|
|
A Coherent Imperial Rank System
|
|
|
A Coherent Imperial Rank System
|
This page is an attempt to come up with a systematic set of ranks for the Imperial forces in Star Wars that make sense both from a structural standpoint and from a practical standpoint.
The pixel artwork representing the Imperial rank bars come from Curtis Saxton's old Imperial Rank Site (LINK).
Other people have also attempted to come up with their own coherentized rank systems:
You can add this page to the pile and see if you think it's worthy. I also did an alternative "subtractive" rank system -- it works very well and fits everything from O-1 (Ensign) to O-12 (6 Star High Admiral) on a single 6x1 row.
If you try to account for every “canonical” rank insignia with everyone's “canon” rank; you end up with a schizophrenic mess, made worse because:
They simply flipped rank badges on set as necessary during the filming of A New Hope, presumably to save on the budget.
The costuming department in Return of the Jedi gave every Imperial officer the same (!!!) rank; presumably because John Mollo was no longer on the team (he did ANH and ESB) to keep them “honest”.
While Pablo Hidalgo considers (THIS) rank chart done by Dave Crossman; the costume designer for Rogue One, as canon for the Pre-Yavin Imperial Military, there are significant problems with it from a practical point of view.
For one, compare the ranks given by it:
ARMY
GENERAL
ARMY
COLONEL
OPERATIONS
COLONEL (Galen Erso Flashback)
STORMTROOPER/SECURITY
GENERAL
STORMTROOPER/SECURITY
COLONEL
How are you, a random officer, supposed to know who outranks you in a split second if you have to do a complex set of if/or additions and subtractions based off color rules in your head?
Also, if you rely on color for additive/subtractive values for rank; it raises the possibility of confusing one rank for another in extremely dark or off-color environments.
While it may be true that modern US Military heraldry has color based ranks (Silver outranks Gold – American Lieutenant Colonels have a Silver Oak Leaf while American Majors have a Golden Oak Leaf.); the US Military is the only military in the world as far as I know that adopted such a style, along with having unique insignia for almost every rank rank (Bars for Lieutenants, Railroad Tracks for Captains, Oak Leafs for Majors and Lt Colonels, Eagles for Colonels and Stars for Generals).
Almost everyone else in the world uses a single heraldic element and repeats it to signify individual ranks – i.e. the British Army uses “pips”, where Lieutenants have two pips while Captains have three.
Since John Mollo, the original designer of the Rank Badges was both British and had an intense interest in military history and insignia, he would have gone with what was known to him, i.e. “continental” insignia practices, instead of American.
I strongly suspect Mollo was inspired by 1935-1940 Red Army officers' insignia when he was designing the “Badguy” ranks for A New Hope – something that's especially apparent if you see Alec Guinness in Dr. Zhivago:
Alec
Guinness as Colonel Yevgraf Zhivago c. 1930s in-film.
Mollo himself was uncertain as to what they meant; though admittedly, he was responding off the cuff to an interview question almost thirty years later:
Q. And the Imperial rank badges?
A. They were just push buttons from an electrical store on the Finchley Road! They came in blue and red. The Rebels had the round ones and the Imperials had the rectangles. I believe there's quite a controversy on the Internet about what all these ranks are. Of course, I don't remember, because I don't think I was using any system at all. I think the more senior they were, the more buttons they had.
Star Wars Insider #98 (December 2007) article “Fabric of the Universe”
His original sketch for some of the development of Star Wars' costumes (unfortunately in poor quality and low) show that he was thinking of ranks even back then, with some 3x3 concepts where you can see a glimpse of the later Empire rank bars in them:
Another Mollo sketch done for ANH shows Tarkin with a single row (IMAGE), while a second Tarkin sketch (IMAGE) has this intriguing line:
“4 Blu [next line] officer is Blue”
A few years later, Mollo's Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook (IMAGE) explicitly calls out rank insignia for all major Imperial officers (Ozzel, Veers and Piett), followed by a concept (IMAGE) of Veers in a custom assault uniform with a single row of rank bars. He also produced sketches of Imperial Officers with a single row (IMAGE) and double row (IMAGE); before defining Veers' combat uniform almost exactly as it appears on screen (IMAGE).
Further help was obtained from this ForceNet thread (LINK / ARCHIVE LINK) where “Lt. Hija” – who was the source of the original treatise on Imperial Ranks that WEG created their Imperial Sourcebook Rank Plate (IMAGE) from, added this:
“According to very early John Mollo costume sketches for the Aquillian Rangers of the second SW draft he seemed to have classic army ranks in mind, but that probably changed because a) Lucas wanted to have it simple and b) there is only the Imperial Starfleet or Navy (no original, official source or novelization ever mentioned an "Imperial Army"), rather reminiscent of Nelson's Navy featuring naval officers in blue uniforms and the marines in red uniforms (and apparently highlighted by the ESB rank plaques, featuring blue and red bars - if there were a distinction I'd expect naval officers to only wear blue rank plaques and army officers only red rank plaques which obviously isn't the case in ESB and ROJ)."
