United States Navy officer rank insignia

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Commissioned officers in the Navy have pay grades ranging from O-1 to O-10, with O-10 being the highest; those with paygrades between O-1 and O-4 are designated junior officers, those between O-5 and O-6 are dubbed senior officers, and officers in the O-7 to O-10 range are called flag officers or the "admiralty." In the event that officers demonstrate superior performance, they are given an increase in paygrade; the official Navy term for this occasion is to be promoted. Above the rank of Admiral is the rank of Fleet Admiral, which was given to a select few in World War II, but has not been held by any officer since and is reserved for wartime use. Even higher than Fleet Admiral was the special rank of Admiral of the Navy, which was awarded to only one person, George Dewey, in 1899. Efforts to resurrect the rank in the 20th century failed, making it very unlikely that it will be used again. Commissioned officers originate from the United States Naval Academy, Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), Officer Candidate School (OCS), and a host of other commissioning programs such as the Seaman to Admiral-21 program and the Limited Duty Officer Selection Program.

Commissioned officers can generally be divided into line officers and staff corps; line officers can be further split into unrestricted and restricted communities. Unrestricted Line Officers are the most visible and well-known, due to their role as the warfighting command element in the U.S. Navy. They receive training in tactics, strategy, command and control, and actual combat and are considered unrestricted because they are authorized to command ships, aviation squadrons, and special operations units. Restricted Line Officers, on the other hand, concentrate on non-combat related fields, which include engineering, maintenance, meteorology and oceanography, and intelligence; they are not qualified to command combat units. Staff Corps officers are specialists in fields that are themselves professional careers and not exclusive to the military, for example medicine, law, and civil engineering. They exist to augment the line communities and are able to be assigned to both line and staff commands.

The term "line" is a carryover from the 18th century British tactic of employing warships in a straight line to take advantage of cannons on each side of the ship. These vessels were dubbed "ships of the line" and those who commanded them were likewise called "line officers." Today, all United States Navy line officers denote their status with a star located above their rank devices on the shoulder boards and sleeves of their uniforms. Officers of the Staff Corps replace the star with different insignias to indicate their field of specialty.^[1]

This chart represents the current U.S. Navy officer rank insignia. (Also see the article on Commodore which explains the evolution of this title (no longer a rank) and its relationship to Rear Admiral over the years)

Commissioned Officer Rank Structure of the United States Navy
Fleet Admiral	Admiral	Vice Admiral	Rear Admiral (Upper Half)	Rear Admiral (Lower Half)
O-10	O-10	O-9	O-8	O-7

Captain	Commander	Lieutenant Commander	Lieutenant	Lieutenant Junior Grade	Ensign
O-6	O-5	O-4	O-3	O-2	O-1

Chief Warrant Officer Rank Structure of the United States Navy
CWO5	CWO4	CWO3	CWO2

Navy Officers serve in either as a line officer (with a star above the stripes on the sleeve or shoulderboards), or in one of the eight staff corps:

Staff Corps	Medical Corps	Dental Corps	Nurse Corps	Medical Service Corps	Chaplain Corps (Christian)
Insignia
Designator¹	210X	220X	290X	230X	410X
Staff Corps	Chaplain Corps (Jewish)	Chaplain Corps (Muslim)	Supply Corps	Civil Engineer Corps	Judge Advocate General's Corps
Insignia
Designator¹	410X	410X	310X	510X	250X
¹An officer designator describes their general community or profession. The final (fourth) digit (X) denotes the whether the officer has a Regular (0), Reserve (5), or Full Time Support (7) commission.