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Military Ranks
US Military Rank Insignia from all Branches

Learn about and get help to identify Military Ranks and Pay Grades
from the different US Armed Forces Branches

US Military Ranks and Military Rank Insignia
US Air Force Rank Insignia	US Army Rank Insignia
US Marines Rank Insignia	US Navy Rank Insignia
US Coast Guard Rank Insignia and USCG Medals

US Military Ranks and Military Rank Insignia

Military Ranks are more than just who salutes whom. Military rank is a badge of leadership. Responsibility for personnel, equipment, and mission grows with each increase in rank. Do not confuse rank with pay grades, such as E-1, W-2 and O-5. Pay grades are administrative classifications used primarily to standardize compensation across the military services. The "E" in E-1 stands for "enlisted" while the "1" indicates the pay grade for that position. The other pay categories are "W" for warrant officers and "O" for commissioned officers. Some enlisted pay grades have two ranks. The Army, for example, has the ranks of corporal and specialist at the pay grade of E-4. A corporal is expected to fill a leadership role and has a higher rank than a specialist even though both receive the same amount of pay. In the Marine Corps, master gunnery sergeants and sergeant majors are E-9s, but the sergeant major has the higher rank. Source: Defenselink.com Interesting military ranks tidbits: Ensigns started with the Army but ended with the Navy. The rank of Army ensign was long gone by the time the rank of Navy ensign was established in 1862. Ensigns received gold bars in 1922, some five years after equivalent Army second lieutenants received theirs. "Lieutenant" comes from the French "lieu" meaning "place" and "tenant" meaning "holding." Literally, lieutenants are place holders. While majors outrank lieutenants, lieutenant generals outrank major generals. This comes from British tradition: Generals were appointed for campaigns and often called "captain generals." Their assistants were, naturally, "lieutenant generals." At the same time, the chief administrative officer was the "sergeant major general." Somewhere along the way, "sergeant" was dropped. Gold is worth more than silver, but silver outranks gold. This is because the Army decreed in 1832 that infantry colonels would wear gold eagles on an epaulette of silver and all other colonels would wear silver eagles on gold. When majors and lieutenant colonels received the leaves, this tradition could not continue. So silver leaves represented lieutenant colonels and gold, majors. The case of lieutenants is different: First lieutenants had been wearing silver bars for 80 years before second lieutenants had any bars at all. Colonel is pronounced "kernal" because the British adopted the French spelling "colonel" but Spanish pronunciation "coronel" and then corrupted the pronunciation. While military rank insignia are important, sometimes it isn't smart to wear them. When the rifled musket made its appearance in the Civil War, sharpshooters looked for officers. Officers soon learned to take off their rank insignia as they approached the battle line. Find a historic overview of Military Ranks and Military Rank Insignia here: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov1999/n11221999_9911224.html

Rank Insignias from US Air Force, US Army,
US Coast Guard, US Marines and US Navy


US Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard