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Military Structure

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• Ranks
  • Nomenclature
  • Notes
    • Navies
    • Armies
    • Fighter Forces
  • Verbal Address
  • Flawed Interpretations
    • Computer Games
    • Roleplaying Games
• Organisation
  • Upper Echelons
    • Galactic Empire
    • Rebel Alliance
  • Army Units
• References

Nomenclature

Below I tabulate the military titles of the English language, adapted from various references on etiquette (eg. Titles and Forms of Address - A guide to their correct use; Collins Australian Pocket English Dictionary : military ranks), removing or adjusting terms which are geocentric or superfluous to the STAR WARS milieu. Seniority increases towards the top of the table; levels on the same row of the table are of equal status. The upper section consists of commissioned ranks; the lower section is non-commissioned.

American departures from standard international English terminology are reconciled with the usual system and noted as grey amendments, intermediates and equivalent alternatives. It should be noted that the air forces of the USA actually originated within that country's army, which accounts for the confusing, anomalous and continuing use of army ranks. However the use of the ordinary air force ranks of Wing Commander and Squadron Leader in the canon as early as A New Hope confirms the application of standard English in STAR WARS.

Notes:

Navies

• High Admiral:
  A rank explicitly introduced in The Imperial Sourcebook; they are inserted into the general convention because STAR WARS armed forces are larger in scope than Earthly equivalents, thus requiring more levels of higher officers. Ideally the ranks of High Admiral and High General ought to be equally senior, but The Imperial Sourcebook makes a swap with Surface Marshal and Fleet Admiral. This may be a mistake.
• Fleet Admiral:
  identical to "Admiral of the Fleet" on Earth. The form used here eliminates superfluous words. "Fleet Admiral" is also used throughout roleplaying game and other spin-off references from The Imperial Sourcebook onwards.
• Line Captain:
  unusual navy officer rank inserted above [naval] Captain by The Imperial Sourcebook; they are probably at the same level as "High Colonel" in the same book. A line captain must be either synonymous with or junior to a Commodore.
• Midshipman / Ensign:
  These two terms refer to the most junior commissioned naval officers, who have finished their academy training and are earning experience aboard an active warship. A "midshipman" may also refer to a naval officer cadet who has no space experience and is still studying at his academy; however the term "ensign" is never applied to such a trainee. [This table is a consolidation of American and non-American terminology, both of which are used in the STAR WARS literature.]

Armies

• High General:
  A ranks explicitly introduced in The Imperial Sourcebook, like "High Admiral" The ranks may really be equal in seniority, but the sourcebook does not say so.
• Surface Marshal:
  an adaptation of "Field Marshal" on Earth; this term was introduced in The Imperial Sourcebook.
• High Colonel:
  an unusual army officer rank inserted above Colonel by The Imperial Sourcebook; this level is either synonymous with or junior to a Brigadier.
• Staff Corporal:
  not in widespread use; non-standard.
• Staff Sergeant / Sergeant Major:
  A "staff sergeant" may sometimes be called a "sergeant major" (an American variation of common English terminology). The latter term is used in The Imperial Sourcebook for the subofficer who is second-in-command of a platoon.
• [Lance] Corporal:
  In artillery units a Corporal is known as a Bombardier, and a Lance Corporal as a Lance Bombardier.
• Private:
  Some specialist army units use alternative ranks equivalent to Private: Trooper in armoured units; Gunner in artillery; Signalman in signals; Musician in bands; etc.

Fighter Forces

• Starfighter titles:
  Most of the military titles for fighter forces are heavily geocentric, involving references to "air" and other phenomena which are specific to pre-space flight. For adaptation to STAR WARS I replace or strip off these parts of the terms. "Spaceman" could be used as a concise alternative to "spacecraftsman." However a character called Air Marshal Von Asch in SW Tales #5 has a fully terrestrial title.
• Pilots:
  Only commissioned officers in the starfighter force actually fly fighters. Non-commissioned personnel are engaged in starfighter support activity. The highest officers are not often involved in combat; they will be involved in overall strategy and command.
• High Marshal:
  conjectural higher starfighter force rank, based on extrapolation from naval practice; equivalent to naval High Admiral.
• Starfighters & Army:
  When fighter operations are temporarily dependent on the Army's surface bases, pilots sometimes use equivalent army ranks in verbal forms of address. The army Captain title applied to a Flight Lieutenant should never be confused with the superior starfighter rank of Group Captain, which equates to a naval Captain or an army Colonel. This seems to be the only charitable explanation for the occasional use of "captain" for a pilot officer inferior to a Commander in certain comics, novels and computer games. Ditto for any application of "major", "colonel" or "general" to pilots.

