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Ranks and insignia of NATO

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Ranks and insignia of NATO are combined military insignia used by the member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Contents

The rank scale is used for specifying posts within NATO.

Definitions

NATO maintains a "standard rank scale" in an attempt to match every member country's military rank to corresponding ranks used by the other members. The rank categories were established in the document STANAG 2116, formally titled NATO Codes for Grades of Military Personnel. There are two scales, though not all member countries use all the points on the NATO scales and some have more than one rank at some points (e.g. many forces have two ranks at OF-1, usually lieutenants):

Officer ranks

  • OF1–OF10 (bottom to top) are used for commissioned officers.

    • Warrant officers

  • Most countries do not have an intermediate tier of ranks between Officers and Other Ranks (see below). The exception is the United States, and the NATO warrant officer grades of WO1–WO5 (bottom to top) are used only for warrant officer ranks of the US military. In other countries with "Warrant Officer" ranks, they are considered part of Other Ranks. (For example a British Army WO1 has the NATO code OR-9.)

    • Other ranks

  • OR1–OR9 (bottom to top) are used for all Other Ranks, including non-commissioned officers and privates.

    • Comparison to other systems

    The numbers in the system broadly correspond to the US military pay grade system, with OR-x replacing E-x and WO-x replacing W-x. The main difference is in the commissioned officer ranks, where the US system recognises two ranks at OF-1 level (O-1 and O-2), meaning that all O-x numbers after O-1 are one point higher on the US scale than they are on the NATO scale (e.g. a major is OF-3 on the NATO scale and O-4 on the US scale).

    Army

  • Ranks and insignia of NATO armies officers
  • Ranks and insignia of NATO armies enlisted

    • Air Force

  • Ranks and insignia of NATO air forces officers
  • Ranks and insignia of NATO air forces enlisted
  • Ranks and insignia of NATO navies officers
  • Ranks and insignia of NATO navies enlisted

    • References

    Ranks and insignia of NATO Wikipedia
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