Can someone explain US army ranks to me?

That's not a bad example, but Sergeants will generally run a wider variety of personality types than any other grade. They might just be a highly proficient individual soldier, or they might be running a platoon of 30. They might be young, bookish, or eager to advance, or they might be an old guy who didn't do anything except accumulate enough time in service that they couldn't be a lower rank any more.

Sergeants tend to be with their units a lot longer than officers would be. In the US Army, officers get moved about every 18 months, so there are quite a few soldiers who have what it takes to be a higher rank, but chose to remain as NCOs because that keeps them closer to their buddies.

NCOs are also likely to remain in a role a lot longer than officers. It might take 6 years to make Sergeant, and might take 10 or 15 before an NCO is high enough that they are no longer directly involved in combat. It's not unusual to meet sergeants that are machine gunners, snipers, or anti-tank gunners.
Rasczak behaves a lot more like a Sergeant Major (the top of the NCO chain) than a Lieutenant.

Lieutenant is a combat rank, but it's basically the very beginning for officers. LTs do a lot of the same stupid stuff privates do. Q: What's the difference between a Lieutenant and a Private First Class? A: The PFC has been promoted -- TWICE!!

The relationship between sergeants and lieutenants in combat units is really weird. The LT is in charge, and he is likely to have a lot of education, but he isn't likely to have any experience at all. Sergeants on the other hand might or might not have the same education, are likely to have more experience, but need to obey the LT. In practice a good LT is a smart guy with a good education who is being trained both by his superiors and his subordinates.

The sucky part is that officers only stay in a job for 18 months on average, so right about the time a lieutenant is getting really good at his job, he gets moved elsewhere.

Lieutenants command platoons of 16-40 men, or act as assistants to higher officers.

Captains are basically lieutenants with a few years of experience. They command companies, troops (cavalry) or batteries (field artillery) of 30-120 men. They tend to get more respect than lieutenants. If an LT tells you something that sounds stupid, he's probably mistaken; if a captain tells you something that sounds stupid then *you're* probably mistaken.

Together, lieutenants and captains are known as "company grade" officers -- either of them might end up in direct command of enlisted soldiers.
Majors tend to be a bit outside the chain of command. They might end up in charge of something if something happens to their superior, but the usually have no command of their own. It's basically a "don't mess with me rank".

Majors and colonels are collectively known as "field grade officers". They might be in command of battalions or squadrons (cavalry) consisting of 3-5 companies, batteries, or troops. They don't directly command soldiers, but are still low enough in the chain that they might be directly involved in combat. They are "field grade" because they are the highest officers likely to be on the battlefield.

Majors might be an assistant to a colonel, but it's a common rank for officers that are somewhat outside the normal command structure. They are basically peers to the colonels without having to worry about who has seniority or whatever. Liaison officers and specialists are very likely to be majors.
Colonels are the highest ranking officers who are likely to be on the battlefield. While they aren't likely to pick up a rifle themselves, they are likely to be under fire, directing from the front. Any higher ranking officer is unlikely to interact directly with local civilians, enemy combatants, or their own troops.

If you want stories to draw from, this one is awesome: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/gates-of-fire.htm

It's non-fiction, but give a bunch of examples of various ranks.

An "Army" is made up of two or more Corps. An Army is a "theater-level command". For example, "United States Army Europe". When I was stationed there, during the cold war, it was made up of V Corps and VII Corps. It also included a lot of units that were not part of V Corps or VII Corps. Things like support units and combat units not directly belonging to one of the Corps.

I'm lumping this all together in the same quote as I don't know how to care it up appropriately. But this is interesting stuff, and in a lot of ways, exactly what I was hoping to hear. You say Majors and Colonels are field officers? Is that why movies use them so much, or is it just that they have the easiest names to say?

This is interesting, though, in that from what I've read so far, I was led to believe that a Major or a Colonel would spend all their time in a tent ten miles behind the front line doing clerical work and organising operations. This was what I was afraid of, but what you're telling me is a bit more to my taste. I can certainly see how a Colonel wouldn't pick up a rifle and go shoot people in the head because he'd have much more important work to do, but putting him at the field, rather than in an HQ somewhere back home, only to occasionally visit the front lines is encouraging.

