1963 at the Military Academy and was commissioned into the Engineer
Branch. General Valença Pinto’s military education includes, amongst other courses, the Army Command
and General Staff Course and the Army War College. He is an “ancient” from the NATO Defence College,
Rome (course 72). He also holds a Civil Engineering degree from the Technical University of Lisbon.
Since his commissioning, General Valença Pinto has served in a variety of command and staff assignments
to include two combat tours, in the former Portuguese colony of Angola, as an Engineer Platoon Leader
(1971-72) and as an Engineer Company Commander (1973-75).
General Valença Pinto was Personal Advisor to the Chief of the Army Staff on four different occasions. He
served in various capacities at the Engineer School, including Company Commander, Chief Instructor,
Training and Education Director, Deputy Commanding Officer and Commanding Officer. He was also a
Staff Officer at the Operations Branch of the Army Staff and, on different turns, a Faculty Member at the
Institute of High Military Studies, where as a teacher he held responsibilities in the areas of Strategy,
Geopolitics, Engineer Operations, NBC Defence and Psychological Operations.
Between 1978 and 1984 he was the Portuguese representative at the main working groups and panels
dealing with NBC Defence matters in the structures of the NATO Conference of National Armaments
Directors,
the
NATO
Military
Agency
of
Standardization
and
the
EURONATO
Training.
He served as Military Counsellor of the Portuguese Delegation to NATO (1990-93, Brussels, Belgium),
where, acting also in the framework of the WEU and the former IEPG, Eurogroup and European Political
Cooperation, he had responsibilities in the fields of Defence Planning, Armaments Cooperation and
Cooperation on Defence Matters with Central and Eastern European countries.
On promotion to Major General in 1997 he became the Portuguese National Military Representative at
SHAPE (Mons, Belgium) and in 2000 Director of the National Defence Institute. On April 2001 he was
promoted to Lieutenant General and took over functions as the
Army Logistics Commander.
General Valença Pinto has been awarded several decorations, amongst them the Grand Cross of the
Military Order of Avis, eight Distinguished Service Medals (six Gold and two Silver) and the Military Merit
Medal in three different classes.
He has published many articles and papers on Security and Defence issues in military and academic
magazines, and he is a regular lecturer at defence and military institutes and at civilian universities, both
in Portugal and abroad.
General Valença Pinto is married to Maria de Lourdes and they have two sons (1971, 1973), one daughter
(1976) and three grandsons.