Devastator Ranks, A New Hope |
|
|
|
|
Death Star Conference Room Ranks, A New HopeLeft Side of Conference: 4K
/ 4K77 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Death Star Ranks Encountered, A New Hope |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ranks Encountered, Empire Strikes BackEmpire isn't the most consistent – Captains Piett and Needa have 3 bar rank insignia; despite Piett commanding a ship over 100 times the size of Needa's, while the Executor's Sensor Pit officer has 3 bars, putting him on the same rank standing as the Captain of the ship! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Costuming and Ranks Encountered in Rogue One
In November 2017, Glyn Dillon (of Rogue One) posted (THIS) on his Instagram with the following comments, which help explain a lot of the “sausage making” behind set/costume dressing – they have to come up with it and then it's up to the “gods”: glyn__dillon mirahtrunks: glyn__dillon to mirahtrunks |
Uniforms Encountered, AndorAndor is one of the most consistent (internally) Star Wars productions, which makes sense as over 4,000 (!) costumes were made for the show; ensuring that they didn't have to recycle and reuse costumes to save on time/money – especially in creating Imperial “badguy” goon squads that weren't Stormtroopers, allowing Stormtroopers to be restored to their proper place in the Imperial hierarchy – top rank elites – while you may see a Stormtrooper guarding a really important door, the majority of guards guarding the rest of the complex will be from other Imperial Military/Paramilitary organizations.
Another creation in Andor was the extension of “Republic Blues” from the “Blue Guards” we saw in TPM (IMAGE) to an entire blue-uniformed branch that staffs the Imperial Senate:
What's truly interesting is that Blue in the Star Wars galaxy seems to have been adopted almost universally for police type organizations, as shown by: Likewise, Yellow seems to have been adopted to represent medical/health care professionals; per a hospital senior employee (IMAGE) (and almost everyone else on the working floor) wearing yellow jumpsuits. Imperial Dress UniformsDuring Season 2, an episode takes place on Senate Investiture Day, when new senators are sworn in. Naturally, there are many parties celebrating this amongst Coruscant's high level elite, and we get to see Imperial Dress Uniforms during one of these parties. (In Universe / Behind the Scenes) Enlisted Rank InsigniaAndor also gave us our first glimpse of what the Empire's enlisted rank system is; and it's rather brutally simple (as well as WW2 Luftwaffe Fallschirmjager inspired): NCO Grade 1 – One Stripe (S1E6
– Tamaryn Barcona's Disguise / S2E8
“Sergeant” Bloy) However, costuming/continuity screwed up by giving “Sergeant” Bloy in S2E8 one stripe, but “Corporal” Kimzi in S1 E5/6 two. It's possible that there is a difference between white/black bars; but until we get more continuity examples, we have to treat them as equal, due to costume coloration issues – you want your rank insignia to be distinctive against the colors of the uniform; so people wearing dark black uniforms get white bars, while those with lighter colored uniforms get black bars. Sienar Rectangular Bar InsigniaA final closeout was Sienar Technican Niya in S2E1 (IMG A / IMG B) who appears to have a completely new horizontal rectangular bar insignia system on her uniform:
but we don't see enough of this ranking system to be sure what it means. |
||
The Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) in AndorNOTE: Per the old WEG Canon, ISB is part of COMPNOR, and as such is not part of the Imperial Military. Yet they wear Naval Blue Rank bars instead of the Gold they more properly should be wearing. I would imagine this does not endear the ISB to Imperial Intelligence (The Ubiquitorate), who are the actual military intelligence in the Empire. NOTE II: Based off counting chairs in scenes from Andor (IMG A / IMG B); I believe that what we're seeing during the events of Andor are the operations of a single specific ISB Directorate/Department. It's headed by a Department Head (Partagaz), with two assistants (Lagret and an Unnamed Black Male), fifteen Supervisors (Dedra, etc) each backed up by two Attendants (Heert in S1). Presumably since Attendants are two bars, they must have two 1-bar underlings assigned to them to do the true “scut work” of preparing reports. It's specifically stated that every Supervisor is overseeing about two or three sectors. Thus, our single Directorate/Department can only oversee about 30 to 50 sectors. If we assume Yularen has his own version of the meeting room where people of Partagaz's rank report to him, then with about sixteen Directorates under Yularen's control; the ISB can only deeply oversee 600+ sectors out of the 1,000~ in the Empire. But if we further assume that Dedra's Department handles the “problem” sectors in the Empire, then it's quite possible that other ISB Departments in “quiet” regions have significantly more sectors to oversee than Dedra's, making up the difference and allowing the ISB to “oversee” all 1,000+ sectors in the Empire. |
||
|
Level of Control |
ISB Rank and Uniform Color |
Examples |
|
This rank has not yet been seen on screen. Theoretically, they may be assistants for ISB Attendants. |
|
None Seen Yet |
|
Assists their assigned ISB Supervisor. Presumably oversees subordinates of their own (1 Bars). |
|
|
|
Oversees several sectors. Has two (2) Attendants, presumably so that there may be one on duty at all times. |
|
(Lonni) |
|
Assistant Department Head: They assist their department head in the running of their assigned department. There are two in each Department, presumably so that there may be one on duty at all times. |
|
|
|
Department Head: They run a specific department within the Imperial Security Bureau. |
|
(Partagaz) |
|
Runs the ISB as a whole. Please note that whoever replaces Colonel Yularen as the head of the ISB following the Colonel's death onboard the first Death Star will have a different, six bar badge unique to their training to that point. |
|
|
Don't be afraid to throw out “old” canon. Much of it is derived from the old early 1990s Decipher CCG that created so many of these ranks by assigning them to random people in the films so that they'd have flavor text for each card. Since then, every “canon” source derived from their “work” has been the “fruits from the poisonous tree”.
