Military ranks of Myanmar

The Military ranks of Myanmar are the military insignia used by the Myanmar Armed Forces, its auxiliary services, some government departments and some civilian organizations.

All the government employees are called "civil service personnel" (Burmese: နိုင်ငံ့ဝန်ထမ်း, romanized: nuiṅʻ ṅaṃ vanʻthamʻʺ, lit. 'State's employee'). Their ranks and appointments are grouped into two categories:

  1. Officer or gazetted officer ,[1] whose promotion and posting are recorded in the Gazette of Myanmar.[2]
  2. Staff or Other Ranks ranks below the gazetted officers.[1]

Personnels of the Armed Forces and the Police Force are included in the civil service personnels but the rules of civil service personnels are not applied to them because of the special nature of their duties.[3]

The rank insignia of Myanmar Armed Forces is the basic form for all other rank insignia in Myanmar.

  • Some departments/organizations use the same insignia as that of the Armed Forces but with different colour, (example: rank insignia of Myanmar Police Force use silver stars instead of golden ones).[4]
  • Some use the same style as that of the Armed Forces but with organization's symbol in place of military stars (example: rank insignia of Myanmar Red Cross Society use red crosses in place of rank stars).
  • Those departments that don't use the military-like uniform system, use the pin badges with rank insignia (example: rank insignia of General Administration Department).[5]

Myanmar Armed Forces

[edit]

All three branches of Myanmar Armed Forces use the same rank system and insignia. While the titles are the same across all branches in Burmese, English translations are different depending on the branch.

Officers

[edit]

In Myanmar Armed Forces, the officer cadets who have graduated from Defense Services Academies (DSA, DSMA, DSTA, etc.) and Officer Training Schools (OTS) are directly commissioned as gazetted officers with the rank of Second Lieutenant or Sub-lieutenant.[6]

Rank group General / flag officers Senior officers Junior officers
Burmese[7] ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချူပ်ကြီး/ဒုဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ဗိုလ်ချုပ် ဗိုလ်မှူးချုပ် ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး ဒုတိယဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး/ဒုဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး ဗိုလ်မှူး ဗိုလ်ကြီး ဗိုလ် ဒုတိယဗိုလ်/ဒုဗိုလ်
ALA-LC[8] Builʻkhyupʻmhūʺkrīʺ Dutiya builʻkhyupʻmhūʺkrīʺ Builʻkhyupʻkrīʺ Dutiya builʻkhyupʻkrīʺ Builʻkhyupʻ Builʻmhūʺkhyupʻ Builʻmhūʺkrīʺ Dutiya builʻmhūʺkrīʺ Builʻmhūʺ Builʻkrīʺ Builʻ Dutiyabuilʻ
Myanmar Armed Forces[9]
Full dress
Army
casual uniform[7] 		General
Navy
casual uniform[10] 		General
Air Force
casual uniform[11] 		General
Army and air force translation[9] Senior general Vice-senior general General Lieutenant general Major general Brigadier general Colonel Lieutenant colonel Major Captain Lieutenant Second lieutenant
Navy translation[9] Senior admiral Vice-senior admiral Admiral Vice admiral Rear admiral Commodore Captain Commander Lieutenant commander Lieutenant Lieutenant (junior grade) Sub-lieutenant

Student officer ranks

[edit]
Rank group Student officer
Burmese[7] ဗိုလ်လောင်း
ALA-LC[8] bolāung
Myanmar Armed Forces
Translation[9] Officer cadet

Special insignia of general/flag officers

[edit]

In addition the general/flag officers have additional special insignia.

Burmese title ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ဗိုလ်ချုပ် ဗိုလ်မှူးချုပ်
English title Senior general Vice-senior general General/
Admiral 		Lieutenant general/
Vice admiral 		Major general/
Rear admiral 		Brigadier general/
Commodore
Rank medal
worn on
left chest
[12][13][14][15][16][7]
Rank stars
on name plate
of car
[17][18]

Other ranks

[edit]

In Myanmar Armed Forces, Lance corporals and Corporals are commonly referred to as Saya (ဆရာ, lit. 'teacher') by both enlisted staffs and officers. Warrant officers (Class 1 and Class 2) are referred to as Bo Lay (ဗိုလ်လေး, lit. 'little lieutenant'), Sergeant and Staff Sergeant are referred to as Saya Gyi. These unofficial ranks are in used throughout the daily life of all branches of Myanmar Armed Forces.[citation needed] Insignia-wearing OR within the Myanmar Armed Forces are usually seasoned veteran soldiers with wide-ranging experience of the battlefield, thus both officers and enlisted men refer to them as "teacher" out of respect as well as affection.[citation needed]

