Distinguished Warfare Medal; New medal for cyber warriors
Andy and Mustang sent us this link. Both thought it might be satire, but it comes from the Associated Press, known for (un)intentional mistakes, but not satire. But anyway, it seems that the Pentagon is hard at work creating a new medal for those folks who stand-off from the war zone but participate in combat from their remote location;
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to announce Wednesday that for the first time the Pentagon is creating a medal that can be awarded to troops who have a direct impact on combat operations, but do it from afar.
The Associated Press has learned that the new blue, red and white-ribboned Distinguished Warfare Medal will be awarded to individuals for “extraordinary achievement” related to a military operation that occurred after Sept. 11, 2001. But unlike other combat medals, it does not require the recipient risk his or her life to get it.
According to the AP, the new medal falls between a Bronze Star and Silver Star in order of precedence. I wonder if it comes with a valor device, you know, if they still take out the enemy but accidentally drop their Egg McMuffin on the floor, but recover it before the 5-second rule gets it.
Officials said the new medal will be the first combat-related award to be created since the Bronze Star in 1944.
According to the Pentagon criteria, the medal gives the military a way to recognize a single act that directly affects a combat operation, doesn’t involve an act of valor, and warrants an award higher than the Bronze Star.
I guess I don’t have to wonder whether it was Bite Me’s idea or not.
Category: Military issues, Terror War
Oh brother… Please be satire.
A ribbon maybe, but a Medal?
I get the feeling this is intended to boost the egos of AF drone “pilots”.
Must be for drone drivers stationed CONUS.
I don’t understand why this medal needs to be created in the first place. We already have DFCs, Air Medals and Aerial Achievement Medals to recognize pilots and air crews.
Maybe they’ll call it the Geek Cross.
@2: I see it more as a way to instill pride and gain some publicity for the ‘cyber’ warriors, as part of a larger effort to recruit into these less-than-glorious roles.
Also, given the reduction in manned aircraft in the coming twenty years, it’s probably just the start of a push to adapt to unmanned but vital roles.
All in all, this was bound to happen, and may even be a good thing, and the ‘wrong’ step would have been to simply give existing medals for these sorts of roles, as that would diminish their meaning. So, while this may seem in some ways comical, I think they actually got it right here.
Next week teenagers will be awarded Purple Hearts for wound recieved in CoD.
OK great….make it and give it to Chairforce Officer but DON’T MAKE IT UP WITH A BRONZE STAR.
Holy farking SHIAT.
Pussies.
/says the 23 year retired AF E-8
Why not just BELOW the BSM, above the Meritorious? BSM requires you actually BE THERE. This one does not. How could NOT being in-theater (wherever it is) be less than sitting thousands of miles away and reporting back to Ft Livingroom every night?
OTOH, could this also be awarded to missileers? Space Warriors?
http://www.tioh.hqda.pentagon.mil/
@6 I work in the CEMA arena and I’m sorry, I just don’t see the point in it.
faux medal de crotch
Wow.
@11: I understand that completely. I don’t work in your field, but I personally find it a bit strange, too. The thing is, it’s not ‘for’ people like you or me, it’s for the guys who will be coming in within the near future and have a different mindset. CEMA-type operations are growing and they need to fill positions and a happy recruit is better than an unmotivated one. Giving them some people to look up to who’ve done ‘cool things’ and had their service acknowledged helps to make those roles seem like more of a ‘legitimate’ bad-ass thing. And most 17- or 18-year olds want to be ‘bad-ass’.
Of course, it’s entirely possible I’m wrong, but putting on my strategic cap, that’s the most plausible reason I see for it – recruiting by way of ‘legitimizing’ that sort of ‘fighting’.
Also, in thirty years where 90% of air operations are unmanned, how do you recognize people who go above and beyond the cubicle-dweller next to them? Something like this was inevitable; doing it now has the other (plausible) benefits above.
It’s not satire, Zero. Army and Air Force Times are reporting the same.
I frankly don’t see why existing decorations (e.g., the LOM, MSM, Commendation and Achievement Medals) won’t work, depending on just how important the individual’s specific contribution or act was to the mission. All of those already exist, can be awarded for specific acts, and (since 2004) can be awarded for activities in direct support of combat operations.