Naval officers ranking as Rear-Admiral or higher are addressed as "Admiral". An Acting Sub-Lieutenant is addressed as "Sub-Lieutenant", and use of the "Acting" prefix is impolite except in formal naval communications. Midshipmen, ensigns and naval Warrant Officers are addressed as "Mr", "Ms" or an equivalent. Other naval officers and personnel are addressed simply by their literal rank.

Army officers ranking as Major-General or above are verbally addressed as "General" A Lieutenant-Colonel is addressed as "Colonel". An army Lieutenant or 2nd Lieutenant is addressed as "Mr", "Ms" or an equivalent. Warrant Officers of first and second class are addressed as "Warrant Officer". Other army officers and personnel are addressed according to their literal rank. Occasionally the commander-in-chief of an army facility or military unit is colloquially addressed as "Commander".

Commodores and brigadiers arguably could be addressed as "Admiral" and "General", but this would be considered highly informal. [This would accommodate the American identification of commodores and brigadiers with one-star admirals and one-star generals.]

Starfighter officers ranking as Vice-Marshal or higher are addressed as "Marshal". Flying Officers and Pilot Officers are addressed as "Mr", "Ms" or an equivalent. All other starfighter officers and personnel are addressed according to literal rank.

When fighter operations are temporarily dependent on the Army's surface bases, pilots sometimes use equivalent army ranks in verbal forms of address. The army Captain title applied to a Flight Lieutenant should never be confused with the superior starfighter rank of Group Captain, which equates to a naval Captain or an army Colonel. This seems to be the only charitable explanation for the occasional use of "captain" for a pilot officer inferior to a Commander in certain comics, novels and computer games. Ditto for any application of "major", "colonel" or "general" to pilots.

Computer Games

The documents and books associated with the TIE Fighter computer game state a very simple rank scale. From a pedantic or technical point of view, this rudimentary system is riddled with problems.

• Grand Admiral
• Admiral
• Vice Admiral
• General
• Colonel
• Major
• Commander
• Captain
• Lieutenant
• Flight Officer
• Flight Cadet

The first defect is the inclusion of "General", "Colonel" and "Major". These are army ranks. Starfighter pilots, if they are not a separate service with "Marshals" for their upper ranks, are affiliated with the Imperial Navy. In fact the connection between starfighter forces and naval warships is assumed throughout STAR WARS fiction.

The second flaw is that "Admiral" and "General" are given different levels of seniority. In naval and army rankings there are several different kinds of admirals and generals, but the plain and literal "Admiral" has exactly the same seniority as a "General".

The next error is the relative positioning of "Commander" and "Captain". In naval or starfighter force terminology, a commander (wing commander) is inferior to a captain (group captain). An army "Captain" equals a naval "Lieutenant", but for the reasons stated above, the use of army terminology is inappropriate for starfighter forces, except perhaps as verbal address for pilot officers assigned to defend Army garrisons.

"Flight Officer" sounds unusual, but this presumably is just an abbreviation of "Pilot Officer" or "Flying Officer." Perhaps it means both.

Many important intermediate and superior ranks are missing, including "Squadron Leader", which is used abundantly in the STAR WARS films. Even if the starfighter forces are completely navalised, there should still be a "Commodore" in the rank structure below the admirals or marshals.

It is important to view the rankings stated in the computer games in their proper context. The game centres on the experience of combat piloting, not military ceremony and etiquette. The ranks are used in the games merely as an approximate indication of player accomplishment, not as a realistic statement about circumstances in the STAR WARS civilisation.

Roleplaying Game

The basic references for naval and military matters in STAR WARS: The Roleplaying Game are The Imperial Sourcebook and Death Star Technical Companion. They contradict each other. In fact, the Imperial Sourcebook contains two mutually inconsistent "systems".

There is modest detail in a chapter about sector group organisation, which names the supposed command structure of a typical sector, though it ignores the elite forces of the Core and galaxy-wide commands like those of Lord Vader, Admiral Giel and the Grand Admirals.

Then there is a diagram showing a handful of officer plaque insignia: some are Army, some Navy, and in terms of the relative seniority of a naval captain and army colonels and majors, the diagram contradicts itself. One of the ranks in the chart, colonel, does not appear in the chapter about sector group organisation.

The Death Star Technical Companion is less explicit regarding command structure, but there are indicators of rank in drawings of uniforms and descriptions of various departments and facilities. These parts of the book suffer from the same flaw as the insignia diagrams in the earlier sourcebook: there are serious inconsistencies between relative rank and rank implied by the insignia. In particular, it looks as if an army major would be senior to a naval commander.