Rank group Other Ranks (Insignia Wearing) Other Ranks (No Insignia)
Burmese[19][7] အရာခံဗိုလ် ဒုတိယအရာခံဗိုလ်/ဒုအရာခံဗိုလ် တပ်ခွဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး/
အုပ်ခွဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး 		တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး/
တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး (စာရေး) 		တပ်ကြပ် ဒုတိယတပ်ကြပ်/ဒုတပ်ကြပ် တပ်သား တပ်သားသစ်
ALA-LC[8] 'araākhaṃ bauilaʻ dautaiya 'araākhaṃ bauilaʻ tapaʻ khavai tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ/
aupaʻ khavai tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ 		tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ/
tapaʻ karpaʻ karīʺ caā raeʺ 		tapaʻ karpaʻ dautai yatapaʻ karpaʻ tapaʻ saāʺ tapaʻ saāʺ
Myanmar Armed Forces No insignia No insignia
Army translation[20][7] Warrant officer class 1 Warrant officer class 2 Staff Sergeant (aka Company Quartermaster Sergeant) Sergeant/
Sergeant (Clerk) 		Corporal Lance corporal Private Recruit
Navy translation[7] Warrant officer class 1 Warrant officer class 2 Chief petty officer Petty officer/
Petty Officer (clerk) 		Leading seaman Acting leading Able-body Recruit
Air force translation[7] Warrant officer class 1 Warrant officer class 2 Flight sergeant Sergeant/
Sergeant (clerk) 		Corporal Lance corporal Private Recruit

Myanmar Police Force

[edit]

Myanmar Police Force is an independent department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, one of the ministries under administration of Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services. The rank insignia of Myanmar Police Force are the insignia of Myanmar Armed Forces with different colours and with different titles.

Officers

[edit]

In the Myanmar Police Force, a person of the rank of Police second lieutenant and above is called an officer; while an officer of the rank of Police Captain and above is called a gazetted officer.[21]

Rank group General / flag officers Senior officers Junior officers
Burmese ရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ဒုတိယရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး ရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ် ရဲမှူးချုပ် ရဲမှူးကြီး ဒုတိယရဲမှူးကြီး ရဲမှူး ဒုတိယရဲမှူး ရဲအုပ် ဒုတိယရဲအုပ် ဒုတိယရဲအုပ်လောင်း
ALA-LC[8] raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ krīʺ dautaiya raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ krīʺ raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ raaimahūʺ khayupaʻ raaimahūʺ karī dautaiya raaimahūʺ karī raaimahūʺ dautaiya raaimahūʺ raai 'aupaʻ dautaiya raai 'aupaʻ dautaiya raai 'aupaʻ laoṅaʻʺ
Myanmar Police Force
Translation Police general Police lieutenant general Police major general Police brigadier general Police colonel Police lieutenant colonel Police major Police captain Police lieutenant Police second lieutenant Police officer cadet

Other ranks

[edit]
Rank group Insignia-wearing staffs Enlisted staffs
Burmese ရဲအရာခံဗိုလ် ရဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး ရဲတပ်ကြပ် ဒုတိယရဲတပ်ကြပ် ရဲတပ်သား ရဲတပ်သားသစ်
ALA-LC[8] Raai 'araā khaṃ bauilaʻ Raai tapaʻ karpaʻ krīʺ Raai tapaʻ karpaʻ Dautaiya raai tapaʻ karpaʻ Raai tapaʻ saāʺ Raai tapaʻ saāʺ sacaʻ
Myanmar Police Force No insignia No insignia
Translation Police warrant officer Police sergeant Police corporal Police lance corporal Police private Police recruit

Prisons Department

[edit]

Prisons Department is a department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, one of the ministries under administration of Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services. The rank insignia of its officers are the same as that of Myanmar Police Force but with different titles.

Officers

[edit]
Rank group General / flag officers Senior officers Junior officers
Burmese ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ် ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ် ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး လက်ထောက်ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (ပထမတန်း) ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (ဒုတိယတန်း) ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (တတိယတန်း) ထောင်မှူးကြီး/
ဒုတိယကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး 		ထောင်မှူး/
လက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး
ALA-LC[8]
Full insignia
Translation Director general Deputy director general Director Deputy director Assistant director Staff officer (first class) Staff officer (second class) Staff officer (third class) Chief jailor/
Deputy supervisor 		Jailor/
Assistant supervisor

Other ranks

[edit]
Rank group Insignia-wearing staffs Enlisted staffs
Burmese လက်ထောက်ထောင်မှူး(၂)/
လက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး 		လက်ထောက်ထောင်မှူး(၁)/
ဒုတိယလက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး 		အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်ကြပ် အကျဉ်းထောင်ဒုတိယတပ်ကြပ် အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်သား အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်သားသစ်
ALA-LC[8]
No insignia No insignia
Translation Assistant jailor (2)/
Assistant supervisor 		Assistant jailor (1)/
Deputy assistant supervisor 		Prison sergeant Prison corporal Prison lance corporal Prison private Prison recruit

General Administration Department

[edit]

General Administration Department is a department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, one of the ministries under administration of Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services. As its uniform is not the military style, pin badges are used to show ranks.[22]

Officers

[edit]
Rank group
Burmese[23] ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ်/
အမြဲတမ်းအတွင်းဝန် 		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ်/
တိုင်းအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး 		ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး/
ခရိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး 		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး/
ဒုတိယခရိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး 		လက်ထောက်ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး/
မြို့နယ်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး 		ဦးစီးအရာရှိ/
ဒုတိယမြို့နယ်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး 		ဒုတိယဦးစီးမှူး/
စီမံ ၁
ALA-LC[8]
Rank symbol
Pin badge[23]
Translation Director general/
Permanent secretary 		Deputy director general/
Divisional administrator 		Director/
District administrator 		Deputy director/
Deputy district administrator 		Assistant director/
Township administrator 		Staff officer/
Deputy township administrator 		Deputy chief officer/
Manager (1)

