Ranks and insignia of 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 1978, 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 ("officer / officier").[1]

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 ("other ranks/sous-officiers et militaires du rang"),[2] 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).

Officer
NATO codeOF-10OF-9OF-8OF-7OF-6OF-5OF-4OF-3OF-2OF-1OF(D)Student officer
US DoD Pay Grade Special O-10 O-9 O-8 O-7 O-6 O-5 O-4 O-3 O-2 O-1
Enlisted
NATO CodeOR-9OR-8OR-7OR-6OR-5OR-4OR-3OR-2OR-1
US DoD Pay Grade E-9 E-8 E-7 E-6 E-5 E-4 E-3 E-2 E-1

Ranks and insignia

Army

Air Force
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See also

References

Citations
  1. NATO glossary of abbreviations used in NATO documents and publications / Glossaire OTAN des abréviations utilisées dans les documents et publications OTAN (PDF). 2010. p. 235.
  2. NATO glossary of abbreviations used in NATO documents and publications / Glossaire OTAN des abréviations utilisées dans les documents et publications OTAN (PDF). 2010. p. 238.

Sources
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