The number of code cylinders don't signify rank directly. Consider the following:
Every ISB Operative (Attendants, Supervisors, Senior Supervisors, Majors, Colonel Yularen) in Andor has a pair of code cylinders, as does Director Krennic.
Your average Lieutenant freshly graduated from an Imperial Sector Academy is so new in service that he only needs a single code cylinder to hold all of his digital security credentials.
Grand Moff Tarkin by the time of A New Hope has been in Republic/Imperial Service since 40 BBY (or 40 years), and on top of that is running multiple SECRET/TOP SECRET projects.
Why keep giving men more cylinders instead of just giving them larger capacity cylinders?
1.) Formats May Have Been Standardized Centuries Ago -- given the length of service (some are 200+ years old) for some Star Wars ships, the form factor for code cylinders may have been fixed into place by design decisions made hundreds of years ago and the need to support such old hardware – the “Windows 9 ate 10” issue.
2.) Internal Security – If you limit the capacity on them to the equivalent of 1.44MB, you prevent espionage by people using them to “leg” classified data out of a secure area.
I believe that the three canonical rank colors (Red/Blue/Gold) represent the main branches of the Imperial Military/Paramilitary structure as follows:
|
|
Navy/Space-Aligned |
|
|
Army/Ground-Aligned |
|
|
Civilian-Aligned |
Furthermore, I believe that the leftmost color represents that wearer's “Primary Branch”, followed by the rightmost color which shows what specific “joint” schooling they've received.
For example, Galen Erso's Rogue One Flashback rank of:
would indicate that he's a 6-bar Ranked Imperial Civilian Officer (Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Ships, Imperial Customs Bureau, etc), who's received the lowest level of “Joint” training for Army operations.
This system of showing schooling level via rightmost rank squares would be quite useful for the kind of “joint” operations that the Empire would have to increasingly execute as the Galactic Civil War increases in intensity. You'd be able to tell at a glance if a Naval officer had received Ground Forces Battalion, Regimental or Battlegroup scale staff training – without requiring a system of complex insignia, badges, or patches.
This might be a hold-over from the early Republic Naval experience in the Clone Wars, where ad-hoc battlegroups and battle squadrons had to be thrown together from multiple races in order to defeat a sudden CIS offensive.
This system of colors for branch training (or equivalent) would also help explain Grand Moff Tarkin's rank bar (the subject of the next question).
Since 1991 and Tom Jung's cover art (5~ MB PNG) for Heir to the Empire; every high level Imperial “Grand” rank is based off Tarkin's ANH badge, which was the only “two row” rank in ANH.
|
|
|
Further confusing the matter was the move to “two-row” rank badges for Empire; as well as Director Krennic's rank in R1/Andor:
|
|
|
The main issues I see are:
How can you tell a “Grand” Moff or Admiral from a regular version of that rank in darkness or off-color lighting?
Do the Gold Squares represent high level training in planetary/sector governance for military officials?
What would happen if we got a Civilian “Director” with authority equal to Admiral Ozzel? Their rank bar could be one of the following variants:
|
|
|
Tarkin's rank badge in ANH is likely the result of his career to that point [per Disney Canon of the Clone Wars show]:
Admiral in the Republic Navy (Top Row Six Blue) (Clone Wars TV Show)
Adjutant General of the Grand Army of the Republic (Bottom Row Three Red) (Clone Wars TV Show)
Appointed Moff of Seswenna sector c. 19 or 18 BBY. (Bottom Row Three Yellow)
Tarkin apparently kept his Naval rank when he was appointed Adjutant General, and then later Moff.
As the first Grand Moff, he would have had extremely wide latitude to design his own rank insignia; similar to how Douglas MacArthur under U.S. Army regulations extant in 1930-1935 could effectively design his own custom uniform as Army Chief of Staff.
I believe that Tarkin, out of pure ego; kept his “old” rank badge, since he was the first (and only) Grand Moff at the time – his face would be his rank insignia.
Furthermore, I believe that the next person appointed to the position of Grand Moff would have their own custom 6x2 badge that represented their career to date, rather than aping Tarkin's, in keeping with the Rank Badge = Training motif.
Presumably the “tell” for “Grand” rank besides their 6x2 badge is that person's uniform – Tarkin because of his Eriaduan upbringing and non-flashy personal aesthetics, simply continued to use the same Olive Drab uniform he'd always worn.
On the other end of the spectrum, Orson Krennic after being promoted to Grand Director may have immediately adopted a customized service uniform with a rather flashy cape. The cape may have been an affection of dress uniforms for General Officers that Krennic “brought forward” to his service uniform. But then again, he was already wearing that cape in the flashback scenes in Rogue One, so this may just have been Krennic being a diva.
Thrawn in Ahsoka (IMAGE) is our best example of what a standard “Grand” uniform looks like – white tunic, silver collar pips, and stylized golden epaulettes on his shoulders.
