Four-star rank (Myanmar)

See also: Military ranks of Myanmar

In Myanmar Armed Forces, 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

"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

Burmese title	English title	Rank insignia	Golden strap [1]	Rank medal [1][3]	Flag [4]		Car insignia
ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး	Vice-senior general

Insignia on regular uniform	of Myanmar Army	of Myanmar Navy [5]	of Myanmar Air Force

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,^[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

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

'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 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. "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)	Myanmar Army	1
Commander-in-Chief (Navy)	Myanmar Navy	1
Commander-in-Chief (Air Force)	Myanmar 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

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

1. "File image of Myanmar Army's deputy commander-in-chief, Vice Senior General Soe Win". Flickr.
2. Aung Shine Oo. "Myanmar New Appointed Home Affair Minister". Archived from the original on 2022-04-26. Retrieved 2022-04-21.
3. KoKo LinnMaung (23 July 2019). တပ်မတော် ရာထူးအဆင့်အတန်း အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုအခေါ်အဝေါ်များ [Tatmadaw appointment ranks' nomenclature in English]. Facebook (in Burmese and English).^{[user-generated source]}
4. 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.
5. Fleet Exercise-2020 conducted with involvement of attack submarine Minye Theinkhathu of Tatmadaw (Navy) to enhance defence prowess of State
6. 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.
7. "(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.
8. "General Maung Aye". Mizzima Election 2010. Mizzima News. 1 April 2010. Archived from the original on 23 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
9. မြန်မာ့အလင်းသတင်းစာ (၃.၄.၂၀၁၂) (Myanma Alin Newspaper (3.4.2012)) (in Burmese)
10. ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၈.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (28.3.2013)) (in Burmese)
11. ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၅.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (25.3.2013)) (in Burmese)
12. "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.
13. "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.
14. "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 2022-04-21. Retrieved 2022-04-23.