The big thing, though, and what got me really curious, is why you say they're kind of outside the normal chain of command. Certainly, I don't know how things work, but whenever I see a list of ranks, both Major and Colonel show up in a line with the others. If you could elaborate on that a bit, that'd be really cool. I especially like the notion of the rank Major being given to specialists without specific command, but in need of a rank.

Say, here's something interesting to ask. I keep hearing that rank may not always describe direct command of personnel, but may instead be given to a specialist in order to grant them the authority of this rank, even if they aren't assigned any troops to command. This is where my eye was all along, and I just wanted to ask how likely it is for a high rank to be given out like this. Say Major or Colonel. How likely would that be? And keep in mind, I can exaggerate even "somewhat" into "Positively will happen!" if need be

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Officers are very likely to be in the middle of the fight, they just don't need a weapon to do their job. An officer needs a map, compass, and radio, and needs to direct the soldiers around him. Weapons are optional, and personally fighting is optional. It happens, but should only happen when there is no one around for him to direct.

LTs have a bad habit of either freezing up or just behaving like privates, which is why there is a lot of overlap in their responsibilities. Between the squad leaders, platoon sergeant, and company commander, the platoon leader is pretty optional.

Good officers are focussed on commanding their troops, not on personally fighting.

Majors are more likely to be personally involved than most officers, because they usually don't have a command of their own. They are mostly just paper-pushers in a headquarters, but because they are veteran officers doing an optional job, they get put in charge of small details or sent to "help" junior officers pretty regularly.

There are additional factors: O'Neill was a colonel in the air force, where ranks are less connected to commanding large numbers of troops, and SG teams were special forces units that included high-ranking specialists like Carter, who was a Captain when the show first started. SG-1 may have started off with a colonel commanding it simply out of necessity, to ensure the commander had sufficient rank to actually command the people in it.

This refers to the show and not the movie. The movie adds an extra twist to the issue of having a colonel commanding the stargate team: in the movie O'Neill was given the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons. That might have elevated the rank desired for the team commander.

You know, I think I finally realised where my major disconnect is taking place and why I keep asking odd questions and failing to grasp simple questions. I'm sort of trying to shoehorn realism into unrealistic fiction, and in so doing sort of straddling the line. And it's not comfortable.

When you say "commanding their troops," I know exactly what you mean - find cover, contact HQ and get to work organising things. What a proper commander should be doing while the men tasked with actual combat go about doing their own jobs. This is realistic, but it isn't exactly how things would go in a largely detached fictional scenario.

In a fictional scenario, even if people aren't super-human, they're so badass they may as well be, so a commander's proper means of leading his man would probably be to shout a lot and kill things like a pro to "inspire" them. In anything other than a historical movie, that's how things get solved - everybody grabs a gun and you they either pull back or shoot everything dead. Think Predator and how the soldiers dealt with the enemy village.

I do think I see what you mean, though, and I think it's time for me to see how I can weave reality into made-up fiction. And it's also time to go to bed, as I need to be at work in 7 hours...

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well they did once mention that they(General Hammond and his bosses) thought that a Major(Carter in this case) wasn't a high enough rank to lead an SG team(forgetting all about Major Kawalski I guess(on the other hand...he did not lead his team very long).

Maybe not miles from the front, but, yes, Majors and Colonels would probably be in the command tent, telling captains on the front line what to do. So, would a Colonel be out in the field shooting at people alongside his men? Not really. If his command post was getting overrun by the enemy, would he pick up a gun and shoot people? You bet.

Basically, a Colonel (brigade commander) tells his Lt. Colonels (battalion commanders) "we will remove the enemy from this major city". The Lt. Colonels tell their Captains (company commanders) "you will remove the enemy from this section of the city". The Captains tell their Lieutenants (platoon leaders), "you will remove the enemy from these streets". As they go up in rank, each officer controls a slightly larger portion of the combat and their job becomes more and more about strategy and planning.