The old Imperial Sourcebook liked to point out that many higher level Imperial ranks were usually granted as a perfunctory title to political rulers:
[Old Republic] divisions were commonly commanded by planetary governors...
“A surface marshal commands the sector army, although more often than not this is merely an additional title bestowed onto the Moff or Grand Moff who commands the Sector Group.”
“A Sector Group is commanded by a high admiral, usually a title granted to the Moff who heads the sector. If the sector is involved in constant and severe naval actions, the high admiral is a man distinct from the Moff, so the Moff does not have devote all of his time to the naval conflict.”
So wouldn't it also track that the same also holds true for the main government ranks, with titles being granted to whatever rank is appropriate for that political unit? For example, Tatooine is so remote and poorly settled that it's plausible that the Planetary Governor there only has the “equivalent” rank of Major or Colonel.
I believe we can reconcile the pre-Yavin “Single Row” rank system with the ESB “Two Row” rank system; because we have examples of “Two Row” rankers pre-Yavin in the form of Grand Moff Tarkin and Director Krennic.
Krennic himself offers a clue as to how we can reconcile them during the second season of Andor with this exchange:
Sculdun: Senator Mothma, Perrin Fertha, I'm sure you've met before.
Krennic: “Oh, yes. I've been a guest at her [Mothma's Senate] committee on several occasions.”
My reconciliation proposal is very simple:
Two-Row Rankers must have their promotion packets sent to the Imperial Senate so that Senators can provide “Advice and Consent” to the Emperor regarding those promotions. It's a holdover of the Republic Era, where they were deathly afraid of the potential power a General Officer would have in the Republic Judicial Corps – i.e. they could order a warship crew to BDZ a world, declare themselves a local warlord, etc.
This is especially important as more of the “Imperator” class Star Destroyers (ISDs) enter service – as per the old WEG Imperial Sourcebook:
The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag or take on a fleet of lesser enemy vessels […] There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Imperial Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as an Imperial expends to make a single hyperspace jump.
Even the “Imperialized” Senate would be excessively leery of the firepower present in a ship over four times as big (volume-wise) as the largest Clone Wars Destroyer, and would want to ensure that solid, stable personalities would be picked to command such firepower. Palpatine also has these same concerns (albeit slightly different – as he's already thinking forward to the day when the Death Star is unleashed and the chances of mutiny amongst the Imperial forces in response to the destruction of one (or more) major Core Worlds is extremely high) and is more than willing to accommodate the Senate.
Tarkin already passed the gauntlet of Senatorial oversight when he was appointed an Admiral in the Republic Navy during the Clone Wars; and presumably Krennic was passed when he was appointed the Director of Project Celestial Power, a crash program to develop advanced power generation in response to the experiences of many Outer Rim worlds during Clone Wars when the flow of refined energy products was interrupted by CIS blockades. (tl;dr – imagine what would happen if all the oil was cut off to a major industralized economy today in 2025).
But what about all the underlings both Tarkin and Krennic need to run Project Stardust?
Krennic simply can't put their promotion packets into the Senate; because if he does, then a sharp-eyed Senator like Mothma is going to ask why does a Civilian Energy Program need...five Stormtrooper Generals, ten Army Generals, two ISB Sector Directors and one Imperial Customs Bureau Sector Director, etc.
To get around this, Krennic and Tarkin send the promotion packets for their underlings to the Emperor, who “pocket promotes” them to the appropriate “war mobilization” ranks (a concept left over from the Clone Wars) as necessary without notifying the Senate.
If this sounds confusing; consider that Dwight Eisenhower was officially a Lieutenant Colonel in the Regular Army from 1936 to 1943, when he was promoted to Brigadier General in the Regular Army on 30 August 1943. Meanwhile, Eisenhower had already been promoted multiple times in the “Army of the United States” during that time period as follows:
Colonel, Army of the United States: 6 March 1941
Brigadier General, Army of the United States: 29 September 1941
Major General, Army of the United States: 27 March 1942
Lieutenant General, Army of the United States: 7 July 1942
General, Army of the United States: 11 February 1943
In order for this ruse to actually work, everyone so promoted has to still wear their “official” ranks, to maintain cover as they travel back and forth all over the Galaxy as part of Project Stardust/Celestial Power.
If they don't, then some holo-channel is going to give their Sector's Senator a scandoc showing Tagge wearing Sector General rank, when he should be wearing a High Colonel's (or somesuch) rank; and that leads to uncomfortable questions in the Imperial Senate.
There just wasn't really enough time for Palpatine to sign the decrees to mass-promote everyone from their official ranks to their pocket ranks, have it work its way up the bureaucracy and then out to the Death Star before it was destroyed – the time between the dissolution of the Imperial Senate and the Death Star's destruction at Yavin was at best, days.
Another point to be made is that the need to hide information from the Senate would also explain the discrepancy between the older WEG Death Star complement figures (approx. 342,000~), the current canon figures (about 1.2~ million) and realistic figures based on density of turbolasers per square kilometer of surface area against crew complements for a Star Destroyer, which carries about maybe a hundred turbolasers of varying types on a crew of about 36,000.
