This is some info I wrote up for the use of our staff artists, describing the basic designs of the uniforms worn by a few of the galaxy's major space forces in the Symphony of the Sword timeframe. These have been described in stories a few times, but I felt a more comprehensive design spec was called for. As I was writing it up, it expanded beyond its original purpose, so I decided to put it up here for readers' potential amusement and/or edification.

It's a bit rough, since it's intended just as a guide rather than a BPGD-style metadocument, but I decided to put it here in case anybody out there might benefit from some of the secondary information included in it. If I were to do it up as a BPGD file, it would have to have much fancier graphics for things like the rank markers, and that's not a project I felt like taking on just now.

Enjoy, or not, as the spirit moves you.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

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FEDERATION STARFLEET

Starfleet officers wear the uniform from the later seasons of "Star
Trek: The Next Generation" - the two-piece, mostly black outfits with
the jackets that zip up the back, the "arrowhead" commbadges, and the
little gold collar pips (or chevrons, for enlisted personnel) denoting
rank. The colored panels on the jackets correspond to the TNG color
scheme as well (maroon for command personnel, mustard for tactical,
security, and engineering, blue for sciences and medical). And no, I
don't know how Starfleet officers manage to dress themselves if their
uniform jackets zip up the back.

It has been canonically established that Starfleet wore the "Star
Trek: The Motion Picture" bootie-PJs uniforms prior to these, and I
believe has been implied that they had the TOS-style velour-shirts
uniforms before that.

When in potentially hostile situations, Starfleet personnel sometimes
carry those little dustbuster-shaped hand phasers. Wearing of
personal weapons aboard ship is frowned upon in Starfleet, except for
security personnel actively engaged in their duties.

WEDGE DEFENSE FORCE

FI-era WDF uniforms aren't based on any specific uniform from SF, but
have stylistic roots to various anime-space-navy outfits. They
feature double-breasted, peacoat-style jackets (sort of that Captain
Gloval look) in royal blue with gold trim, buttons, and a loop of gold
braid on the left shoulder (runs under the arm, attached to the
epaulet fore and aft). The WDF roundel (white delta on red) is worn
on the left chest. Any special service insignia - pilot wings, etc. -
are worn just below the roundel; decoration ribbons are worn in a grid
above, but customarily only put on for special occasions. Patches on
the right shoulder show the ship's crest, if the officer is assigned
to a particular vessel, or the unit crest if attached to a shoreside
headquarters unit.

Underneath the jacket, WDF officers wear a white button-front shirt
with short sleeves and no collar. Below the jacket and undershirt,
slightly baggy white trousers bloused into mid-calf black boots.
Officers holding the rank of lieutenant commander or higher are
permitted to wear a white cravat; smallcraft pilots may wear an
aviator's scarf. Veritech fighter pilots and Destroid pilots are
allowed to wear rowelless spurs on their boots. Officers who have
been pilots but are now serving in staff jobs are permitted to keep
their badges of pilot status (wings, spurs, etc.) unless they left
active pilot duty because of disciplinary action.

The names of ranks differ depending on the WDF member's branch of
service. Naval personnel use one set of names, while smallcraft and
Destroids pilots, as well as tactical troops, use the other set.
Below, naval ranks are listed first, then tactical ranks.

O-11	Admiral of the Galaxy / Field Marshal
O-10	Grand admiral / Marshal
O-9	Admiral / General
O-8	Vice admiral / Lieutenant general
O-7	Rear admiral / Major general
O-6	Commodore / Brigadier
O-5	Captain / Colonel
O-4	Commander / Lieutenant colonel
O-3	Lieutenant commander / Major
O-2	Senior lieutenant / Captain
O-1	Lieutenant / Lieutenant
E-6	Master chief petty officer / Sergeant major
E-5	Senior chief petty officer / Master sergeant
E-4	Chief petty officer / Sergeant
E-3	Petty officer / Corporal
E-2	Able-bodied spaceman / Senior trooper
E-1	Ordinary spaceman / Trooper
E-0	Spaceman recruit / Trooper recruit

NOTES:

- O-11 is the Supreme Commander of the WDF. The WDF has only one
O-11-grade officer at a time. Presently, that is Field Marshal Dave
Ritchie.
- There are currently no tactical officers with the grade of O-10.
- The rank of commodore is rarely used in the WDF, but when it
appears it denotes a real grade level, O-6. This is distinct from its
usage in the IPSF, where it is a courtesy title given to a captain who
is in temporary command of a force of more than one ship.
- The WDF has no rank corresponding to ensign/second lieutenant.
- "Spaceman" is pronounced with the "a" in "man" clipped, as in "foreman".