Doctors and Lawyers are two examples of officers who usually don't have a command function, but are still officers.

If I recall correctly, while he was still a Colonel, O'Neill was also 2nd in command of the Stargate project, in addition to his field duties. (not sure if that was to imply all of Cheyenne Mnt.)

Of course, that doesn't explain all the 31 flavors of colonels that kept popping up on other teams during the series.

Back in RL, I find it curious that when one reaches the generals' ranks, the titles work in reverse (Major General is less than a Lt. General)

That's s fair point

But as noted, the extenuating circumstances are the exception rather than the rule.

They get used so much because they are field grade. They're the highest ranks that still see the close-up picture.
There is likely to be a headquarters tent miles away, but the Colonel might or might not be in it. They also usually have whatever type of vehicle the unit they command uses (a tank or armored car of some type usually) outfitted with a ton of radios which they can use to get closer.

As a rule, any commander should be wherever most of his troops are. For a colonel that doesn't mean right on the very front, but close enough to communicate by runner if needed.

Majors are more likely to be the ones sitting in the tent, but that changes too. If the unit has two major focusses then a major might be sent to oversee one of them.

What I mean is that majors don't typically have a permanent command. They might have a driver or a runner, but they can be assigned or reassigned as their colonel sees fit. They do lead different sections in a headquarters, but usually the NCOs could run their section in their absence, so if someone needs to go talk to a general, talk to an allied commander, or supervise the construction of a power plant, a major will get sent to do it. They tend to be liaisons.
It's common for pilots, medical personnel, and dogs (military dogs are one rank higher than their handler). Other than that it's rare-ish.

Higher enlisted ranks are more common for "specialists". I've met snipers and dog handlers who were Sergeants First Class (usually that would be reserved for platoon sergeants) and I've heard of Master Sergeants who are basically just riflemen on special operations teams.

Among commissioned officers, you might find a Captain leading a team of a half-dozen special operations guys, but otherwise the rank usually accompanies command.

The thing is that officers change jobs about every 18 months, so they usually wouldn't be given a rank just because they were a great sniper or something.

In the Army, that sort of thing would go to Warrant Officers and Chief Warrant Officers. They aren't in the chain of command, they have no authority outside their specialty field, but in their specialties they are highly respected. They are like the enlisted grades in that they might remain in the same job for a decade or more. Army pilots and other specialists are usually WOs.

Overall though, it's a game so I don't see a problem with making a character whatever rank you like. Any Sergeant or anything Captain through Colonel would imply a character with some experience in their field. In the US Army commissioned officers are pretty strictly "management", but it's believable enough that a captain or major might be on some special mission to work in a comic-book setting.


Heck, "Captain America" was supposedly an actual captain while in uniform during WWII. In his secret identity he was a PFC, and his sidekick outranked him. That obviously worked well enough for a comic book

One fictional example for command in this context that might be a reasonably accurate reflection of reality (at least under wartime) is Band of Brothers. There is a scene in one of the episodes in which Winters, promoted to Captain, sees his former company under heavy fire and apparently being poorly commanded. He begins to make a move to join them in the field when he is rebuffed by his commander, Colonel Sink, who in effect tells him that as XO of the battalion it would be inappropriate to run into combat. Winters then calls up Lt Speirs and orders *him* to take command of Easy Company and continue the attack.

In the episode, its Speirs that is portrayed as the "badass." Although it seems that his actions in that episode are more or less historically accurate, specifically that he ran through the enemy-occupied town of Foy just to relay a message to the rest of the company to countermand their original orders and coordinate the attack (they had no radio), and then ran *back* through the enemy-held town to return to the main force and take command of them.

This does simultaneously illustrate the fact that ranks higher than Lt are less likely to be literally in combat (usually due to their higher responsibilities: its hard to see the bigger picture when you are also ducking from rifle shots), but it also shows their proximity to combat, at least under some conditions.