However for the purpose of this discussion, none of the books' defects are as important as one simple omission. None of the roleplaying game books discuss the specifics of the rank structure of the starfighter service. Without being stated, it is always assumed to be totally subsumed within the Imperial Navy.

Upper Echelons

Galactic Empire

The rank titles tabulated above are those used in a Sector Group. This is the gathered total of the Empire's naval and military forces assigned to a particular sector of space. Sectors are political regions defined so that they encompass several hunderd to several thousand inhabited worlds, and several million systems without permanent settlement.

The supreme commander of a Sector Group is a Moff, the military official who governs the sector politically as well as martially. Higher commands are given to Grand Moffs, who possess the equivalent of several sector groups for the purpose of pacifying temporary territories called Priority Sectors. These regions are composed of adjacent parts of one or more sectors where rebellion, piracy or organised crime are rife. More than a tenth of the Empire's armed forces are kept in reserve in the Galactic Core without attachment to any particular regional government. These forces are at the disposal of the Emperor, the twelve Grand Admirals or for deployment in elite roving commands such as those of Lord Darth Vader and Admiral Giel.

The number of realistic ranks is much less than the number of ways in which Imperial insignia units (cylinders and coloured squares) can potentially be combined. In some instances, officers of the same rank in different regions and forces show different insignia. This probably signifies different aesthetic regulations that are specific to local units, or else may trace an individual officer's history of promotion. Alternatively, the diverse combinations of colours and cylinders may display fine distinctions of seniority between officers that otherwise hold the same titular rank.

Rebel Alliance

No single rebel faction would exceed the might of a Sector Group of the Empire's military (at least until the defection and capture of whole Imperial sectors in the early years of the New Republic). Therefore the Alliance would use fewer of the rank distinctions known in the Imperial forces. Some of the intermediate ranks may be unused, and many of the highest ranks would be redundant due to the limited size of rebel forces.

Before the fall of Palpatine, there would probably be no Alliance equivalent of a Moff, Grand Moff or Grand Admiral. By the time the well-consolidated New Republic was struck by the Starbuster Plot in the Corellian sector, one title given to a sector-level authority was "Governor-General". However it is not clear whether this usage was just special deference to local custom, since some Core sectors were already administered by beings titled as governors-general under Palpatine's regime.

type of unit	compositon	led by
section / squad*	8 to 12 troops	sergeant‡
platoon	3 to 4 sections	lieutenant
company	3 to 4 platoons	captain or major
battalion	3 to 4 companies	major
regiment	2 or more battalions	lt colonel or colonel
brigade	equivalent to 2 or more regiments	brigadier
division	several brigades	general†
corps	several divisions	general†
* = American variation. † = Potentially any rank of general. ‡ = Not a commissioned officer.

On Earth there is no consistent terminology for military units larger than a corps. However the STAR WARS galaxy is a civilisation of much grander scope and its defence requires the existence of many higher levels of military organisation that do not have names in English (in our pre-interstellar era). Whereas Earth's nations of mere millions of people make war on tiny portions of one planet's surface, the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War affect millions of planets entirely. It seems likely that 3 to 4 corps are grouped into the next higher kind of unit, and that three or four of these units are in turn grouped into higher units still, and so on up to the scale of military forces that are able to invade and occupy many hostile planets simultaneously.

• Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross Sections, Dr Curtis Saxton, DK Publishing, 2002.
• Attack of the Clones: Visual Dictionary, Dr David West Reynolds, DK Publishing, 2002.
• The Death Star Technical Companion, Bill Slavicsek, West End Games.
• The Imperial Sourcebook, Greg Gorden et al., West End Games, 1988.
• STAR WARS II: Attack of the Clones, George Lucas et al., Lucasfilm Ltd, 2002.
• STAR WARS IV: A New Hope, George Lucas et al., Lucasfilm Ltd, 1977.
• STAR WARS VI: Return of the Jedi, George Lucas et al., Lucasfilm Ltd, 1983.
• STAR WARS Customisable Card Game, Decipher Inc.
• The STAR WARS Sourcebook, Curtis Smith & Bill Slavicsek, West End Games, 1987.
• TIE Fighter, LucasArts Entertainment.
• X-Wing Rogue Squadron: The Rebel Opposition, Michael Stackpole et al., Dark Horse Comics.

• Australian Protocol & Procedures, 2nd edn, Asher Joel, Angus & Robertson Publishers.
• Collins Australian Pocket English Dictionary, W.A.Krebs & G.A.Wilkes, Collins.
• Titles and Forms of Address - A guide to their correct use, 15th edn, A. and C. Black Ltd.

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