Don’t get me wrong; contributions by UAV operators and cyber types are indeed important, and can be vital. But creating a new medal when appropriate awards already exist simply seems to me like one helluva unnecessary waste.
Will it be virtually awarded to their avatar?
Oh, come on now! You know exactly how important it is to make sure that the troops have toilet paper, facial tissues, and sockks that are not marked ‘Army Reject’.
Don’t be so heartless. Some brave soul in logistics might just make sure that the ammo for the base is actually what is supposed to go there.
Seriously, people who worked in photo intelligence during World War II were not IN combat zones, but what they worked on related to combat zones made it possible for the Allies to beat Hitler’s troops. Cryptographers were also extremely important in breaking codes. Need I remind you guys about the pigeon who ended up in a chimney with the coded message still fastened to its leg?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/124117/world-war-ii-pigeon-message-decoded
And someone please tell me just what is wrong with having a gedunk medal? It’s all I have.
Valor awards and you never have to set foot in theatre.
Im speechless.
Hondo #15: Thanks. I have rather personal issue with it being a medal rather than a ribbon.
For reasons unclear there are a large group of sailors and Marines who earned just a simple ribbon (CAR), and many actually got shot at in the line of duty.
Oh well…
“No shit, I was there. I earned this. Four server crashes because SGT. Mouthbreather brought in a file from his computer that had more viruses in it than a Camp Lejeune bar girl. I jumped in the middle of it and did three system restores while replacing a hard drive single-handed!” -Candidate #1 for the 20th annual Ballduster McSoulpatch award.
Ex-PH2: no one argues that the work doesn’t merit appropriate recognition. The question is whether it’s apropos to create an entirely new decoration of higher precedence than the MSM to do so vice using the existing decorations that can already be awarded to achieve the same result.
@17 Don’t forget about the meat stamped “Rejected by US Army”. And they say submarines get the best food…
First “Information Dominance” warfare pin and now this? YGTBSM!
Ex-PH2 #18: Other than the NUC mine are also gedunk awards. Still… I see a clear difference when “combat” and “medal” are used.
Anyone who has been around the block a few times, particularly in combat, knows that medals and awards are mostly political. We all know “that guy” with brass balls the size of tractor wheels who took an RPG to the face and kept fighting to repel an attack, and got maybe an ARCOM for it, and if they’re feeling generous they’ll throw a V device on the ARCOM. And then there’s “That Guy” who sat in the TOC and did a bang up job putting together PowerPoints with all the bells and whistles and gets a Bronze Star for it.
The Distinguished Warfare Medal is just more political fodder.
And here silly me thought that “Power Point Ranger” was sarcasm. Obviously a concept before it’s time.
I agree, Zero, but I knew some guys who came back from Vietnam who were really PO’d that a nurse who got shot over there was given a Purple Heart. That was 1972. By 1992, those kinds of unkind remarks had stopped.
Any award is only worth what the approval authority thinks that it is worth. To a certain extent whether or not you get one depends on who wrote it and what kind of a job the one shop did moving it through the process. If you’ve got a nice award you probably think that you deserve it (and you probably do), but there are plenty without such awards who also deserve one and never get it.
Hondo is perfectly correct, there are plenty of existing awards that could have filled the bill here, there doesn’t seem to be much need to create a new one.
Same is true in the Army, Zero. Only in the Army a badge (CIB, CMB, or since about 2005, CAB) vice a ribbon is used to ID getting shot at by or exchanging fire with the enemy. So far as I know, it’s only the USAF that gives a medal for that (their new Combat Action Medal).
Before the CAB, in the Army it wasn’t unknown for soldiers to get shot at and go home with only a campaign or expeditionary medal. In general, you had to have (and still do) an Infantry, SF, or Medic MOS to qualify for the CIB or CMB. Until the CAB was instituted, other specialties – even if assigned to or serving in an Infantry or SF unit – were by reg pretty much SOL. (However, it does appear that during Vietnam USARV wasn’t above making a rather large number of local exceptions to DA regs and/or looking the other way at times regarding the CIB.)
REMF award. Wow.
After they proposed a medal for not shooting an enemy very little surprises me anymore.