Even in a galaxy of 100~ quadrillion beings; past a certain level of manpower, things get noticed – what happens if some data slicer notices that about 60 million personnel in the Imperial Navy have all been assigned to “Outpost 41-21F?”
The Senate is going to ask “what's Outpost 41-21F?”
This in turn helps explain some of the rather big plot holes in A New Hope – low density of return fire from the Death Star, lack of TIE Fighters – because it was running on a minimum skeleton crew so as to “run under the Senate's radar”. Presumably after Yavin, the Death Star would have been brought to it's full wartime authorized complement with no Senate to act as a gadfly, and the Rule by Terror would begin...
By the time of Empire Strikes Back three years later:
1.) There's no need for pocket promotions to get around the Senate – everyone can be at the rank appropriate for their position.
2.) The Imperial Military has undergone a massive build-out, no longer constrained by the Senate; towards a fleet size approaching or eclipsing that of the Republic Armed Forces during the final stages of the Clone Wars. That requires a lot more “higher level” personnel.
3.) In keeping with #2, since the Imperial officers in Empire are part of the personal squadron of the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Armed Forces (aka Lord Vader), they have to be promoted upwards to have the rank necessary to handle the massive quantities of manpower and ships that are being thrown across the galaxy to find the Rebellion and crush them.
On-Screen, Death Squadron is somewhere between:
Empire: 1 x Command Ship and 5 Star Destroyers
TO
Jedi: 1 x Command Ship and 36 (!!!) Star Destroyers (4K 1 – 2) (4K83: 1 – 2)
“Admiral” Ozzel (and later Piett) have quite a large force of ships at their command – the old Imperial Sourcebook stated that an Imperial Fleet had 6 Star Destroyers and was commanded by a Fleet Admiral, while a Sector Group contained 24 Star Destroyers with a High Admiral in charge.
Likewise “General” Veers is in charge of a full Stormtrooper Corps (38,000+ men) if we count just the Executor's carried troops alone. If we include the troops on the other ships of Death Squadron (at 9,700 Stormtroopers per Star Destroyer), we get 48,000 more troops in Empire, or 349,200 in Jedi.
Either way, they're in charge of an immense amount of firepower; acting as the immediate Naval or Ground Force subordinates for the Commander in Chief of all Imperial Armed Forces – Lord Darth Vader; so the ranks we see in Empire are subject to “being close to the boss” rank inflation to handle the bureaucratic strain of fighting a galaxy-wide war – Eisenhower's SHAEF HQ had 4,914 men, 4 x Four-Stars (Incl. Eisenhower himself), 5 x Three-Stars and 6 x Two-Stars.
Rank inflation also applies to many of the junior officers, because we're seeing the Star Wars equivalent of the “Admiral's Bridge” in most of the scenes shot in Empire on the Executor; as well as having to take into account the size of a Star Destroyer (37,000 crew) as all subordinate ships in Death Squadron were Star Destroyers, such as “Captain” Needa's Avenger.
It's important to remember that in A New Hope, we don't actually “see” the command staff of the Devastator; we just follow Lord Vader as he leads a company of the Devastator's Stormtrooper complement (200 men out of c. 9,700 men) to seize and search the Tantive IV. Everyone Vader interacts with (“Commander” Prajj and “Commander” Daine Jir) during that scene are drawn from the Stormtrooper / immediate hangar area complement of the Devastator, in other words; relatively junior personnel doing “hands on” work.
I believe this is a result of Vader directly reorganizing Death Squadron over the last three years of the Galactic Civil War (by the time of Empire) to be a more “combined arms” organization; significantly ahead of the greater Imperial armed forces' own modernization – everyone before Yavin was increasingly “siloed” into their own organizations – Ground Forces rarely talked with the Navy, Starfighter Command and the Fleet Staff were at odds, and nobody went to “joint” staff schools (i.e. everyone was ranked in their “home” branch and had solid color rank bars).
The Imperial Force reorganization(s) since Yavin have emphasized “jointness” with a vengeance, particularly after several incidents when “pure” trained officers were “rope-a-doped” by the more flexible Rebels. Vader because of his unique position in the Imperial hierarchy, was able to push reorganization upon Death Squadron with lightning speed, bypassing all existing military bureaucratic fiefdoms through a mysterious spate of crushed tracheas.
This also explains why Vader was so brutal with Admiral Ozzel – by this point Ozzel had attended enough “joint” schooling to fill out the entire lower row of his rank plaque with Army colors. So why did he drop out of lightspeed so close to the Hoth system? Apparently that's the kind of rookie operational mistake in an amphibious operation that even a ground forces officer (Veers) thinks is wrong. – “He felt surprise was wiser.”
Another thing that trips up a lot of people in organizing an Imperial rank chart is that they don't take into account the average person's “slang” as well as formal military protocol. Per Department of the Army Pamphlet 600–60 in many instances, you're allowed to use General for all grades of general, Colonel for colonel and lieutenant colonel, and Lieutenant for all grades of lieutenant under certain conditions; and most civilians default to this.
