The United Interstellar Fleet Agency

The United Interstellar Fleet Agency, most often shortened down to its initials and therefore commonly referred to as just the UIFA, is an organisation working directly for the Planetary Union government which is responsible for managing, co-ordinating, constructing and staffing the starships affiliated with this power, and for training the crewmembers of these starships in the fleet. It's considered as a successor of sorts to NASA.

Admiralty
This term refers to, in ascending order of rank, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral and full Admiral, the latter being the highest rank level in the UIFA overall. The Admiralty aren’t stationed on starships - except for the commanding officer of the U.S.S Asgard due to it being the most important and largest ship in the fleet as a whole - and are instead in charge of political and beaurocratic matters on planets and space stations. As the highest ranking officers within the UIFA, people who are full, Vice or Rear Admirals have completely unrestricted access to any and all top-secret documents and strategies belonging to the UIFA and the Planetary Union government itself. They wear purple uniforms, with the highlights and the edges of their badge on said uniform being gold. Rear, Vice and full Admirals have, respectively, one, two and three stars on the shoulder bars used to indicate rank.

Known Individuals:

 * Bruce Sullivan

Captain
Captains are the highest starship-based rank and have the highest level of authority on the ships they’re stationed on, being able to directly command any and all officers or civilians onboard. They also have the authority to carry out court martial proceedings against their own crewmembers, but Captains answer directly to the Admiralty ranks and while they’re the highest authority onboard starships, they still get their orders from members of the Admiralty and deliberate failure to report to them or to deliberately misreport is considered as a serious offence. In addition, the ship’s Chief Medical Officer is the only person onboard who’s allowed to relieve the Captain of command duties if need be. They have four rectangular-shaped rank bars on the shoulders.

Known Individuals:

 * Jenna Kaufmann
 * Pria Lavesque (alleged)

Commander
The next rank down after Captains, Commanders are the First Officers of the starships they’re stationed on. Although the ship’s Captain still has the authority to overrule a Commander, they’re still mostly in equal standing to their Captain and are placed in command of the ship if the latter is unavailable. The Commander’s main job is to advise the Captain on the ship’s orders and current objective and to assist said Captain with diplomatic duties, and they’re both seated next to each other symmetrically on the bridge. Both the Commanders and the Captains wear blue uniforms with, like every other rank above Cadet except for the Admiralty, white jacket highlights with silver-rimmed badges of the Planetary Union seal. The number of rectangular rank bars they have is three.

Known Individuals:

 * Martin Keates

Lieutenant-Commander
Next in the chain of command after Commanders. This rank usually adheres to the heads of departments on starships but this isn’t always the case, and the Lieutenant-Commander rank also belongs to the ship’s Second Officer, the third and only other position on the ship which is in the Command Division except for the Captain and the First Officer (Commander). They have three rank bars on the shoulders, although the one in the middle is thinner compared to the other two on either side. As the Second Officer is next in line, they command the crew of the ship if both of the aforementioned pair are unavailable. Also, Lieutenant-Commander is the rank that the ship’s Chief Medical Officer holds, although they’re mainly referred to by the title “Doctor” rather than this actual rank, and unlike the Admiralty, Captain and Commander ranks, those from Lieutenant-Commander and descending can apply to more than one job division.

Known Individuals:

 * Connor RK-800
 * Hank Anderson
 * Eve Ferencz (Doctor)
 * North WR-400

Lieutenant
Lieutenants are one of the two starship ranks that takes up more personnel than the rest, the other being Ensigns. They’re responsible for this latter rank and although the heads of departments usually hold the rank of Lieutenant-Commander, Lieutenants can also be department chiefs onboard the starships on which they’re stationed. The Lieutenant rank insignia is two bars.

Known Individuals:

 * Arthur Doyle
 * Andrea Kitan
 * Markus RK-200

Ensign
This is the lowest starship-based rank. Ensigns, along with Lieutenants, take up the biggest number of crewmembers onboard compared to the others, and they have only one bar on their shoulders as their rank insignia. Ensigns are typically Cadets that have graduated recently.

Cadet
Cadet is the rank belonging to students of UIFA Academies who haven’t yet graduated, meaning as a result that they have no rank for serving on starships or stations yet. This is why they have no badge or shoulder insignia, and their uniform colour is light grey. Members of Cadet classes are sometimes chosen to be temporarily stationed on starships for training purposes.

Adjutant
Adjutants are administrative assistants at various UIFA headquarters who work directly for the Admiralty ranks. They don’t have any kind of rank insignia, as an Adjutant isn’t technically counted as an actual rank. Adjutants are in charge of advising these superiors that they work for, managing the admin aspect of the headquarters, and assisting the Admiralty - also at the headquarters - with ship coordination and, if need be, planning battles in the event of a war or another conflict. Some of them additionally serve as headquarters security guards. They wear dark grey uniforms with no badge and with darker grey shoulder patches and highlights compared to other UIFA positions. As well as for Admiralty members, they can work for the heads of their government.

The Chief Governor
The UIFA as a whole is managed and led by a Chief Governor, occasionally referred to either as just “the Governor” or “the Chief”, although the former is more commonly-used. The current Chief Governor of the UIFA as of 2276 is an Andorian woman named Zarial Sh'vakris.

Uniforms
Each of the seven divisions has a different uniform colour: light grey for Cadets, dark grey for Adjutants, blue for Command, green for Science/Medical, red for Security, orange for Operations (consisting of engineers, Helmsmen and Navigators), and purple for the Admiralty. The uniforms additionally have a gender-based difference: the male uniforms have trousers, whereas the female ones have miniskirts and opaque tights.

In addition, each division has a different badge - Adjutants and Cadets have no badge at all, but for the others, Command is the Union seal, Science/Medical is respectively an atom or caduceus symbol, Security is a shield, Operations is two gears, and the Admiralty is also the Union seal, but, unlike the other badges which are silver-rimmed, those of the Admiralty have gold rims.

Chief Medical Officers wear a longer variant of their uniform jacket which serves as a lab coat while on duty onboard their ship, but they change into the standard version like the other officers when going on away missions. Security division officers wear pistol holsters throughout the day, on the thigh on the side of their body which matches up with the location of their dominant hand, whereas the other divisions only wear them on away missions.