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

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 officers.[1]
Other ranks
Warrant officers
  • WO1–WO5 (bottom to top) are used for United States warrant officers only; other countries use only regular officer ranks, do not have warrant officers, or warrant officers are considered as Other or Enlisted Rank (for example a British Army WO1 is coded as OR-9).

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-2 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).

Ranks and insignia[]

Army[]

Air Force[]

Navy[]

See also[]

References[]

All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.
The original article can be found at Ranks and insignia of NATO and the edit history here.

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