Space Force Survey Asks Personnel to Help Determine New Rank Insignia
As the Space Force continues to progress through the later stages of its transition into a full-fledged branch of the armed forces, the service is asking its personnel to help chose their future rank insignia.
Back in December when the Space Force celebrated its first birthday, it revealed a general name for all members of the service: “Guardians”. At the end of February, a service-specific rank structure was revealed which largely mirrored that of the army and air force. Officer ranks are identical but the same could not be said for enlisted rank names (E-1 through E-4 being Specialist 1 through Specialist 4 and the “sergeants” beginning at E-5). Now that the Space Force has managed to disappoint all who supported a naval rank structure, all that remains is the adoption of insignia for the chosen rank names.
To help this process along, the Space Force is running an internal survey among the guardians, featuring four designs. These were first revealed to the public in a Facebook post made by the AirForceForum. While that, just like our Overt Defense comment section, offers a perfect place to have a protracted online argument about these designs, we’ve included a poll for our readers to see what they think the Space Force should go with.
The first design is most unique, while the others can be clearly linked to those already in use by other services. Aside from changes in the color palette and addition of the Space Force diamond, the second is almost indistinguishable from air force designs while the fourth is almost indistinguishable from the insignia worn by soldiers and marines. The third is basically an inversion of the fourth.
After finishing up insignia designs, the Space Force must still finalize some uniform designs. The Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) has already been selected as the combat utility uniform, featuring “space blue” embroidery which is meant to set guardians apart from OCP-clad soldiers. The Air Force dress uniform, decorated with Space Force lapel pins, currently remains in use but plans for a unique Space Force dress uniform are in the works.