A general officer is an officer of high military rank. The term or equivalent is used by nearly every country in the world. General can be used as a generic term for all grades of general officer, or it can specifically refer to a single rank that is simply called general.
The various grades of general officer are at the top of the rank structure; lower-ranking officers are known as field officers or field-grade officers, and even lower-ranking o...
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A general officer is an officer of high military rank. The term or equivalent is used by nearly every country in the world. General can be used as a generic term for all grades of general officer, or it can specifically refer to a single rank that is simply called general.
The various grades of general officer are at the top of the rank structure; lower-ranking officers are known as field officers or field-grade officers, and even lower-ranking officers are known as company-grade officers. The General Officer ranks came about by adding General as an adjective to existing names of ranks, although in some countries the highest general officers are titled Field Marshal or Marshal. All officers who commanded more than a single regiment (the most significant level of unit) came to be known as "general officers".
There are two common systems of using general ranks.
One form, the old European system, is used in the United Kingdom from which it eventually spread to the Commonwealth and the...
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