{{Short description|Military rank in Myanmar}} {{See also|Military ranks of Myanmar}} In the Tatmadaw (the armed forces of Myanmar) there are two different ranks, one higher than another, but both designated as four-star ranks. * '''Vice-senior General''' ({{langx|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး}}): a rank between five-star rank of Senior general and four-star rank of General/Admiral, but designated as a four-star rank. * '''General''' or '''Admiral''' ({{langx|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}): the actual four-star rank.
{| class="wikitable" |- ! rowspan=2| Seniority in Armed Forces ! rowspan=2| Burmese title ! colspan=2| English title ! rowspan=2| Rank insignia ! rowspan=2| Golden strap <br><ref name=VSSWF>{{cite web|url=https://i0.wp.com/nenow.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Vice-Senior-General-Soe-Win.jpg?resize=768%2C373&ssl=1 |title=File image of Myanmar Army's deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win |website=Flickr}}</ref><ref name=SHAP>{{cite web |url=https://editorial01.shutterstock.com/preview-440/10554356b/78b92edb/Shutterstock_10554356b.jpg |title=Myanmar New Appointed Home Affair Minister. |author=Aung Shine Oo |access-date=2022-04-21 |archive-date=2022-04-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220426155938/https://editorial01.shutterstock.com/preview-440/10554356b/78b92edb/Shutterstock_10554356b.jpg |url-status=dead }}</ref> ! rowspan=2| Rank medal <br><ref name=VSSWF/><ref name=SHAP/><ref name=KLFB>{{cite web |script-title=my:တပ်မတော် ရာထူးအဆင့်အတန်း အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုအခေါ်အဝေါ်များ |trans-title=Tatmadaw appointment ranks' nomenclature in English |language=my, en |url=https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=461530361337155&id=193717571451770&m_entstream_source=timeline&ref=opera_speed_dial |author=KoKo LinnMaung |website=Facebook |date=23 July 2019}}{{User-generated source|certain=yes|date=April 2022}}</ref> ! colspan=2 rowspan=2| Car insignia |- style="text-align:center ! for Army and Air Force ! for Navy |- |- style="text-align:center;" | 2. | {{lang|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး}} | colspan=2| Vice-senior general | 70px | 50px | 50px | colspan=2 rowspan=2| 100px |- |- style="text-align:center;" | 3. | {{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}} | General | Admiral | 70px | 50px | 50px |}
== Vice-senior general == "Vice-senior general" ({{langx|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး|dautaiya bauilaʻ khayupaʻ mahūʺkarīʺ}}) is the second highest rank in Myanmar Armed Forces. It is held by the person appointed to both Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services and Commander-in-Chief (Army). Since 2012, it can also be held by the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services if he has not yet been promoted to Senior general.
It is between the five-star rank of Senior general and the four-star rank of General or Admiral, thus being a unique rank existing only in Myanmar Armed Forces. The rank medals of both Vice-Senior general and General/Admiral have the same obverse; both with golden logo of Armed Forces and four golden stars overheading it, but the rank medal of Senior general has a green stripe in addition to that of General/Admiral. Thus, it can be assumed as a higher variant of four-star rank. The flag of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services also confirms that.
=== Insignia === {| class="wikitable" |- ! Burmese title ! English title ! Rank insignia ! Golden strap <br><ref name=VSSWF/> ! Rank medal <br><ref name=VSSWF/><ref name=KLFB/> ! colspan=2| Flag <ref>[https://cdn.myanmarseo.com/file/client-cdn/gnlm/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/V-Soe-win-copy.jpg Vice-Chairman of the State Administration Council Vice-Senior General Soe Win holds phone talks with Australian Vice-chief of Defence Force yesterday. Photo: MNA] from {{cite news|title=(Vice-Senior General holds discussions with Australian Vice-chief of Defence Force over phone|author=MNA |date=February 2021 |url=https://www.gnlm.com.mm/vice-senior-general-holds-discussions-with-australian-vice-chief-of-defence-force-over-phone/amp/ |website=Global New Light of Myanmar}}</ref> ! Car insignia |- style="text-align:center | {{lang|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး}} | Vice-senior general | 70px | 50px | 50px | colspan=2| 100px | 100px |}
{| class="wikitable" |- ! rowspan=2| Insignia on <br>regular uniform ! of Myanmar Army ! of Myanmar Navy <br><ref name=FE20>[https://cincds.gov.mm/node/9399?d=2 Fleet Exercise-2020 conducted with involvement of attack submarine Minye Theinkhathu of Tatmadaw (Navy) to enhance defence prowess of State]</ref> ! of Myanmar Air Force |- style="text-align:center | 50px | 50px | 50px |}
=== History === When the five-star rank Senior general was created above the four-star rank General, there was no Vice-senior general or similar rank between them. In 1990, General Saw Maung promoted himself directly to Senior general,<ref name=MWT>{{cite book |title=တပ်မတော် ခေါင်းဆောင်များ သမိုင်း အကျဉ်း (၁၉၄၂ ခုနှစ်မှ ၁၉၉၀ ပြည့်နှစ်အထိ) |trans-title=A Brief History of Tatmadaw's Leaders (1942 to 1990) |language=my |date=1991 |publisher=News and Periodical Enterprise |location=Yangon |author=Mya Win |pages=86-87}}</ref><ref name=CC76>{{cite news |url=https://cincds.gov.mm/node/11484?d=1 |title=(၇၆)နှစ်မြောက် တပ်မတော်နေ့အထိမ်းအမှတ်အဖြစ် ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင် ခဲ့ကြသည့် ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်၊ တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်(အငြိမ်းစား) များ၏ အမှတ်တရရုပ်တုများ ဖွင့်ပွဲအခမ်းအနားကျင်းပပြုလုပ် |language=my |trans-title=As a commemoration for the 76th anniversary of Armed Forces Day, the opening ceremony for memorial statues of those who served through successive periods as Chief-of-Staff and Commander-in-Chief (now retired), was held. |date=25 March 2021 |work=Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services}}</ref> his deputy: Lieutenant General Than Shwe to General,<ref name=CC76/> and Brigadier General Maung Aye to Major general.<ref name=MZMA>{{cite web|url=http://www.mizzima.com/political-pro/military/military-regime/general-maung-aye.html|title=General Maung Aye|date=1 April 2010|work=Mizzima Election 2010|publisher=Mizzima News|accessdate=20 August 2011|archivedate=23 August 2011|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110823003130/http://mizzima.com/political-pro/military/military-regime/general-maung-aye.html}}</ref> In 1993, General Than Shwe was promoted directly to Senior general,<ref name=CC76/> and Major General Maung Aye was promoted to Lieutenant general and became deputy of Than Shwe.<ref name=MZMA/>
Lieutenant General Maung Aye was promoted to General in 1994, and then Vice-senior general in 2002. Thus, he became the first person to hold the rank of Vice-senior general.
