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List of active duty United States four-star officers

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ4432835 ↗
Source-derived summary

There are currently 38 active-duty four-star officers in the uniformed services of the United States: six in the Army, four in the Marine Corps, 10 in the Navy, 12 in the Air Force, four in the Space Force, two in the Coast Guard, and one in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Of the eight federal uniformed services, the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps is the only service that does not have an established four-star position.

List of designated four-star positions

Department of Defense

Joint Chiefs of Staff

Unified combatant commands

Other joint positions

Department of the Army

United States Army

Department of the Navy

United States Marine Corps

United States Navy

Department of the Air Force

United States Air Force

United States Space Force

Department of Homeland Security

United States Coast Guard

Department of Health and Human Services

United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Statutory limits

The U.S. Code explicitly limits the total number of four-star officers that may be on active duty at any given time. The total number of active-duty general or flag officers is capped at 219 for the Army, 150 for the Navy, 171 for the Air Force, 64 for the Marine Corps, and 21 for the Space Force. For the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force, no more than 28% of each service's active-duty general or flag officers may have more than two stars, and statute sets the total number of four-star officers allowed in each service. This is set at eight four-star Army generals, six four-star Navy admirals, nine four-star Air Force generals, two four-star Marine generals, two four-star Space Force generals, and two four-star Coast Guard admirals.

Several of these slots are reserved by statute. For the Army and the Air Force, the chief of staff and the vice chief of staff for both services are all four-star generals. For the Navy, the chief and vice chief of naval operations are both four-star admirals. For the Marine Corps, the commandant and the assistant commandant are both four-star generals.

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This entry incorporates text from “List of active duty United States four-star officers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.