General Staff Insignia

You wear them if you have greater than 9x additional duties but are redundant in your main duty assignment. Because you're generally staff but not specifically anything.

Hope this helps.

All G-shops are general staff, but there's only one General Staff and that's where any officer or warrant assigned starts wearing that insignia. So pretty much DA G-shops and the Service Secretary offices as another commenter said.

AR 670-1 para 21-9 Branch Insignia

c. General staff, commissioned officers, and warrant officers, other than general officers, will wear the general staff branch insignia, as indicated below.

(1) When assigned to positions within the Office of the Secretary of the Army, the Under Secretary of the Army, or the Assistant Secretary of the Army, and when authorized by the Secretary of the Army to wear such insignia during their assignment in these offices.

(2) When detailed to duty on the Army General Staff (see AR 614–100).

(3) As directed by the Chief of Staff.

(4) When assigned to departmental or statutory tour table of distribution and allowance (TDA) positions in the National Guard Bureau.

(5) When assigned to the ARNG command chief warrant officer positions within the office of the Adjutant General of each state, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, or the District of Columbia.

I only saw branch insignia on 4 star Hq.

Maybe HQ DA staff.

Don’t know if it’s correct, but my chief of staff for a 2-star headquarters wore them.

I wear. HQDA.

While they exist and are still authorized, I have not seen these worn since the late 1980s. I think the wearing of the insignia started to die out in the 1960s when the field uniform (107s, Jungles, BDUs) went from pin on insignia to sew on cloth insignia. I remember meeting one officer on III corps staff who was required by the commander to wear it (IIRC primaries and deputies were wearing it at the time), and he had the GS insignia on visible on the collar, but then had his "real" branch insignia sewn on the inside of the collar.

I don't know, but perhaps he was a little insecure.

Edit. After seeing u/tee_bee comment I decided to look into older versions of the AR. When I first came into the service, there was an additional line in the regulation which is not present today. (3) Detailed in general staff with troops. (See AR 614-100.) While it would be interesting to know when the line refering to all General level staffs was deleted, I'm got actually real work around the house today and won't be taking that deep dive into the ARs.

You wear this insignia as a member of the Army staff at HQDA.

I think the "collar insignia" is the giveaway here--there's no uniform where US Army officers have worn collar insignia in close to two decades.

If we're talking about branch insignia in general, I suppose that hypothetically someone on the Army staff might wear something like this on the lapel of their ACUs/AGSUs, but in my years at the Pentagon I've never seen it. You will see an aide-de-camp substitute the ADC insignia (which varies based on the rank of the general you're serving) for their branch insignia.

I remember these. One of my mentors had to wear these when he was working for our Corps Commander. He wore it on the collar of his BDUs (this was in 2002) and when I saw them for the first time, I thought he was a general himself which made me so nervous that I stood so tall and rendered the sharpest salute at the time. A couple of years later, I was present at his ceremony where his family helped him pin on his first Star. Well earned, sir!

You haven’t gotten your lobotomy yet? Have you pinned 6? We start ranting about standards and discipline by then with no elaboration because we have nothing to elaborate on. Now go shave