Introduction
These pages are a presentation of ongoing attempts to deduce a concise synthesis of the system of the military uniforms and insignia of the Galactic Empire.
In addition, the pages necessarily contain a summary of the command structure of the Imperial Forces.
The primary sources are the STAR WARS films,
but I include as much official non-canon material as possible:
comprehensiveness is also an objective.
Where non-canon references conflict with each other
I follow the choice which most closely agrees
with modern military systems and terminology on Earth.
At present most of my attention in this field is dedicated to understanding the insignia of commissioned officers.
The decorations of Imperial officers simultaneously show
more complexity and hints of underlying mathematical order
than the uniforms of noncommissioned personnel.
Armed Services
Imperial Navy
The Imperial Navy is charged with the security of all space throughout the galaxy.
These responsibilities include the elimination or deterrence of
belligerence by spacegoing factions amongst the galactic citizenry:
pirates, the underworld, corporate and guild powers,
rebel forces
and the navies of untamed sapient species
such as the Mon Calamari and the Ssi-Rukh.
Knowingly or unknowningly, the presence of the Imperial Starfleet
deters incursions by covetous extragalactic barbarians like the Yuzhan Vong.
The Navy also plays important roles in support of the operations of the Imperial Army.
It provides the Army with transport between worlds
and orbital bombardments against troublesome ground-based enemies of the Empire.
The Imperial Navy is claimed the largest space naval force in the history of the galaxy,
with large and small combat starships numbering in countless millions,
including at least several dozens of tens of thousands of dreaded star destroyers,
and lesser numbers of more powerful star cruisers, star battlecruisers,
star battleships and star dreadnoughts.
Imperial Army
The Imperial Army
is responsible for holding territory on the millions of worlds of the Galactic Empire.
Whereas stormtroopers are employed in crucial conflicts and guard the most
vital military installations,
the Army is responsible for holding ground and
pacifying entire worlds as a lasting force when stormtroopers are withdrawn
to perform other missions
[according to The Imperial Sourcebook and roleplaying games].
The Army is a more sizeable and permanent presence than the elite shock-troops
which the stormtroopers are.
Methodology
As with the insignia of the semi-organised forces of the Rebel Alliance,
the uniforms and insignia of the Imperial Forces must indicate the
status of commissioned and non-commissioned members in an unambiguous fashion.
This implies that
there must exist a simple visual scheme for reading the
geometric and colour cues of the insignia.
Each individual's insignia must translate into a single
measure of seniority.
The artists who designed the costumes for the films might not have considered
such a system in detail,
but it is the task of this document to consider the simplest possible
ad hoc scheme which is consistent with all of the known examples
and with realistic naval and military conventions and
nomenclature.
The vast scope and orderly nature of the Galactic Empire
gives us confidence that its insignia
must follow regular and systematic principles.
The Galactic Empire was
static, resource-rich and tightly-regulated on a galactic scale.
The Imperial Forces are rooted in traditions of lawfulness,
consistency and uniformity.
Their equipment, uniforms, insignia and customs must be
as fixed and standardised
as Imperial policy and philosophy.
Whatever rules are theorised to govern the interpretation of the insignia
of the Imperial Forces,
they should satisfy some basic, axiomatic requirements.
The system of interpretation must indicate an unambiguous status level for
any given insignia configuration.
The insignia must preserve and reflect the equivalence of
ranks and ratings which are of equal status in different services.
The system should agree with the explicit and tacit ranking of
officers and personnel in the films and literature.
The rules of interpretation should be simple and obvious to the eye.
General Notes
-
John Mollo,
the artist chiefly responsible for the military costumes of
STAR WARS, is also reputed to be an expert military historian.
Therefore his work is likely to be at least partly systematic.
Whether he had a fully comprehensive system may never be known,
since the only evidence today is the handful of insignia examples seen on film.
-
The Emblem of the Galactic Empire
appears on several specialist types
of military uniforms, including walker pilots, TIE pilots, and gunners.
Where it appears as a shoulder patch on pilot and noncommissioned uniforms,
it is silver.
On helmets the emblem is white for naval and starfighter forces,
and red-orange for army/stormtrooper forces.
I provisionally treat it as a mild indicator of service branch,
though it might have another meaning.
- Rank squares
are only known to occur in blue, red and yellow colours.
In The Empire Strikes Back all of the officers in Lord Vader's
personal forces
have equal numbers of red and blue squares,
though this is not true of all Imperial officers
(eg. those in A New Hope,
STAR WARS Holiday Special,
and numerous moffs and higher officials).
In the A New Hope costuming sketches, the badges formed by the
combinations of squares are called rank indicator plaques.
- Squares or rectangles?
Gabriel Crowl
suggests that Army badge units appear narrower than those of naval officers.
He cites the badges of Admiral Piett and General Veers in
The Empire Strikes Back as evidence.
