The top row of the chart below shows the position of each rank in the sequence. The second and third rows show the possible ranks and insignia of the navy version. The fourth row shows the possible ranks and insignia of the air force version. Arabic titles are in the bottom row.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
NONE Midsh	Sub-Lt	Lt	Lt- Commander	Commander	Captain	Commodore	Rear Admiral	Vice- Admiral	Admiral	Admiral of the Fleet
Ensign						Cdre- Admiral
Pilot Officer	Flying Officer	Flight Lt	Squadron Leader	Wing Commander	Group Captain	Air Commodore (or equivalent marshal rank)	Air Vice- Marshal	Air Marshal	Air Chief Marshal	Marshal of the [service's name] or Marshal of the Air Force
Mulazim	Mulazim Awwal	Naqib	Raid	Muqaddam	Aqid	Amid	Liwa	Fariq	Fariq Awwal	Mushir

• Though an officer rank, Midshipman is traditionally not a commissioned rank (instead being immediately below all commissioned ranks) and is therefore not entitled to insignia of this type. Ensign and Mulazim are commissioned ranks (fully equivalent to Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer).

• Which naval rank Amid is appropriately translated as depends on the insignia worn.

• Traditionally there is no exact naval equivalent of Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer, but such a rank is possible. Ensign is the least inappropriate alternative to Midshipman being immediately below Sub-Lieutenant (it exists in the South African Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy among others).

• Traditionally there is no Commodore-equivalent flag rank, but such a rank is possible. Commodore-Admiral is the least inappropriate choice of title (it was used briefly by the US Navy).

• If an air force has army officer ranks, army rank insignia (see page 1) should be used instead of insignia of this type.

• An Air Commodore-equivalent marshal rank is possible but unprecedented in the context of RAF-style officer ranks.

• Examples of 'Marshal of the [service's name]' are Marshal of the Royal Air Force and Marshal of the Royal Australian Air Force. The alternative is Marshal of the Air Force, which exists in a number of air forces. (This variation in title is of no concern – the difference is slight, they're all marshal ranks, they're all distinctively air force ranks, their equivalence is unmistakable and promotions to such ranks are very rare.)

• The rank of Midshipman is represented by 'turnbacks' on the collar instead of gold lace on sleeves. The turnback comprises a white rhomboid piece of cloth with a gold button at one end and a length of white cord. The shoulder board/slide version differs in that it is smaller and the white cloth is rectangular. (Naval officer cadet insignia are the same as for midshipmen except that the button and cord are worn without the white cloth.)

• Rank stripes are worn on sleeves (on the forearm part), shoulders or elsewhere, depending on the order of dress.

• For the rank between Captain and Rear Admiral a length of medium-width gold lace is crimped to form a ring, which is worn against the upper edge of the broad stripe. For other naval officer ranks the uppermost or only band of gold lace is crimped to form a curl. Curls/rings on sleeves have a diameter of 1 ¾" for Commodore and below and 2" for flag ranks.

• Gold rank insignia may be worn with some orders of dress (such as mess dress) by air force officers.

Military services make acting rank appointments from time to time. This involves permitting a person to have the title (formally preceded by 'acting') and insignia of a rank that is higher than the rank the person is officially listed as holding (the actual rank).

Several navies use Acting Sub-Lieutenant as an actual or quasi-actual rank at Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer level. Acting Sub-Lieutenant is properly the counterpart of (army) Acting Lieutenant and Acting Flying Officer, not a counterpart of actual Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer. The clumsiness of this arrangement is obvious in that an acting sub-lieutenant, by definition, is entitled to the rank insignia of an actual sub-lieutenant whereas second lieutenants and pilot officers wear Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer insignia.

A number of errors concerning junior officer ranks have involved adding a narrow stripe to the medium stripe at Sub-Lieutenant/Flying Officer level and moving the medium stripe-on-its-own down to Ensign/Pilot Officer level. Which rank title goes with which rank level and which insignia design is no longer self-evident. What looks exactly like a sub-lieutenant or flying officer may be an over-dressed holder of a lower rank.

