Few player's know about the red and blue triangles and there purpose. In addition to one having to be at 100% REP before a Military Mission will be granted at some point. The little red or blue triangle along side it must not be there. If one is working on the FED rank for instance, then doing any missions for any other broker will cause those triangles to appear.
They start from blue up then blue down, then red up, then red down. Each step will cause a player to do an additional 3 missions before it will change.
IF one is interested in ranking up, then only do mission's conducive to the faction your trying to rank up. Federal broker's for Federal Navy. Empire broker's for Empire Navy. And never any of the independents.