So you can set on your 4th Point of Contact playing with your joystick and get a medal higher in order of precedence than Soldiers with ARCOM w/V devices or the Bronze Star…. WTF!! If they spill their coffee and burn themselves do they qualify for a Purple Heart???
And they say submarines get the best food…
Don’t count me among them. And seriously, a medal for that? What’ll they call it? The Playstation Medal? That’d be as stupid as giving coner Chiefs NAM’s for supervising field days during ORSE workups!
Oh wait, I’ve seen that. Nevermind.
Do they get the campaign awards associated with whatever conflict they were pressing buttons for?
Ex-PH2 #27: Point taken. Wasn’t me BTW. Happily my interaction with military nurses (other than a stint at Balboa with pneumonia) was rather pleasant. [grin]
I still insist that a medal in this case is nuts.
I can see it now- DWM’s by every pogue wanna-be. Who, on a major base, DOESN’T contribute to an effort overseas somehow?
From where I personally sit, right now, I affect every footstep (in a VERY small way) in places over there- yet no way do should I qualify OVER someone who’s physically there. My team here could easily justify dozens of DWM’s given what we do. Remember, BSM/V, SS, and others are PER ACTION typically, not just ‘tour awards’.
I will be very interested in how this thing gets written…
I’m not certain what benefit is gained by an additional medal, unless comment 14 is close to the mark. Placing it above the Bronze Star also seems incorrect, but what do I know…
I always told my Joes a little quote from Mark Twain when they would see fat slobs fromm HHC like our mess sgt getting high awards for doing jack during our year in Iraq and they got a thankyou ARCOM for the year over there,never mind how many IEDs,RPGs, or bullets we dodged.
“It is better to deserve honors and not have them, than to have them, and not to deserve them.” Mark Twain
I firmly believe that all those S shop pukes and staff officers that got Bronze Star service awards or MSMs for spending one year inside the wire look down on their racks on those rare times when they have to wear their class As and choke on it, because they know they didn’t do anything except be in the right job with the right rank to “rate” that award.
At least that’s what I hope happens.
Now that I’ve had 30 seconds to think about it, I think I would turn it down in favor of a coupon for free ice cream for life from Baskin Robbins.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!! MMMMMMONSTER KILL!!
@39 Ex-PH2, that would be very very dangerous…….I don’t PT anymore.
@33 Didn’t you know that the primary mission of any submarine is to work up for the next ORSE?
@40 Andy, okay, then how about adult beverage of your choice (maybe a very, very aged Macallan single malt) instead?
UAV officers gotta feel loved too!
http://www.stripes.com/news/air-force-to-award-61-more-bronze-stars-1.42274
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/04/air-force-tech-sergeants-take-heat-bronze-stars-041612/
Shit like this cheapens those awards for people that truly earned it.
@41 & @43: I can get booze and ice cream, how about free .223/5.56 for life 🙂
Christ, that sounds just like my last ENG. And concur with the free ammo for life.
This is what happended:
A bunch of senior and flag officers from DIA, NSA, NGA, and SECDEF, along with one E-9 from the USAF, were all conference on selecting the next generation of comfortable arm chairs and tactical office funiture for DoD elements within the beltway.
One officer said, “with all the work we do, why don’t we have our own medal”?
The Air Force E-9 said, “yeah great idea, I have never deployed, my highest award is the USAF Training Ribbon. Oh and I have the USAF Basic Military Training Honor
Graduate Ribbon, yeah anyway … great idea … ah … sorry for interrupting sir”!
“So it is settled, we will call it the Distinguished Warfare Medal”, said the flag officer as he gloated about their collective accomplishments for the day.
Yeah, we got yelled out by squadron because our battery cycles were so high we were predicted to need battery replacement two years early.
Does it come with Playstation or Xbox credits?
I am disapointed that our door gunner on the space shuttle did not chime in. This is right up their gun sights. I almost forgot about the IDWB, nothing says get the hell away from me or I will kill you like a computer geek warfare badge. Now they will have the Medal to go with it.
As crazy Uncle Leon leaves for the farm, is anybody whispering good ideas to him or just the fuck nuts are getting to him.