Before we deal with individual examples there are several arguments against this variation of the system in a general sense that ought to be stated.

The very fact the narrow stripe is an option for the Ensign/Pilot Officer-level rank and a medium stripe is an option for the rank above implies that adding to them is excessive.

Ensign/Pilot Officer-level ranks are represented by a narrow stripe in other insignia systems also, e.g. the French system (in which the lowest commissioned ranks are represented by one or more narrow stripes).

The sequence with the lone narrow stripe forms a true pattern, tidy and logical: each rank with a narrow stripe is below two ranks without a narrow stripe. (Having a rank that has a medium and a narrow stripe means that a rank that has three medium stripes and a narrow stripe is required to complete the pattern, which is possible only with a superfluous additional rank.) It's also neater in terms of the company officer/field officer distinction for services that apply that distinction: each rank with the narrow stripe is the lowest of each of these rank classes.

If it seems that the rank insignia of higher and/or lower ranks are based specifically on those of British services (which is the case with a large number of services), it follows that junior officers' stripes should be interpreted on that basis, i.e. the medium stripe represents Sub-Lieutenant/Flying Officer.

Sub-Lieutenant has been represented by a medium stripe (without additional stripes) since it was given sleeve lace in 1863. Flying Officer has been represented by a medium stripe and Pilot Officer by a narrow stripe since their inception.

Having the narrow stripe at Ensign/Pilot Officer level and the medium stripe at Sub-Lieutenant/Flying Officer level in all services that use the system would result in there being no contradiction between different services and no instance of the sequence going from no stripes straight to two stripes, regardless of whether the rank immediately below Sub-Lieutenant is represented by a turnback or a stripe:

1	2
Midshipman	Sub-Lt
Ensign	Sub-Lt

Finally, deviating from the arrangement that is traditional for Commonwealth countries is simply unnecessary and doing so has achieved nothing but disorder and confusion.

It's hard to say why such changes were made. The way the United States Navy arranges its junior officers' stripes may have had something to do with why services of neighbouring allies such as Canada and Jamaica altered theirs. However, this is nowhere near a substantial enough basis for the change.

Indeed, from the American – or anyone's – point of view it used to be much easier. There was no need to be informed of the ranks and insignia of different services on an individual basis. All you had to do was recognise that a service's ranks and rank insignia were of the British model and interpret them accordingly. Nowadays it's necessary to acquaint yourself with different and contradictory versions of the system, depending on which services you're dealing with.

Interestingly, the USN previously had the stripe arrangement that is correct for the two lowest commissioned rank levels in the British version, and before the British did. Ensign had the narrow stripe when the USN introduced the rank in 1862, at which time the rank immediately above had the medium stripe on its own. The RN gave the medium stripe to Sub-Lieutenant the following year (it didn't have any stripe until then). It wasn't until 1881 that the USN (for no obvious reason) gave Ensign the medium stripe and added a narrow stripe to the rank above.

Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy now has a narrow stripe in addition to the medium stripe. The Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force equivalent, likewise, has an additional narrow stripe. Being Lieutenant, not Flying Officer, ideally it would have stars (see page 3) without any stripe at all.

The RCN is a navy that treats Acting Sub-Lieutenant as a Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer equivalent. A Canadian acting sub-lieutenant has an actual sub-lieutenant's medium stripe (which is correct insofar as the rank title is represented properly). However, because actual sub-lieutenants have wrongly been given an additional narrow stripe, the rank insignia of an acting sub-lieutenant is different from that of an actual sub-lieutenant! This makes it abundantly clear that in the RCN Acting Sub-Lieutenant, despite the designation, is by no means an 'acting' position.

Flying Officer's stripe has been moved down to misrepresent Second Lieutenant in the Army and Air Force. Being Second Lieutenant, not Flying Officer, ideally it would have a star, not a stripe of any kind.

The Canadians have even gone so far as to give officer cadets (of all three services) the narrow stripe of pilot officers.