Gold rank pins are worn on the jacket's collar tabs, as follows:

O-11	Six-armed spiral galaxy silhouette (in WDF parlance, "the Galaxy")
O-10	5 four-pointed stars arranged in a pentagon
O-9	4 four-pointed stars arranged in a diamond
O-8	3 four-pointed stars arranged in a triangle
O-7	2 four-pointed stars arranged in a vertical line
O-6	1 four-pointed star
O-5	A plain disc about the size of a quarter ("the Planet", "the
	  Full Planet", as in "a full-planet colonel")
O-4	A circle the same diameter as the captain's disc, crossed
          with two right-angle diagonals (a circled X, a la later
	  X-Men logos; "the Cross")
O-3	The above with only one crossbar ("the Bar Sinister")
O-2	The above with no crossbars (just a circle) ("the Ring")
O-1	No pin

Enlisted personnel wear a different, much simpler uniform consisting
of dark blue fatigues with division-of-service pins worn below the
chest roundel, right shoulder unit patches, and left shoulder stripes
denoting grade:

(actually, they're arranged vertically, but you get the idea)

/////	E-6
////	E-5
///	E-4
//	E-3
/	E-2
	E-1
X	E-0

The standard WDF sidearm is the BlasTech DL-44 heavy blaster pistol.
Officers and NCOs above petty officer must wear their sidearms at all
times, except for medical personnel who object to carrying weapons.

INTERNATIONAL POLICE SPACE FORCE

We've seen two IPSF uniforms, both derived from other Starfleet
uniforms seen on Star Trek.

The IPSF dress uniform is very similar to the Starfleet uniforms
introduced in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". In the IPSF version,
the jacket is black rather than maroon, and a commbadge in the shape
of the IPSF logo,

is worn in place of the Starfleet arrowhead on the left chest. The
belt bucklet on the jacket is a plain silver disc.

Color coding in the IPSF works slightly differently from the Starfleet
codes. Command is denoted by bright red (matching the star),
engineering by white, medical by "surgical green", science by royal
blue, and tactical/security by gold. In the dress uniform, the
department colors are reflected by the undershirt (with a ribbed
half-turtleneck collar, as in the movies), the face of the shoulder
strap and left-sleeve-cuff stripe, and stripes down the outside seams
of the pants.

Rank pins are worn on the shoulder strap and left sleeve "cuff
stripe", and correspond to those in the movies.

The IPSF daily duty uniform is similar to the Starfleet uniforms from
the late seasons of DS9 and the last three movies - black two-piece
outfits with sorta-dressy pants and front-zip jackets. The jackets
have that same blue-grey ribbed shoulder yoke. In the IPSF, they're
worn over the same undershirts that go with the dress uniform, with
the Star Trek II-style half-turtleneck collar, and have a
department-color stripe around the cuff of each sleeve. The same Red
Star commbadge is worn on the left chest.

Rank is denoted on the IPSF duty uniform with silver pips attached to
the collar, but they're different from the Starfleet ones, consisting
of short Morse-like codes of dots and slashes, as follows:

///	Fleet captain/commodore
/./	Captain
//	Commander
./	Lieutenant commander
/	Lieutenant
.	Ensign

IPSF admirals (as of 2412 there's only one) wear a small gold star.
There is no rank of lieutenant junior grade in the IPSF.

Highly skilled technical personnel who have not completed a college degree
are commonly inducted as warrant officers. Warrant officers are not
commissioned, but instead hold a warrant from the Chief of the IPO
granting them some of the privileges of officer rank. In the IPSF's social
hierarchy, warrant officers exist in a continuum between commissioned and
non-commissioned officers, overlapping slightly with both. They tend to be
highly respected for their technical skills, and many earn field commissions
after a few years of service.

