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]

Personnel of the Armed Forces and the Police Force are included in the civil service personnel but the rules of civil service personnel 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 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

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] Builʻ (Burmese: ဗိုလ်, lit. 'commander') serves as the root word for each officer rank.

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]
Navy casual uniform[10]
Air Force casual uniform[11]
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

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

Special insignia of general/flag officers

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

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

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; 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

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

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
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

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

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

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

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