Four-star rank (Myanmar)#Vice-senior general
{{Short description|Military rank in 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 ({{langx|my|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 ({{langx|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}): the actual four-star rank.
Vice-senior general
"Vice-senior general" ({{langx|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး|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 =
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! Burmese title ! English title ! Rank insignia ! Car insignia |
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| {{lang|my|ဒုတိယဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီး}} | Vice-senior general | 70px | 50px | 50px | colspan=2| 100px | 100px |
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! rowspan=2| Insignia on ! of Myanmar Army ! of Myanmar Navy ! of Myanmar Air Force |
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= 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,{{cite book |title=တပ်မတော် ခေါင်းဆောင်များ သမိုင်း အကျဉ်း (၁၉၄၂ ခုနှစ်မှ ၁၉၉၀ ပြည့်နှစ်အထိ) |trans-title=A Brief History of Tatmadaw's Leaders (1942 to 1990) |language=my |date=1991 |publisher=News and Periodical Enterprise |location=Yangon |author=Mya Win |pages=86-87}}{{cite news |url=https://cincds.gov.mm/node/11484?d=1 |title=(၇၆)နှစ်မြောက် တပ်မတော်နေ့အထိမ်းအမှတ်အဖြစ် ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက်တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင် ခဲ့ကြသည့် ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်၊ တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်(အငြိမ်းစား) များ၏ အမှတ်တရရုပ်တုများ ဖွင့်ပွဲအခမ်းအနားကျင်းပပြုလုပ် |language=my |trans-title=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. |date=25 March 2021 |work=Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services}} his deputy: Lieutenant General Than Shwe to General, and Brigadier General Maung Aye to Major general.{{cite web|url=http://www.mizzima.com/political-pro/military/military-regime/general-maung-aye.html|title=General Maung Aye|date=1 April 2010|work=Mizzima Election 2010|publisher=Mizzima News|accessdate=20 August 2011|archivedate=23 August 2011|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110823003130/http://mizzima.com/political-pro/military/military-regime/general-maung-aye.html}} In 1993, General Than Shwe was promoted directly to Senior general, and Major General Maung Aye was promoted to Lieutenant general and became deputy of Than Shwe.
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 =
| class="wikitable"
! No. ! Photo ! Name ! Date of promotion from previous rank ! Date of promotion to next rank or retirement ! Remark |
| 1.
| 100px | 2002 | 30 March 2011 | Promoted from General. |
| 2.
| 100px | March 2013[https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs21/Mirror2013-03-28-red.pdf ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၈.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (28.3.2013))] (in Burmese)[https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs21/Mirror2013-03-25.pdf ကြေးမုံသတင်းစာ (၂၅.၃.၂၀၁၃) (The Mirror Newspaper (25.3.2013))] (in Burmese) | Promoted from General. |
| 3.
| 100px | Soe Win | March 2013 | – | Promoted from General. |
General/Admiral
'General' or 'Admiral' ({{langx|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး|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. "{{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}" is translated as "General" for army and air force, and as "Admiral" for navy.
Since 2011, the rank "{{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}}" is designated to be held by the persons in following appointments.
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! Appointment ! Service branch ! Number of posts |
| style="text-align:center
|Chief of General Staff (Army, Navy and Air Force) | {{flagicon image|Army Flag of Myanmar.svg}} Myanmar Army | 1 |
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| {{flagicon image|Naval Ensign of Myanmar.svg}} Myanmar Navy | 1 |
| style="text-align:center
|Commander-in-Chief (Air Force) | {{flagicon image|Air Force Ensign of Myanmar.svg}} 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{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=2 February 2021|title=Order No (6/2021), Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services, Republic of the Union of Myanmar|url=https://cdn.myanmarseo.com/file/client-cdn/gnlm/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2_Feb_21_gnlm.pdf|work=The Global New Light of Myanmar |p=5|access-date=12 April 2021}} and the Ministry of Transport and Communications{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=4 February 2021|title=Order No (15/2021), State Administration Council, Republic of the Union of Myanmar|url=https://cdn.myanmarseo.com/file/client-cdn/gnlm/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/4_Feb_21_gnlm.pdf|work=The Global New Light of Myanmar |p=5|access-date=18 April 2021}} are General and Admiral respectively.
= Insignia =
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!Service branch !!Burmese title !!English title !!Rank insignia !!Golden strap !!Rank medal !!Car insignia |
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| Myanmar Army | rowspan=2| {{lang|my|ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး}} | General | rowspan=2| 70px | rowspan=2| 50px | rowspan=2| 50px | rowspan=2| 100px |
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| Admiral |
| class="wikitable" |
| style="text-align:center; background:#efefef;"
! rowspan=2| Insignia on ! of Myanmar Army ! of Myanmar Navy ! of Myanmar Air Force |
| style="text-align:center
| 50px | 50px | 50px |