=== List of rank holders === {|class="wikitable" ! No. ! Photo ! Name ! Date of promotion from previous rank ! Date of promotion to next rank or retirement ! Remark |- | 1. | 100px | Maung Aye | 2002 | 30 March 2011 | Promoted from General. <br>Retired. |- | 2. | 100px | Min Aung Hlaing | March 2012<ref>[https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs13/MA2012-04-03.pdf မြန်မာ့အလင်းသတင်းစာ (၃.၄.၂၀၁၂) (Myanma Alin Newspaper (3.4.2012))] (in Burmese)</ref> | March 2013<ref name="sgmah">[https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs21/Mirror2013-03-28-red.pdf ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၈.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (28.3.2013))] (in Burmese)</ref><ref>[https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs21/Mirror2013-03-25.pdf ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၅.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (25.3.2013))] (in Burmese)</ref> | Promoted from General. <br>Promoted to Senior general. |- | 3. | 100px | Soe Win | March 2013 | – | Promoted from General. <br>Incumbent. |}
== General/Admiral == 'General' or 'Admiral' ({{langx|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး|bauilaʻ khayupaʻ karīʺ}}) is the third highest rank in Myanmar Armed Forces, and traditionally the highest rank that a personnel from Myanmar Navy and Myanmar Air Force can get. It is a four-star general rank.
The rank's Burmese title and insignia is the same for all branches. But Myanmar Navy uses different English translation, to be harmonized with the naval terms. "{{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}" is translated as "General" for army and air force, and as "Admiral" for navy.
Since 2011, the rank "{{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}" is designated to be held by the persons in following appointments. {| class="wikitable" |- ! Appointment ! Service branch ! Number of posts |- style="text-align:center |Chief of General Staff (Army, Navy and Air Force) | {{flagicon image|Army Flag of Myanmar.svg}}{{flagicon image|Naval Ensign of Myanmar.svg}}{{flagicon image|Air Force Ensign of Myanmar.svg}} (can be promoted from any of the three branches) | 1 |- style="text-align:center |Commander-in-Chief (Navy) | {{flagicon image|Naval Ensign of Myanmar.svg}} '''Navy''' | 1 |- style="text-align:center |Commander-in-Chief (Air Force) | {{flagicon image|Air Force Ensign of Myanmar.svg}} '''Air Force''' | 1 |}
Beside these appointments, the Armed Forces personnels appointed as Union Ministers in the government can also hold this rank. Currently, the Union Ministers of the Ministry of Defence<ref name="GNLM:1">{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=2 February 2021|title=Order No (6/2021), Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, Republic of the Union of Myanmar|url=https://cdn.myanmarseo.com/file/client-cdn/gnlm/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2_Feb_21_gnlm.pdf|work=The Global New Light of Myanmar |p=5|access-date=12 April 2021}}</ref> and the Ministry of Transport and Communications<ref name="GNLM:2">{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=4 February 2021|title=Order No (15/2021), State Administration Council, Republic of the Union of Myanmar|url=https://cdn.myanmarseo.com/file/client-cdn/gnlm/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/4_Feb_21_gnlm.pdf|work=The Global New Light of Myanmar |p=5|access-date=18 April 2021}}</ref> are General and Admiral respectively.
=== Insignia === {| class="wikitable" |- !Service branch !!Burmese title !!English title !!Rank insignia !!Golden strap !!Rank medal !!Car insignia |- style="text-align:center | '''Myanmar Army''' <br>and <br>'''Myanmar Air Force''' | rowspan=2| {{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}} | General | rowspan=2| 70px | rowspan=2| 50px | rowspan=2| 50px | rowspan=2| 100px |- style="text-align:center | '''Myanmar Navy''' | Admiral |}
{| class="wikitable" |- ! rowspan=2| Insignia on <br>regular uniform ! of Myanmar Army ! of Myanmar Navy ! of Myanmar Air Force <br> <ref name=JTR>{{Cite web |url=https://cdn-japantimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/np_file_111053.jpeg |title=Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing receives a model plane from Gen. Maung Maung Kyaw in 2019. {{!}} OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT WEBSITE OF SENIOR GEN. MIN AUNG HLAING / VIA REUTERS |access-date=2022-04-23 |archive-date=2022-04-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220421042107/https://cdn-japantimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/np_file_111053.jpeg |url-status=dead }}</ref> |- style="text-align:center | 50px | 50px | 50px |}
== References == {{reflist}}
Category:Four-star officers Category:Military ranks of Myanmar