A Rank Amateur

I don't really know much about the military.  When it comes to the structure of the US Army, most of what I know comes from half-remembered episodes of M*A*S*H, which means that in my head, the order of prominence goes something like Private (no-name redshirts), Corporal (Klinger), Sergeant (?? There must have been some around, but I can't remember any), Captain (Hawkeye, BJ, Trapper John), Major (Burns, Winchester), Colonel (Potter, Blake), General (Guest Star).  Lieutenant goes in there somewhere, too, but I can never remember where.

Now, of course, I knew there were others.  "Lieutenant" can be combined with some other ranks, right?  And there's the Private First Class, unless that somehow still counts as a Private.  Anyway.  So, as usual, I look it up!

According to http://www.army.mil/symbols/armyranks.html, there are at this point in time at least 26 distinct ranks in the US Army depending on how you count (note-- the other branches have different structures, other nations have different structures, and in the past and probably in the future the US Army had and will have different structures, so if you're somehow reading this from 1883, the information is probably not reliable).

Starting from the bottom with the enlisted men, there are two grades of Private (PVT and PV2), Private First Class, Specialist (where privates go who are not command track), Corporal (where privates headed for NCO go), Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Sergeant First Class, Master Sergeant, First Sergeant, Sergeant Major, Command Sergeant Major, and Sergeant Major of the Army (only assigned to one person at a time, the highest you can get as a NCO).  I have to wonder if the large number of Sergeant gradations is in some way indicative of their importance in the Army.

Then there are the five grades of Warrant Officers, the Warrant Officer itself and then four different pay grades of Chief Warrant Officer.  These guys are technical experts in some sort of specialized field.  I'm still not sure how they fit into the structure-- technically they fit in between enlisted men and officers, so they probably take orders from officers, but I don't know if they're really allowed to boss sergeants around.

Anyway, finally there is the Officer class-- Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lt. Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General (it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Major General), Lt. General, General, and the General of the Army (5-star General; no one currently has this title, but it's still part of the structure, as is the General of the Armies which has almost never been used and is also currently empty).  Then, of course, there's the Secretary of Defense and the Commander in Chief, but those aren't strictly speaking officer positions, although of course the positions might be filled by people who are also officers in other respects.