Air gunner,
Would you say, in today's Air Force, that more people get Air Medals for individual achievement or for sortie count? It's not even close.
Second, if 9 people get an award for sortie count and 1 gets it for individual heroics, what's the value of THE award. Not HIS award, but THE award. The answer is "X number of sorties".
We don't need to focus on the theoretical, we have real world. The majority of Air Medals are going for sortie count; either that or those boom operators with 8 Air Medals are pretty heroic. Bronze Stars are going to PAOs, admin clerks, equipment custodians, etc. You tell me what it's worth today. If 3 people in line all have Bronze Stars, 1 from Korea, 1 from Vietnam, and 1 from 2012, are you going to assume they all distinguished themselves equally in combat? Not me, I won't, and neither will you. It's because a medal's value is based on the circumstances on which it is PREDOMINANTLY awarded, not on what it's criteria should be.
It's funny how you see the very solutions to such issues as a sign of the problem. If admin clerks who don't go outside the wire had a separate medal from the guy diffusing the IED, you don't think the respective values would be more meaningful? Medals today are given out like candy compared to 20 years ago and that's not the problem because we'll stick to thinking about what they COULD be given out for, some new award for a behind the scenes contribution to the mission is? Interesting.