The second thing that trips up a lot of people is that the commanding officer of a ship is always referred to as “Captain”, irrespective of his actual rank, per these examples from the WWII US Navy:
|
Ship Class |
Rank in Command |
|
PT Boat (56~ tons) |
O-1 (Ensign) to O-2 (Lieutenant j.g) |
|
Patrol Craft (PC) (450 tons) |
O-2 (Lieutenant j.g) to O-3 (Lieutenant) |
|
Landing Craft Infantry, Large [LCI(L)] |
O-3 (Lieutenant) |
|
Patrol Frigate/Destroyer/Destroyer Escort (PF, DD, DE) |
O-4 (Lt. Commander) |
|
Escort Carrier (CVE) |
O-5 (Commander) |
|
Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Large Cruiser (CL, CA, CB) |
O-6 (Captain) |
Now consider the following table of ship volumes:
|
Ship Class |
Volume (m3) |
Multiplier over Prev. Entry |
|
Executor “Super” Star Destroyer
(17600m) |
1.26E10 |
181.29x over Imperial |
|
Imperial Star Destroyer (1600m) |
6.95E7 |
4.4x over Venator |
|
Venator Star Destroyer (1137m) |
1.58E7 |
1.94x over Acclaimator |
|
Acclaimator Assault Transport (752m) |
8.14E6 |
44x over Nebulon-B |
|
Nebulon-B Frigate (300m) |
1.85E5 |
2.89x over Corvette |
|
Corellian Corvette
(150m) |
6.4E4 (rounded off average) (NOTE: The Corvette is so big because of it's massive engines.) |
Not Applicable |
In conjunction with the following statements from the Imperial Sourcebook:
“A Star Destroyer is considered a line in itself. A naval staff study concluded that a Star Destroyer was the equivalent of at least the squadrons of the time, and would be more properly categorized as such. The Admiralty agreed with the analysis, but disagreed with the conclusion. The Admiralty felt that as there were more lines than squadrons, designating the Star Destroyer as a line unit would get them more Star Destroyers. The Admiralty’s thinking prevailed.”
Line. Theoretically a unit of four ships, commanded by a captain of the line.
Squadron. Normally has 14 to 60 ships, commanded by an admiral. Normally the largest force of ships assigned to a single system.
The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag or take on a fleet of lesser enemy vessels. […] There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Imperial Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as an Imperial expends to make a single hyperspace jump.
An Imperial has 375~ times the volume of a Nebulon-B, which supports WEG's old claims of “equal to a squadron”, given that a squadron flagship is likely to be a larger “cruiser” similar to an Acclaimator; while an Executor itself has about 180 (!) times the volume of an Imperial.
From the size discrepancies between all the ships listed above, it's clear that an Imperator will be commanded by a lower-ranked Admiral, while an Executor will have a higher ranked Admiral – yet both of them will be called “Captain” by their crews, per Naval Traditions.
It would only be in extremely formal settings that you would see a full formal title be used – e.g.:
“Vice Admiral Gaver Beren is hereby directed to take command of His Imperial Majesty's Ship Aggressor, command ship for the 45th Independent Sector Group under Fleet Admiral Val Madar.”
A Coherent Ranking System for the
Empire
|
NCO RanksNOTE: I don't yet have the time to work out a ranking system for the enlisted, since we don't see enough NCO ranks on screen to establish a coherent hierarchy of colors, beyond the simplest lower grades that we see. (No Bar)
|
Inferior Officer Ranks (“Single Rowers”)NOTE: The term “inferior officer” is a constitutional term in the United States, referring to those officers who can be appointed without Senate confirmation. I had to think a bit to find the right balance as to how high I wanted “inferior officers” to go; because the Imperial Senate can't be approving every minor promotion, particularly when there are a million major worlds with about 50 million dependencies in the Empire, a significant majority of which need a low ranked General Officer. However, I had to balance this off against the egos of the men in the Death Star Conference room in ANH. They'd be willing to stay as inferior officers to preserve secrecy (as the Death Star Project is a dream job), but they can't be that inferior. I think I managed to get a decent balance here. NOTE II: I had to collapse several Army ranks (Lt. Colonel / Colonel), (1st/ 2nd Lieutenants), along with the Naval ranks of Lieutenant and Lieutenant (Junior Grade) into a single rank; in order to work with a hard limit of 6 bars across (canonical from ANH) and avoid the use of subtractive colors to signify “in-between” ranks, as that would significantly confuse things. NOTE III: The Disney novel “Aftermath: Life Debt” provided me with the rank of Vice General (through Vice General Adambo of the Imperial Army). |
|||
|
Level of Control |
Army Rank |
Naval Rank |
Level of Control |
|
Officer in Training |
Cadet |
Officer in Training |
Midshipman |
|
Platoon (35+ men) |
|
|
C.O. Extremely Light Combatant |
|
Company (180+ men) |
|
|
|
|
Battalion (800+ men) Normal Minimum Unit Size for Extended Surface Ops. |
|
|
C.O., Very Light Combatant |
|
Regiment (3,500~ men) |
|
|
CO, Light Combatant |
|
Battlegroup (14,400~ men) Used for major offensives against known concentrations of resistance. Replaces the older Division of the Republic, which was commanded by a Major General, due to the extremely strong links between Divisions and their Planetary/Sector governments, something anathema to the New Order. |
|
|
CO, Medium Combatant |
|
Corps (69,000+ men). Used to cover all men in a typical planetary invasion force and is considered enough force to retake a world in opposition to the Empire. Corps HQs are also the basis of Imperial Garrison structures; ensuring that every world with an Imperial Garrison has a ready-made HQ for violently reasserting Imperial control if necessary. |
|
|
