Four-star rank (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 (Burmese: 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 (Burmese: ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး): the actual four-star rank.
| Seniority in Armed Forces | Burmese title | English title | Rank insignia | Golden strap [1][2] |
Rank medal [1][2][3] |
Car insignia | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| for Army and Air Force | for Navy | |||||||
| 2. | ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး | Vice-senior general |  |
 |
 |
 | ||
| 3. | ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး | General | Admiral |  |
 |
 | ||
Vice-senior general
[edit]"Vice-senior general" (Burmese: ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး, romanized: 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
[edit]| Burmese title | English title | Rank insignia | Golden strap [1] |
Rank medal [1][3] |
Flag [4] | Car insignia | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး | Vice-senior general | |
|
|
.svg) |
| |
| Insignia on regular uniform |
of Myanmar Army | of Myanmar Navy [5] |
of Myanmar Air Force |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
History
[edit]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,[6][7] his deputy: Lieutenant General Than Shwe to General,[7] and Brigadier General Maung Aye to Major general.[8] In 1993, General Than Shwe was promoted directly to Senior general,[7] and Major General Maung Aye was promoted to Lieutenant general and became deputy of Than Shwe.[8]
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
[edit]| No. | Photo | Name | Date of promotion from previous rank | Date of promotion to next rank or retirement | Remark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  |
Maung Aye | 2002 | 30 March 2011 | Promoted from General. Retired. |
| 2. |  |
Min Aung Hlaing | March 2012[9] | March 2013[10][11] | Promoted from General. Promoted to Senior general. |
| 3. |  |
Soe Win | March 2013 | – | Promoted from General. Incumbent. |
General/Admiral
[edit]'General' or 'Admiral' (Burmese: ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး, romanized: 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 obtain. It is a four-star general rank.
The rank's Burmese title and insignia is the same for all branches. The Myanmar Navy uses a different English translation to be harmonized with the naval terms; "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး" is translated as "General" for army and air force, and as "Admiral" for navy.
Since 2011, the rank "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး" is designated to be held by the persons in following appointments.
| Appointment | Service branch | Number of posts |
|---|---|---|
| Chief of General Staff (Army, Navy and Air Force) |    (can be promoted from any of the three branches) |
1 |
| Commander-in-Chief (Navy) | Navy |
1 |
| Commander-in-Chief (Air Force) | 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[12] and the Ministry of Transport and Communications[13] are General and Admiral respectively.
Insignia
[edit]| Service branch | Burmese title | English title | Rank insignia | Golden strap | Rank medal | Car insignia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Myanmar Army and Myanmar Air Force |
ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး | General | |
|
|
|
| Myanmar Navy | Admiral |
| Insignia on regular uniform |
of Myanmar Army | of Myanmar Navy | of Myanmar Air Force [14] |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 "File image of Myanmar Army's deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win". Flickr.
- 1 2 Aung Shine Oo. "Myanmar New Appointed Home Affair Minister". Archived from the original on 26 April 2022. Retrieved 21 April 2022.
- 1 2 KoKo LinnMaung (23 July 2019). တပ်မတော် ရာထူးအဆင့်အတန်း အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုအခေါ်အဝေါ်များ [Tatmadaw appointment ranks' nomenclature in English]. Facebook (in Burmese and English).[user-generated source]
- ↑ 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 MNA (February 2021). "(Vice-Senior General holds discussions with Australian Vice-chief of Defence Force over phone". Global New Light of Myanmar.
- ↑ Fleet Exercise-2020 conducted with involvement of attack submarine Minye Theinkhathu of Tatmadaw (Navy) to enhance defence prowess of State
- ↑ Mya Win (1991). တပ်မတော် ခေါင်းဆောင်များ သမိုင်း အကျဉ်း (၁၉၄၂ ခုနှစ်မှ ၁၉၉၀ ပြည့်နှစ်အထိ) [A Brief History of Tatmadaw's Leaders (1942 to 1990)] (in Burmese). Yangon: News and Periodical Enterprise. pp. 86–87.
- 1 2 3 "(၇၆)နှစ်မြောက် တပ်မတော်နေ့အထိမ်းအမှတ်အဖြစ် ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင် ခဲ့ကြသည့် ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်၊ တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်(အငြိမ်းစား) များ၏ အမှတ်တရရုပ်တုများ ဖွင့်ပွဲအခမ်းအနားကျင်းပပြုလုပ်" [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.]. Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services (in Burmese). 25 March 2021.
- 1 2 "General Maung Aye". Mizzima Election 2010. Mizzima News. 1 April 2010. Archived from the original on 23 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
- ↑ မြန်မာ့အလင်းသတင်းစာ (၃.၄.၂၀၁၂) (Myanma Alin Newspaper (3.4.2012)) (in Burmese)
- ↑ ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၈.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (28.3.2013)) (in Burmese)
- ↑ ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၅.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (25.3.2013)) (in Burmese)
- ↑ "Order No (6/2021), Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, Republic of the Union of Myanmar" (PDF). The Global New Light of Myanmar. 2 February 2021. p. 5. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
- ↑ "Order No (15/2021), State Administration Council, Republic of the Union of Myanmar" (PDF). The Global New Light of Myanmar. 4 February 2021. p. 5. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- ↑ "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". Archived from the original on 21 April 2022. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
