Ranks

Starfleet maintains a system of ranks inherited from Earth's ground and naval militaries. The rate symbols no longer dictate pay grade as they once did as economics works rather differently at this point, but they do help to make the hierarchy generic to facilitate translation into other languages and equivocation between ranking systems for civilian navies, shipping vessels etc. All ranks are shown on an administrative-track uniform colour for the sake of example; the cadet ranks are shown on the dark grey cadet division colour, as cadets do not specialise into a division until graduation.