CO, Heavy Combatant or CO, Squadron of Light Ships– Normally the largest force of ships assigned to a single system. A direct order from a Moff, Grand Moff or the Emperor is necessary to gather more ships in a single system. |
Superior Officer Ranks (“Two Rowers”)NOTE: The term “superior officer” is a constitutional term in the United States, referring to those officers who require Senate confirmation. Following the suspension of the Imperial Senate “for the duration of the present emergency” shortly before Yavin, COMPNOR took over the task of determining an officer's fitness for promotion to the Superior Ranks. Many bright and intelligent officers have seen their careers deadline because an ISB Supervisor considers them to be an “excessive risk”. NOTE II: 2x2 Ranks utilize an unique “gap” designed to make those ranks more rectangular and more immediately recognizable as belonging to the Superior Officer ranks. NOTE III: I've attempted to preserve the “weird ass” flavor of Naval Ranks when compared to Army Ranks – in a logical system, both High General and High Admiral should be the same rank grade... but never underestimate the Imperial Navy's resistance to the New Order's attempts at “rationalization”. The Navy can call upon thousands of years of history in both the Republic Judicials and individual Planetary/Systems/Sector Navies; whereas the Imperial Army is much “newer”, effectively being created whole cloth during the Clone Wars – under the pre-Clone Wars Old Republic, the highest ranking Republican Ground Commander was the Colonel in Chief of the Judicial Regiments. NOTE IV: I had to revive the term “Army Group” in order to create an Imperial Army sector-level organizational resource similar to the Imperial Navy's “Fleets”; to equalize higher level Army ranks with Naval ones. WEG screwed up here long ago in the 1980s by not actually getting a blackboard and mapping everything out beforehand when they were laying out Sector Group organization in the Imperial Sourcebook. |
|||
|
Level of Control |
Army Rank |
Naval Rank |
Level of Control |
|
Army (290,000+ men) An Army is designated as a "sector resource," which means it should be available for action anywhere within the sector. Under the Early Empire (19BBY to 1ABY); Armies acted as a strategic force pool/reserve for subordinate units engaged in combat in that sector. Following several Rebel successes in holding worlds against Corps-level landings, the Imperial Army began to revive and further develop older Clone Wars doctrines regarding the field use of Armies. |
|
|
CO, Star Destroyer or CO, Squadron of Heavy Ships – Normally the largest force of ships assigned to a single system. A direct order from a Moff, Grand Moff or the Emperor is necessary to gather more ships in a single system. |
|
Systems Army (580,000+ men): The Systems Army is more of a bookkeeping level of organization rather than a unit that ever sees action in the field. The primary function of the Systems Army is to make sure that all of its subordinate commanders know where all of the other military resources in the sector are; and to pool specialized support units under a single commander. |
|
|
CO, Star Cruiser (Executor or Larger) or CO, Systems Force – Contains several squadrons and is responsible for several systems. |
|
Army Group – Army Groups are a revival of an older Clone-Wars organizational concept – they mirror the Navy's Fleet as being a “sector resource” that can be sent to any point within the sector. Most of the time, an Army Group consists of a “Heavy” Army with a large amount of supplemental attachments; but configurations of up to five Armies have been studied; in case the great Clone-Wars era sieges have to be recreated in the campaign against the Rebellion. |
|
|
CO, Fleet – A fleet is designated as a "sector resource," which means it should be available for action anywhere within the sector. A fleet is also the smallest unit transferred between sectors. A space superiority fleet contains 6 ISDs and 390+ other combat ships. |
|
Sector Army -- This organization covers all Imperial Army forces in a given sector; and acts as a pool for specialized support units that a subordinate commander can request. Most of the time, the rank of Sector Marshal is granted to the Moff of that sector; but if that sector is undergoing heavy combat, a separate Sector Marshal is assigned to the sector to free up the Moff. |
|
|
CO, Sector Group – Contains 24~ ISDs and about 1,600 other combat ships. Most of the time, the rank of High Admiral is granted to the Moff of that sector; but if that sector is undergoing heavy combat, a separate High Admiral is assigned to the sector to free up the Moff from having to handle large scale naval engagements as well. |
|
The rank of Grand Marshal, is in the view of the Imperial Navy; a political sop to the Imperial Army to mollify several influential personages, amongst them the well-connected Baron Cassio Tagge. Other than hypothetical studies for seizing a Coruscant-level city-planet, the Navy can find no plausible reason for a Grand Marshal rank to exist, as several Army Groups under the overall command of a Sector Marshal can defeat 90% of all possible planetary forces in all hypothetical invasion scenarios; while the Imperial Navy can handle the remaining 10% outliers via blockades or bombardment. Palpatine will have none of it; previously having declared the rank for the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army on Empire Day, 18 BBY. As part of the post-Yavin reforms, several Grand Marshals have been declared; to keep the Imperial Army's political creatures on the Emperor's side as part of the reward for not complaining (too much) about the recent promotions of several Navy officers to the rank of Grand Admiral. |
|
|