Warrant officer ranks are denoted on the dress uniform by a number of
inverted chevrons attached to the jacket's rank tabs, and on the duty
uniform by smaller versions of the same chevrons attached sideways to
the undershirt collar, as with officers' rank pips:

(orientation shown is for duty uniform chevrons: rotate clockwise 90
degrees for dress uniform version)

>>>>  Master chief warrant officer
>>>   Senior chief warrant officer
>>    Chief warrant officer
>     Warrant officer

Enlisted personnel wear no collar pips, but instead have shoulder chevrons:

(again, these are actually arranged vertically)

<<<>>>	Master chief petty officer
<<<>>	Senior chief petty officer
<<<	Chief petty officer
<<	Petty officer
<	Able crewman
	Crewman

The IPSF has no rank equivalent to the WDF's "spaceman recruit".

The standard sidearm of the IPSF is the Pistol, Phased Energy
Rectification, Mk. II Mod. A, more commonly known as "Phaser 2A" - the
badass-looking phaser pistols with the cone emitters seen in the
later TOS movies. (The two guys in spacesuits used these to
assassinate Chancellor Gorkon in "Star Trek VI".) Shipboard wearing
of sidearms is optional for all except security personnel, but not
discouraged as it is in Starfleet.

Like modern-day Starfleet personnel, IPSF members don't wear anything
that specifically shows what ship they're from.

OTHERS

Most other significant forces in the UF universe wear uniforms that
either look like their canonical equivalents, or have already been
established in official art. For example, Earthforce uniforms are the
same as they were on Babylon 5, while the UF Colonial Forces have duty
uniforms like the ones on the new Battlestar Galactica, but Warriors
wear BG-1978 uniforms with color adjustments, as seen in the two
existing pictures of Kozue Kaoru in her Rogue Squadron uniform. The
Klingon Defense Forces wear armor like that shown on TNG/DS9, ditto
for the Cardies, Royal Salusian Navy uniforms have appeared in "Ninja
High School", GENOM Military Arm uniforms are essentially Imperial
uniforms from the original Star Wars triology, and so on.

I have no design information for the Confederate Freespacers at the
moment, though I seem to recall from Redneck's descriptions that their
uniforms are grey and generally Civil War-ish.

Any more rough bits of collaboratory communique you feel you might be able to toss our way would be tremendously welcome.

Mike Thedford
Domestic Marvel
Writer of Heinously Ugly Sentences

It's good to see all this further fleshed out, though; it gives me a somewhat clearer image of the universe that's being built up in the stories, and, I tell ya, I'm all for universe building.

And for some reason the term "Admiral Of The Galaxy" just cracks me up. It's too bad it never appeared "on screen" while Zoner was WDF supreme commander, because I'm sure that would have brought on much snickering and fun-poking by the other characters.

- How is the Strategic Fleet distinguished from the Tactical Fleet and from other WDF components now that one uniform color is standard for the entire service? (Indeed, at least one branch of service, the Armored Cavalry, still wears uniforms of a different color scheme from the rest of the Force, unless Misato's just being contrarian in "Knights of Avalon: Great Justice!" Makes me wonder if the Marines are similarly idiosyncratic.)

- Are there branch-of-service insignia as in the current US armed services? If a WDF spacer strikes for a particular specialty like a current US Navy sailor, is he/she issued any particular insignia to wear with the chevrons?

- Since all WDF officers appear to wear the shoulder-loop braid (I think it's called the "aigulette" (sp?) ), what distinguishing marks do aides-de-camp to WDF officers wear?

- What headgear, if any, do WDF personnel wear as part of their uniforms? Daver is shown at one point wearing an officer's gold-braided cap in "Day of Infamy", but that's the only specifially military bit of gear he dons; then again, as CINCWEDGE he can wear anything he damn pleases, right?

- What's the UF explanation for the colored squares that are worn on the left chests of GENOM officers' uniforms? I always wondered if they were decorations, but there are usually too many "squares" of the same color, such as a row of red on top of a row of blue. (Actually, I don't even know what the SW-canonical explanation is!)

- The one time we see a CFMF dress uniform in FI, Mac's duds in "Hunted Rose", they do indeed resemble a Confederate States Army officer's (infantry, canonically, with the blue facings) dress uniform. I'm not sure - Redneck, you out there? - but I think Freespacer duty uniforms are usually rather utilitarian jumpsuits.

- If the UF Colonial Fleet is a branch of service of the WDF, don't they also wear the WDF roundel?

-Joe-