State Military

Members typically wear blue overcoats and trousers with black boots, a yellow fourragere, and badges reflecting personal achievement, with rank shown on the epaulets and some troops adding blue berets. Harsh or foreign terrain calls for white coats, hats, and gloves, while police guards don a black variant to mark their special role. Etiquette runs strict: soldiers salute every superior, romances within the ranks are forbidden as seen with Mustang and Hawkeye, and breaking protocol invites detention or court-martial. The arsenal echoes First World War hardware, from Luger and M1911 pistols to bolt-action rifles, machine guns, trench mortars, small tanks, and buried dynamite charges.

Amestris has been a mighty and aggressive state from its founding, picking fights with its neighbors and running an intensely centralized, authoritarian government whose stability leans on constant war. That reliance let the military climb to the highest ranks of power until the nation became a state ruled by its own army, a grip cemented once King Bradley took the office of Fuhrer. Much of the country's might traces back roughly three centuries to Father, who taught its people potent alchemy and helped make Amestris the dominant power of its world. Recruits must pass through the Military Academy, where training tests both mind and body, and the ranks welcome soldiers of every sex and ethnic background.

The force is built almost entirely around infantry, with no navy or air arm to speak of, relying on heavy ground assaults from a general headquarters in Central City and regional garrisons across the country. Its finest units are the defense-minded Briggs Army guarding the northern border against Drachma and the offense-focused Eastern Army hardened by the Ishval war. Elite branches include the State Alchemists, science officers certified as living weapons and automatically granted the rank of major, and the Chimeras, secretive man-beast hybrids used as guards and shock troops. The 2003 anime adds a Black Ops Division that handles assassinations and other deeds the government wants buried.