The rank of Grand Admiral saw moderate use in the Clone Wars; most famously when Grand Admiral Tillo led multiple sector fleets to the relief of Coruscant during the Battle of Coruscant (19 BBY / ROTS Opening). [NOTE: Apparently over a thousand Venators were in the opening ROTS battle.] The rank was then partially retired during the post-Clone Wars drawdown; becoming reserved for the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Navy. Recently, the Emperor has once again awarded the rank to several Admirals as part of post-Yavin military reforms circa 2ABY. |
|
Important Lore Point for the “Grand” Ranks: A big point that many big time authors who get “handed the keys” to Star Wars canon forget is that Palpatine moved quite slowly and carefully in setting up events over the entire period we see him in Star Wars from TPM (40 BBY) to ROTJ (4 ABY). He took almost two decades after the declaration of the Empire in ROTS to set up the next phase of his plan. Retiring a significant amount of Clone Wars era ranks and tonnage to mollify the “peace” movement in the Imperial Senate is something a realistically written Palpatine would do; because in the end, Palpatine got his main goal: growing the Republic/Imperial military from virtually nothing pre-TPM to a fairly strong fleet post ROTS (presumably about five thousand Venators were agreed to be kept on the post-war Fleet Rolls) that he could use as cadre for his future planned explosive growth (i.e. 25,000 ISDs by 4 ABY). This also applies to the “Grand” ranks – he wants to keep them around so that the institutional knowledge of commanding at such a high level isn't lost, but the peaceniks don't want the rank(s) to continue now that the “emergency” of the Clone Wars is over. The interim solution is to make them the CINCs of the Imperial Military, something the peaceniks would go along with grudgingly. This rationalization also puts Tarkin's 6x2 in ANH and Krennic's 6x2 in Andor into a new light – there are multiple rationalizations there:
|
|||
Civilian/Paramilitary InsigniaIn the Empire, “Civilian” ranks are closely associated with three colors:
Gold – Associated with many of the traditional technical/semi technical “services” necessary for civilization: Customs, Bureau of Ships and Services [BoSS], Corps of Engineers, etc
White/Black – Associated with governments or civilian NGO organizations. Gained prominence during the Clone Wars due to the needs of identifying organizational authority across tens of thousands of species across a galaxy-spanning war. NOTE: White rank squares were introduced in the old “Legends” comic book adaptation of Splinter of the Mind's Eye with Captain-Supervisor Grammel's rank (IMAGE). Naturally, the artists messed up his rank badge. Black squares apparently were introduced in the old Star Wars Newspaper Comics – in the old days of newspaper comics, Sunday comics were in full color, so we know that the rank square(s) were indeed black. Much like in “our” galaxy, civilian organizations borrow heavily from military ranks – one only needs to look at the NYC Department of Sanitation's OFFICIAL PORTRAIT for a Director (heh). All you need to do is borrow the existing one-row "Inferior" rank system from the Imperial Army (or Navy) and adapt it to your organization's needs; changing the uniform color or cut to something non-Imperial military for those worlds who are still politically independent. Only the largest and richest worlds (Coruscant and Corellia) have enough political influence to be able to use two-row "Superior" ranks for their internal forces. Anyone else trying to do so was reminded of the errors of their ways by the Republic (and later Imperial) Senate as they acted to preserve their own institutional power. NOTE: Pay close attention to the "scale" of your planet/locale when designing your paramilitary organization. Imperial officers are willing to overlook some rank inflation for social status in planetary or systems organizations. Anything more than that marginal inflation quickly makes Imperial officers openly contemptuous of these organizations, which is excellent fodder for players/GMs in role-playing games. NOTE II: Some titles from the NYC Department of Sanitation (in order of precedence from highest to lowest) for you to “borrow” are: Director The titles of the NY Police Department (in order of precedence from highest to lowest) are: Commissioner The titles of the US Forest Service (in order of precedence from highest to lowest) are: Chief of the Forest Service There's plenty of room there for you to design your local paramilitary or civilian forces. |
||
Government Insignia at the Planet/System LevelIn the majority of cases by 8 BBY, major government figures are military officers appointed directly by the Emperor (or his subordinates) and as such, retain their military ranks and titles when they assume their new duties as government leaders, so the following rank badges are becoming quite rare in the New Order as the Emperor and his minions rush to "reorganize", "restructure", or "modify" millions of worlds to place them under reliable military governance in anticipation of the unveiling of the Death Star. In “theory”, the Prefect, Provost and Undermoff are supposed to act in their superiors' stead if they're indisposed and relieve the pressure of governing a planet, system, or sector. In reality, many of these subordinates are the actual “powers behind the throne” as their superiors are often too busy with personal or vanity projects to pay much attention to their actual jobs. It's a calculated risk that often goes wrong, as many leaders find to their discomfort during a visit by Lord Vader, followed by field promotions for their subordinates to the now-vacant position. NOTE: The role of Planetary/Systems leadership may be combined in one person, or even all three roles, depending on how sparse and remote the region is; so don't be afraid to combine roles as necessary in the Outer Rim. |
||
|
Planetary Leadership |
Systems Leadership |
Sector Leadership |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
