Military ranks of Myanmar

In Myanmar, military rank system and insignia are 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" (နိုင်ငံ့ဝန်ထမ်း, lit. 'State's employee'. Their ranks and appointments are grouped into two category:

1. Officer (အရာထမ်း) or gazetted officer (ပြန်တမ်းဝင်အရာရှိ), ^[1] whose promotion and posting are recorded in the Gazette of Myanmar (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံပြန်တမ်း) ^[2]
2. Staff (အမှုထမ်း), 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

All three branches of Myanmar Armed Forces — Myanmar Army, Myanmar Navy and Myanmar Air Force — use the same rank system and insignia, the same rank titles in Burmese. But the English translations of titles are different according to the branch. For example, the three-star general rank in Burmese is "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်" (bo jhoke') for all three branches, but for the English translation, it is "Major General" for Army and Air Force, while it is "Vice Admiral" for the Navy.

Officers

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]

The Armed Forces has a unique general officer rank: Vice-senior general (Burmese : ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး, romanized: Du ti ya' Bo Jhoke' Mūchē), a rank between the five-star rank of Senior general and the four-star rank of General/Admiral. It is also a four-star rank but it is higher than the ordinary General or Admiral.

Rank group	General / flag officers										Senior officers						Junior officers								Officer cadet
Burmese [7]	ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး		ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး	ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး	ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး		ဗိုလ်ချုပ်		ဗိုလ်မှူးချုပ်		ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး		ဒုတိယဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး		ဗိုလ်မှူး		ဗိုလ်ကြီး		ဗိုလ်			ဒုတိယဗိုလ်			ဗိုလ်လောင်း
ALA-LC [8]	Builʻkhyupʻmhūʺkrīʺ		Dutiya builʻkhyupʻmhūʺkrīʺ	Builʻkhyupʻkrīʺ	Dutiya builʻkhyupʻkrīʺ		Builʻkhyupʻ		Builʻmhūʺkhyupʻ		Builʻmhūʺkrīʺ		Dutiya builʻmhūʺkrīʺ		Builʻmhūʺ		Builʻkrīʺ		Builʻ			Dutiyabuilʻ			Builʻloṅʻʺ
Literal translation	Commander control leader great		Vice commander control leader great	Commander control great	Vice commander control great		Commander control		Commander leader control		Commander leader great		Vice commander leader great		Commander leader		Commander great		Commander			Vice commander			Commander-elect
Myanmar Armed Forces
Army and Air force translation [9] [10] [7]	Senior general		Vice-senior general	General	Lieutenant general		Major general		Brigadier general		Colonel		Lieutenant colonel		Major		Captain		Lieutenant			Second lieutenant			Officer cadet
Navy translation [10]	Senior admiral		Vice-senior admiral	Admiral	Vice admiral		Rear admiral		Commodore		Captain		Commander		Lieutenant commander		Lieutenant		Lieutenant (junior grade)			Sub-lieutenant			Officer cadet
Full insignia on green strap [7]
Insignia on casual uniform of Army
Insignia on casual uniform of Navy [11]
Insignia on casual uniform of Air Force [12]

Special insignia of general/flag officers

In addition to the regular rank insignia, the general/flag officers have additional ones, that are only for them.

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
Full insignia on golden strap [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
Rank medal worn on left chest [13] [14] [15] [17] [16] [7]
Rank stars on name plate of car [18] [19]

Staffs

In Myanmar Armed Forces, insignia-wearing staffs are commonly referred to as Saya (ဆရာ, lit. 'teacher') by both enlisted staffs and officers. For example, Warrant officers and Staff sergeants are referred to as Bo Lay (ဗိုလ်လေး, lit. 'little lieutenant'), Sergeant are referred to as Saya and Corporal/Lance Corporal as Saya Lay (ဆရာလေး, lit. 'little teacher'). These unofficial ranks are in used throughout the daily life of all branches of Myanmar Armed Forces.^{[ citation needed ]} Insignia-wearing staffs 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	Insignia-wearing staffs																																		Enlisted staffs
Burmese [20] [7]	အရာခံဗိုလ်						ဒုတိယအရာခံဗိုလ်		တပ်ခွဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး / အုပ်ခွဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး		တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး / တပ်ကြပ်ကြီးစာရေး												တပ်ကြပ်				ဒုတိယတပ်ကြပ်								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 sacaʻ
Myanmar Armed Forces																																			No insignia		No insignia
Army translation [9] [7]	Warrant officer I						Warrant officer II		Company quarter master 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						Warrant officer (II)		Flight sergeant		Sergeant / Sergeant clerk												Corporal				Lance corporal		Private								Recruit

Myanmar Police Force

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

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

Rank group	General / flag officers										Senior officers						Junior officers								Officer cadet
Burmese ALA-LC [8]	ရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ krīʺ		ဒုတိယရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး dautaiya raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ krīʺ		ရဲဗိုလ်ချုပ် raaibauilaʻ khayupaʻ		ရဲမှူးချုပ် raaimahūʺ khayupaʻ		ရဲမှူးကြီး raaimahūʺ karī		ဒုတိယရဲမှူးကြီး dautaiya raaimahūʺ karī		ရဲမှူး raaimahūʺ		ဒုတိယရဲမှူး dautaiya raaimahūʺ		ရဲအုပ် raai 'aupaʻ			ဒုတိယရဲအုပ် dautaiya raai 'aupaʻ			ဒုတိယရဲအုပ်လောင်း 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
Full insignia
Regular insignia [4]