One thing I should point out: if you want to make a character that has high rank, but also has a combat-rich backstory, the escape hatch is to write their backstory as a Lt commanding combat troops, and have them be promoted to a higher rank just before they start their career in the game. Major Jones can have a rich front-line combat history if they were Lt Jones prior to becoming your character.

As I understand it Sam, this is one of the primary reasons for the rank of Major. However, absent professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) most persons wouldn't just be "given" the rank of Major. They'd most likely move up in a specialty like Intelligence, Special Operations (e.g. Rangers), pilots.

Major is a very multi-purpose rank to use for game characters because it's entirely likely that a Major would be doing a job where he's somebody important, but he doesn't seem to have a whole lot of other people following him or her around calling them sir.

Major's also a great rank for intelligence clearance, from an interesting-as-a-Player-Character perspective. He'll likely be privy to a lot of pretty intense stuff relating to his specific field, which opens up the possibility for his own missions to drift into classified territory. On the other hand, he's not so high rank that getting access to classified info outside of that specialty will be at all likely. So he can stay focused, and also be surprised by sudden revelations that command didn't see fit to brief him on in advance.

This is where the Major as Combatant mostly comes out in fiction. The higher ups go "We need a dude with a pronounced tallent for killing a bunch of other dudes, but who we've also cleared to know the top secret stuff about the specific bunch of dudes we need killed, and can therefore trust to do all that killing without everybody and their dog finding out about it. Call Major Killmonger back from his vacation in an undisclosed part of Southeast Asia murdering drug smugglers, child molesters and rare endangered Giant Venomous Prehistoric Hell-Tigers armed with nothing but his teeth, and optionally assemble a team of suitably distinguished mass murderers to follow him to Hell and Back."

Former US Army here. This is about the simplest, and best description.

The missing ranks, in the "etc" are Sergeant First Class (usually a Platoon Sergeant, but sometimes an acting First Sergeant of small detatchments), Master Sergeant (sometimes a Platoon Sergeant or acting First Sergeant, but usually in an administrative position), First Sergeant (same rank as Master Sergeant, but he/she is has a diamond in between the chevrons and rockers, and is the senior NCO of a Company sized unit), Sergeant Major (again, same rank as a Master Sergeant, with a star between the chevrons and rockers, he/she is the senior NCO of Battallions and Brigades). Lastly is the Sergeant Major of the Army (2 stars between the chevrons and rockers) who is the senior most NCO in the Army. The "Senior" NCO's are mainly administrative positions as well, since they directly answer to their respective CO's. It's not too unusual to find them in the field among the troops, threatening..err, boosting morale.

NCO's are the backbone of the Army. They are the ones that ensure that what needs taken care of is taken care of.

The smartest Lieutenant I knew was one of my former Platoon Leaders who, on the first day of his assignment to my Platoon, called all of us Sgt's together and said "I don't know a damn thing about what we do here, and I'm going to let you guys run the show. I do want you to teach me what needs to be done, and how to go about doing it." The dumbest Lieutenant was the one who got our squad lost. He wouldn't listen to anyone. He would say "I'm a Top 10 West Point grad. I know what the hell I'm doing." All the while trying to read a compass that was sitting on the medal hood of a jeep." We were 10 miles away from our rendezvous point, at 0200 hrs (2:00am) with temperatures around 12F, and heading in the wrong direction. We finally got spotted by a heli and evac'd back to HQ. Don't think that LT sat down for a week after the ***-chewing he got from the CO.

Also, there's the rank given to enlisted men when they need to enter officer's clubs: corporal-captain.

In the Marine Corps, you also have the Gunnery Sergeant. The Gunny seems to be used a lot in tv/movies for some reason...maybe the sound of the rank?

R. Lee Ermey is a honorary Gunny, and he played one in Full Metal Jacket. Gibbs from NCIS is a Gy Sgt as well, along with Gunny Highway, portrayed by Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge.


Nice rank info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Ma..._rank_insignia

Lol - I remember that episode!

Wasn't that the episode Beejay arrived in on?

Yes, but that was a trial thing, to see how it worked and what the other personnel thought about it.