Jamaica's (pseudo-navy) coast guard renamed Lieutenant 'Lieutenant (Senior Grade)'. Apart from being unnecessary and wordy, there's already a senior grade of Lieutenant – Lieutenant-Commander. The only thing I can imagine being used as a pretext for the addendum is a desire to distinguish it clearly from the army rank of Lieutenant. But they didn't do the same thing with Captain, which is distinguished from the (much lower) army rank of Captain by putting '(N)' after 'Captain', which is far more sensible.

Sub-Lieutenant was displaced by introducing the USN rank of 'Lieutenant (Junior Grade)'. Unlike the '(Senior Grade)' in the rank above, '(Junior Grade)' is not redundant. Instead the whole thing is redundant (as well as being gratuitously wordy) as there was already a rank that was immediately below Lieutenant whose title meant much the same thing – Sub-Lieutenant. Though the rank is in Sub-Lieutenant's position, a narrow stripe was wrongly added to the medium stripe.

Despite the fact that Sub-Lieutenant had ranked immediately below (naval) Lieutenant since its inception, and continues to do so all over the world, the Jamaicans moved it down to Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer level. And it still has Sub-Lieutenant's medium stripe. So Jamaican sub-lieutenants are indistinguishable from real sub-lieutenants who have real Sub-Lieutenant insignia, but rank below them.

Brunei's navy has made the same mistake with its stripes as the naval services of Malaysia, Canada and Jamaica. However, the Royal Brunei Navy uses army officer ranks. So not only are junior officers misrepresented as having naval ranks, they're misrepresented as having higher naval ranks.

The Royal Malaysian Navy replaced English rank titles with Malay ones in 1980 (rightly so for a Malay-speaking country, though they could have done it a bit better). English titles are still used officially, but only for translation. Sub-Lieutenant was changed to Leftenan Madya (approximate literal translation: Middle Lieutenant), which has a narrow stripe in addition to the medium stripe. The RMN's equivalent of Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer has same title as the equivalent in the other Malaysian services, Leftenan Muda (literally Junior Lieutenant), which has Sub-Lieutenant's medium stripe instead of a narrow stripe. That the Royal Malaysian Air Force continues to use the correct stripe sequence makes the RMN's deviation seem all the more maladroit and egregious.

There should be no naval lieutenant rank at Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer level. Three lieutenant ranks exist already (Lieutenant-Commander, Lieutenant and Sub-Lieutenant). A lieutenant rank is unorthodox for Commonwealth countries and non-Commonwealth English-speaking countries generally. A non-lieutenant rank in this position would be less of an aberration in terms of tradition. Sub-Lieutenant (being the rank immediately below Lieutenant) is traditionally the lowest lieutenant rank and there's no reason why this shouldn't remain the case. Midshipman is not a lieutenant rank, so it's appropriate that an alternative rank immediately below Sub-Lieutenant not be a lieutenant rank either.

Ensign is the obvious candidate. Since its adoption by the USN, supplanting Passed Midshipman (which was held by midshipmen who were qualified for promotion to commissioned rank), it has in the English-speaking world become widely and almost entirely known as a naval equivalent of Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer.

The South African Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy have Ensign, have it in the right place and represent it properly with a single narrow stripe. As well as the US Navy and US Coast Guard, non-Commonwealth naval services whose Second Lieutenant-equivalent is Ensign include those of the Philippines and Ireland. Non-lieutenant ranks are used in many non-English-speaking countries' navies at the same level.

It was decided recently that the Royal Navy should have an exact equivalent of Second Lieutenant and Pilot Officer. Rather than introduce Ensign (or some other rank), Midshipman – after more than four hundred years of existence in the RN – was upgraded to become a commissioned rank.

On the one hand, it's the least disruptive way of eliminating gaps in the officer rank structure across the armed forces. The title, insignia, position of Midshipman in relation to Sub-Lieutenant, and traditional role of midshipmen as a link in the chain of command between lieutenant-rank officers and other ranks can be maintained.