Staffs

Rank group	Insignia-wearing staffs																										Enlisted staffs
Burmese ALA-LC [8]							ရဲအရာခံဗိုလ် Raai 'araā khaṃ bauilaʻ		ရဲတပ်ကြပ်ကြီး Raai tapaʻ karpaʻ krīʺ												ရဲတပ်ကြပ် Raai tapaʻ karpaʻ				ဒုတိယရဲတပ်ကြပ် Dautaiya raai tapaʻ karpaʻ		ရဲတပ်သား Raai tapaʻ saāʺ								ရဲတပ်သားသစ် 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

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

Rank group	General / flag officers										Senior officers						Junior officers								Officer cadet
Burmese	ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ်		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ်		ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး		လက်ထောက်ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး		ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (ပထမတန်း)		ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (ဒုတိယတန်း)		ဦးစီးအရာရှိ (တတိယတန်း)		ထောင်မှူးကြီး / ဒုတိယကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး			ထောင်မှူး / လက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး			–
																						–
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			–
Full insignia																								–

Staffs

Rank group	Insignia-wearing staffs																																		Enlisted staffs
Burmese	လက်ထောက်ထောင်မှူး(၂) / လက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး						လက်ထောက်ထောင်မှူး(၁) / ဒုတိယလက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး		အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်ကြပ်ကြီး												အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်ကြပ်				အကျဉ်းထောင်ဒုတိယတပ်ကြပ်		အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်သား								အကျဉ်းထောင်တပ်သားသစ်
																											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

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

Burmese [23]	ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ် / အမြဲတမ်းအတွင်းဝန်		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ် / တိုင်းအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး		ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး / ခရိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး		ဒုတိယညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး / ဒုတိယခရိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး		လက်ထောက်ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူး / မြို့နယ်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး		ဦးစီးအရာရှိ / ဒုတိယမြို့နယ်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူး		ဒုတိယဦးစီးမှူး / စီမံ ၁
Rank symbol
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)
Pin badge [23]

Staffs

Burmese [23]	ရုံးအုပ်		ဌာနခွဲစာရေး		အကြီးတန်းစာရေး		အငယ်တန်းစာရေး		ရုံးအကူ / စာပို့ / ယာဉ်မောင်း
Rank symbol
Translation:	Superintendent		Branch clerk		Upper divisional clerk		Lower divisional clerk		Office factotum / Mailman / Driver
Pin badge [23] [5]

References

1. "The Union Civil Service Board Rules". Article 2, rules of 11 September 2020 (PDF). Union Civil Service Board. p. 1. "(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". Article 2, rules of 9 June 2017. Union Civil Service Board. 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. 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: , , , , etc.
7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 KoKo LinnMaung (23 July 2019). တပ်မတော် ရာထူးအဆင့်အတန်း အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုအခေါ်အဝေါ်များ [Tatmadaw appointment ranks' nomenclature in English]. Facebook (in Burmese and English).^{[ user-generated source ]}
8. American Library Association. "Burmese" (PDF). loc.gov. Library of Congress. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
9. မြန်မာ–အင်္ဂလိပ် အဘိဓာန်[Myanmar English Dictionary]. Myanmar Language Commission, Department of Myanmar National Languages, Ministry of Education. 2019.
10. 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 21 October 2021.
11. Fleet Exercise-2020 conducted with involvement of attack submarine Minye Theinkhathu of Tatmadaw (Navy) to enhance defence prowess of State
12. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing receives a model plane from Gen. Maung Maung Kyaw in 2019.
13. "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.
14. "File image of Myanmar Army's deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win". Flickr .
15. Aung Shine Oo. "Myanmar New Appointed Home Affair Minister".
16. Htet Naing Zaw (July 2020). "Lt-Gen Thet Pon (left) and Maj-Gen Nyunt Win Swe (right)". The Irrawaddy.
17. Thiha Lwin. "Lt-Gen Min Naung who will continue to participate in the peace process". The Irrawaddy.
18. 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.
19. "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.
20. တပ်မတော်(ကြည်း၊ ရေ၊ လေ)အဆင့်လိုက် လစာနှုန်းထားများ [Salaries according to ranks in Tatmadaw (Army, Navy, Air Force)]. Myanmar Military Recruitment (in Burmese).
21. "The Myanmar Police Force Maintenance of Discipline Law". Article 3. (e) and (f), law of 26 April 1995. State Law and Order Restoration Council.
22. A civil servant stands outside the Eastern Yangon General Administration Department office in Thingangyun Township. (Teza Hlaing / Frontier)
23. ပြည်ထဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၊ အထွေထွေအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးဦးစီးဌာန၏ ဝန်ထမ်းအဆင့်အလိုက်သတ်မှတ်ထားသော ရင်ထိုးတံဆိပ်သင်္ကေတများ / photo- myo kyaw kyaw