Providing a distinction between the badges of the two services would be
attractive,
however Ethan Platten
observes that
the badge units of Navy captains and commanders also give the same impression of rectangular proportions.
It seems that rectangular proportions are either common
to all badges with gaps between their units (regardless of service),
or else the difference of proportions is entirely illusory
(caused by the presence of the gaps themselves).
Measurements suggest that the latter is true.
- Number of squares contributes to the designation of an
officer's rank.
All else being equal, having more squares indicates higher rank.
The system is complicated
by the difference between the colours, especially with the yellow squares
and single-row badges.
Later sections discuss specific deductions and a working hypothesis about the
meaning of the colours and the interplay between colour and number of
squares.
The principles are illustrated using photographic examples.
- Code cylinders
also contribute to the designation of rank.
(For example "Commander" and "Captain" insignia are only
distinguishable by the number of cylinders worn.)
These small silvery cylinders are kept in narrow pockets on either side of the upper chest, near the shoulders.
Their practical function is to act as computerised permits to allow the officer access to areas under his authority.
The cylinders can be placed in the standard computer interfaces (which are also used by astromech droids) for access to sensitive and secure data.
- Blooper:
Many of the rank badges in Return of the Jedi
cannot be given serious attention, unfortunately.
All of the rank badges in the film were
accidentally made as naval Commander badges, even those of
Admiral Piett
and
Moff Jerjerrod.
The Return of the Jedi representations of these two officers'
insignia must be rejected because they're inconsistent with
the officers' known ranks.
Let us hope that the blooper will be corrected by computer graphics effects in a
future special edition of the film.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks are due to (in alphabetical order):
-
Robert Brown
for demonstrating how I could structure my rank badge graphics so that they would not be affected by a graphics bug which persists thorugh all known
version of a certain common web browser;
for discussion regarding real-world rank conventions;
for a few heretical "Devil's advocate" challenges.
-
Elwyn Chow,
for having catalogued the rank badges of A New Hope when I could not find the time or means, and for sending images of some Imperial officers.
-
Mathew Clayson
for suggestions regarding the stormtrooper uniforms,
particularly the coloured pauldrons;
for information about the extrinsic, real-world make-up of code cylinders.
-
Dennis Conner
for drawing my attention to what seems to be a pocket at the right shoulder
of naval crewmen, which is unmatched at the left shoulder.
-
Gabriel Crowl
for reminding me of a possible variation of rank squares to rectangular
proportions under some circumstances.
-
Justin Gann
for finding Grand General Malcor Brashin;
for extensive suggestions about the rationalisation of the officer insignia
in the portraits in the game Rebellion.
-
Adam Gehrls
for the list of Grand Admirals from Essential Chronology.
-
Frank Gerratana
for advice regarding culture-specific variations of rank terminology;
for detailed observations of colour and shape of rank cylinders;
for Commander Gherant SWCCG card scan.
-
Holger Johannsen
who has my permission to translate this page into German for mirroring at his
Coruscant web site.
-
Michael Allen Horne
for suggesting the use of "spaceman" as the equivalent to terrestrial
"aircraftman";
and for noting Tarkin's French cuffs.
-
Teresa Karvonen
for suggestions relating to the role(s) of the black-uniformed officers.
-
Holger Leuz
for suggestions relating to the role(s) of the black-uniformed officers.
-
James McFadden
for suggestion of compromise between novels and comics regarding the epaulets
on the Grand Admiral uniform.
-
Mark Miller
for stylistic feedback and for the provision of rank cylinder illustration.
-
Jason Mitchell
for inferences towards identifying some of the overall-garbed
crewmen in ROTJ.
-
Peter Olevik-Dunder
for discussion of the reality of High Colonels in Sweden.
-
Branson Peacock
for reference to General Nasda of the ISB;
for an image of the ISB officer on the Death Star overbridge.
-
Shay Pierce
for the Admiral Daala image from Rebellion;
for the officer images from Force Commander.
-
Ethan Platten
for long and fruitful discussion and debate;
for several images taken from various LucasArts computer games;
for miscellaneous digitised shots from the movies;
and for new, clearer badge icons;
for the Grand Admiral Makati reference.
-
RebsNU96
for suggestions relating to the role(s) of the black-uniformed officers.
-
Tyler Saxton
for the use of his video digitising facility and the delivery of many useful images at my request.
-
Vincent Starre
for pointing out the differences of colouration of some rank cylinders.
-
Jason Temporado,
Midshipman, USNR,
for discussion about the ranks and roles of the higher officers,
and the relationship between Moffs and the services.
-
Anthony Tully
for general and specific discussion regarding real rank conventions.
-
David West Reynolds
for confirming the different colour types of gauge-shaped rank cylinders.
-
Greg Zellner
for drawing attention to the similarity between Imperial rank plaques
and ribbon decorations on Earthly naval uniforms.