On the other hand, Midshipman has a very long and prominent history as a rank below Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer level, most services that have Midshipman have not upgraded it, Ensign's position is not ambiguous, and Ensign's insignia represent it clearly as a commissioned rank. (Giving Ensign insignia to Midshipman to convey its new status is not a sensible idea. The point of retaining the rank is regard for tradition, but replacing the turnbacks would defy tradition. Doing so would also create ambiguity about the name of rank whereas the turnback – virtually unchanged since 1758 – is very well known as being specific to Midshipman.)

If Midshipman were more common than Ensign as an exact Second Lieutenant/Pilot Officer equivalent, there would be much less ambivalence about whether this was a better option than introducing Ensign. In any case, the rank system and the rank insignia system can accommodate, neatly and without modification to a higher or lower rank, either Midshipman or Ensign as the rank immediately below Sub-Lieutenant.

There seems to be some inconsistency in the position of the ring in relation to the stripe worn by commodores and equivalent flag officers. There is no basis for determining that there should be a gap between the ring and the stripe (which looks peculiar anyway).

The difference in the size of the curl, or (for a rank between Captain and Rear Admiral) ring against the stripe, is more significant than it may seem. The larger curl or ring is the element of this type of insignia that distinguishes flag ranks as a class (it isn't the broad stripe because that's also worn by commodores).

Commodore	Commodore-equivalent flag rank

Judging from recent photographs of officers of the Royal Australian Navy, it appears that the RAN has recently reduced the size of flag officers' curls to the same size as for non-flag ranks. What's most striking about this is not its result but that people bothered to make it happen. Neither cost nor practical considerations could have been a significant concern. The matter didn't need simplifying; it was simple enough (and logical) already. A number of navies that have made changes to their rank insignia that are more irksome have not made this particular change.

Zimbabwe's air force inherited 'Air Lieutenant' and 'Air Sub-Lieutenant' from the Rhodesian Air Force. These ranks supplanted Flying Officer and Pilot Officer in 1970 (correct Flying Officer and Pilot Officer insignia remain). They are gratuitously inconsistent with ranks of other air forces. That the insignia and other rank titles are normal invites the assumption that Flying Officer and Pilot Officer are their names. The prefix 'air' is a characteristic of the most senior officer ranks, not junior officer ranks (hence the term 'air ranks'). 'Air Sub-Lieutenant' being junior to Sub-Lieutenant is needlessly awkward, as is the co-existence of 'Air Lieutenant' with the too-slightly different Flight Lieutenant. And there's simply no benefit to be derived from such an aberration.

The South African Air Force has army rank titles. Therefore it should have army rank insignia and until recently it always had. Officer ranks up to and including Colonel are now represented by a nonsensical scheme comprising stripes that neither resembles the navy version nor conforms to the formula according to which army rank devices are employed. See page 1 for SAAF general ranks.

Though the Canadians are putting up some strong competition, the grand prize for craziness must go to Ghana's air force. The stripe of an air commodore is now accompanied by what seems to be the insignia of 'full' (i.e. three ranks higher) General, the latter being worn immediately above the stripe. A star is added to the general officer design for each successively higher air rank as well as each having the correct stripes.

Firstly, the (extremely obvious) fact is that nothing can distinguish the officer ranks of Ghana's air force more clearly than the traditional stripes on their own. Any such addition cannot be regarded an improvement – or sensible – on any basis. Secondly, there is the redundancy of attempting to represent a rank in two different ways in the same place. Thirdly, general officer designs are being used for air ranks (Ghana's air ranks have also been given general officer gorget patches). Fourthly, the general officer designs represent ranks that are three levels higher than the ranks held by the wearers, including ranks so high that they don't even exist.

Ghana's military even issued a cringeworthy self-congratulatory press release about changes to air force rank insignia, which describes them spuriously as 'part of efforts to restructure and modernise all aspects of the Ghana Armed Forces' and 'necessary' (??!!) in order to distinguish air force ranks from those of other organisations.

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