Staffs

[edit]
Rank group Staffs
Burmese[23] ရုံးအုပ် ဌာနခွဲစာရေး အကြီးတန်းစာရေး အငယ်တန်းစာရေး ရုံးအကူ/
စာပို့/
ယာဉ်မောင်း
ALA-LC[8]
Rank symbol
Pin badge[23][5]
Translation Superintendent Branch clerk Upper divisional clerk Lower divisional clerk Office factotum/
Mailman/
Driver

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b The Union Civil Service Board Rules (PDF) (rules, 2). Union Civil Service Board of Myanmar. 11 September 2020. p. 1. 81/2020. "(a) Officer means the service personnel at the ranks of the gazetted officer and above; (b) Staff means the service personnel at the ranks below the gazetted officer"
  2. ^ Crouch, Melissa; Tim Lindsey (2014). Law, Society and Transition in Myanmar. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781782254768.
  3. ^ The Rules Amending the Civil Service Personnel Rules (rules, 2). Union Civil Service Board. 9 June 2017. p. 1. ...Although the Defence Service Personnel and members of the Myanmar Police Force are the Civi Service Personnel, these rules shall not apply to them according to the nature of their works and duties.
  4. ^ Myanmar police chief Major General Zaw Win cautions reporters in Naypyidaw to accept only information that the police confirm about the killing of prominent rights attorney Ko Ni, Feb. 1, 2016. / RFA /
  5. ^ a b The badge of a civil servant working at the Eastern Yangon General Administration Department office in Thingangyun Township. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)
  6. ^ news from "cincds.gov.mm" (Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services), for example: [1], [2], [3], [4], etc.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h KoKo LinnMaung (23 July 2019). တပ်မတော် ရာထူးအဆင့်အတန်း အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုအခေါ်အဝေါ်များ [Tatmadaw appointment ranks' nomenclature in English]. Facebook (in Burmese and English).[user-generated source]
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i American Library Association. "Burmese" (PDF). loc.gov. Library of Congress. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  9. ^ a b c d Cooke, Melinda W. (1983). "National Security". In Bunge, Frederica M. (ed.). Burma: a country study. Area Handbook (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress. p. 256. LCCN 83-25871. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  10. ^ Fleet Exercise-2020 conducted with involvement of attack submarine Minye Theinkhathu of Tatmadaw (Navy) to enhance defence prowess of State
  11. ^ Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing receives a model plane from Gen. Maung Maung Kyaw in 2019.
  12. ^ "Message of Greetings from Commander in Chief of Defence Services Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary Diamond Jubilee of Armed Forces Day on 27 March 2020". Myanmar Digital News.
  13. ^ "File image of Myanmar Army's deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win". Flickr.
  14. ^ Aung Shine Oo. "Myanmar New Appointed Home Affair Minister".
  15. ^ Thiha Lwin. "Lt-Gen Min Naung who will continue to participate in the peace process". The Irrawaddy.
  16. ^ Htet Naing Zaw (July 2020). "Lt-Gen Thet Pon (left) and Maj-Gen Nyunt Win Swe (right)". The Irrawaddy.
  17. ^ Soe Zeya Tun (March 27, 2012). "Myanmar's Army Chief General Min Aung Hlaing 2nd-r waves as he leaves a ceremony to mark the 67th anniversary of Armed Forces Day in Myanmar's Capital Naypyitaw". Reuters.
  18. ^ "Parade of the 76th Anniversary Armed Forces Day held;Chairman of the State Administration Council Commanderin-Chief of Defence Services Senior General Maha Thray Sithu Min Aung Hlaing delivers address". seniorgeneralminaunghlaing.com.mm. 28 March 2021.
  19. ^ တပ်မတော်(ကြည်း၊ ရေ၊ လေ)အဆင့်လိုက် လစာနှုန်းထားများ [Salaries according to ranks in Tatmadaw (Army, Navy, Air Force)]. Myanmar Military Recruitment (in Burmese).
  20. ^ မြန်မာ–အင်္ဂလိပ် အဘိဓာန် [Myanmar English Dictionary]. Myanmar Language Commission, Department of Myanmar National Languages, Ministry of Education. 2019.
  21. ^ The Myanmar Police Force Maintenance of Discipline Law (law, 3. (e) and (f)). State Law and Order Restoration Council. 26 April 1995.
  22. ^ A civil servant stands outside the Eastern Yangon General Administration Department office in Thingangyun Township. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)
  23. ^ a b c d ပြည်ထဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၊ အထွေထွေအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးဦးစီးဌာန၏ ဝန်ထမ်းအဆင့်အလိုက်သတ်မှတ်ထားသော ရင်ထိုးတံဆိပ်သင်္ကေတများ / photo- myo kyaw kyaw
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