Case in point: John Kerry. SSs and BSMs not too difficult to come by for some.

 

Drone pilots in five years:

 

Ok. I had to laugh. Sort of a summary of this thread. Dear Leader is fair but firm.

That down the leg thing is good, more so since they have not been to war in 50+ years.

 

I don't care. I don't care about any of it. People flipped their lids when RPA drivers got to wear wings, when they got to wear flight suits, when they got leather jackets, flight pay or anything else that should only be reserved for ME, ME, ME, ME! This is just more dog-piling on a community that has been ****** on for too long. Other pilots mock them, leadership passes them over, they are promised but don't receive cockpits, they get stationed in Cannon and Creech, their significant contributions to the war effort (hugely significant as anyone who actually knows anything about what's going in theater right now would know) are scoffed by shoe clerks, firefighters, maintainers, and pilots alike. I won't add to it. I've spoken to combat controllers who wouldn't be here today if there wasn't a predator overhead. I have a good friend who took an RPG in the face of his Pave Low that commands a RPA squadron. He'd probably disagree with many on this board. I'm sure those operators and their families would also be puzzled by the scorn heaped upon these guys. This doesn't devalue anyone else's combat experiences, medals, or actions in any way, shape, or form. If anyone thinks it does, they need to check their ego.

 

The recognition needs to match the contribution AND the hardship and risk endured.

Strategic nuclear folks (AF and Navy) make a huge contribution but it's not particularly grueling or risky. They get minimal recognition (a badge in both cases IIRC). Any combat medals they get are situation-dependent and are probably earned on IA grounds tours in the CENTCOM AOR.

I think strat nuke is good place to start when trying to decide how to recognize RPA drivers. Just because they happen to be the flavor-of-the-month doesn't mean we should get carried away.

 

Strat nuke folks never killed an enemy combatant (WWII excluded, but I don't think that's what you meant), never saved a life, never turned the tide of a TIC, never killed a terrorist. Again, the medal isn't supposed to be for simply showing up. It's supposed to be for something above and beyond. If deterrence is your only criteria, then let's give everyone in the military a medal and be done with it. No one is getting carried away, except for the irrational opposition to this. There's always someone who has done something harder and more dangerous than the next guy. An Army grunt could laugh at some of the DFCs handed out to aircrew - how much danger were they REALLY exposed to compared to the Jarhead on the ground in Fallujah? How does this medal truly affect anyone not in the RPA community?

 

You seem to have an irrational opposition to the idea of recognizing the role and accomplishment of strat nuke folks. Good thing RPA guys eventually got weapons on their aircraft, or it would appear from everything you cite you don't value that role of their mission.

The disagreement here is on giving out a medal that is the 4th highest ranking combat medal to someone who never had to leave the safety of their U.S. based squadron. What if the value of this medal had been put above the Silver Star--would that be enough to get you to say, "Well, maybe that's a bit too much."???? And then I could argue back with a sad story of how bad the UAV guys have it...no one respects them, their parents are disappointed they aren't actually in an aircraft and look down my nose at you for daring to even question the idea that this medal should be the third highest combat medal. Yes, that rebuttal would sound pretty weak. So give them a special medal, sure. SAC crews didn't need one, but maybe others do.

 

Wow. Just joining and as I went through to multi-quote, I could've selected pertinent points from every single post. Here's but a few:

This ^^^, I believe, is the crux of the matter. Personally, I think they should get medals that fit with the current medal inventory, this new medal does nothing but further the us-v-them mentality. Separate, but equal.

This is a concerning turn in our society as a whole over the last 20 years. There is no doubt that medal awards, particularly in the AF which I'm most familiar with, is somewhat watered down (OK, a lot watered down).

And these are precisely what drone pilots do. Their contribution is saving lives on today's battlefield. Let's focus on that while discussing the relative merits of a) creating a new award and b) it's placement in the hierarchy of existing medals.


This is the problem with these discussions (and I'm not singling you out, just using one of many examples, JamesNoBrakes). Much like declaring one political argument as 'racist' because it doesn't comport with the views of the other party, so too is the "you hate drone pilots, but face it it's here to stay - nanny-nanny-boo-boo" retort that invariably ends up in these discussions. That really is a straw man argument because nobody is discounting the fact that it is the future. Is there resistance to change? You bet. But the implied name calling doesn't further either argument. Let's focus on their exceptional contributions while debating the relative merits of a new medal and it's hierarchical ranking.

And going home to mama and little Johnny is part of the discussion. However, where's your decompression time/place? Where do you stop off on the way home to get all the stuff you saw/participated in out of your head? I'm not minimizing the fact that they DO go home, rather, it presents unique challenges and is worthy of inclusion in the discussion.

And 95% of my 7x4 rack is either doing my job, or being somewhere by virtue of my job. I do have a very small few that I feel I actually earned.

Concur. And with the current precedence of this medal, it better be actions on par with a DFC or Silver Star...in the RPA arena. What counts? I don't know. Knowing the USAF PA, however, they'll be hungry to see the first one awarded so they can splash it across the AF Times.

Actually, the ISR 'lobby' is extremely influential. The ISR 'lobby' is now peopled by UAV drivers AND now that they have offensive weapons they can use with regularity, there is a bigger push. Trust me, it's politics as usual in the five-sided puzzle palace...


That's not a complete nor accurate description of the awards criteria and consequently, you're mis-representing these medals. While what you say is partially true, you can earn a single-mission Air Medal and an MSM or AFAM for a single action. However, your description of the awards criteria is common and general - it speaks to the 'participation' aspect of many of our medals (see comments above about society).

Straw man argument. Nobody is claiming that and most folks with 'participation & sortie count' medals are smart enough to know what they really mean. That's not really pertinent to the discussion at hand.

And how do you know which of my Air Medals are sortie count and which are single-mission?

You don't.

And therein lies the argument about not cheapening other medals. That is related to, but not the subject of, this debate, but is is an inviting rabbit hole.


Incomplete. As the Catholics would say, "lying through omission" - see my earlier remark.


Agreed. I think that is where the overwhelming majority of the concern is.

I think most tend to agree with this sentiment.

Agreed. I think a separate medal promotes the divisiveness witnessed in this thread. If there are meritorious actions that are unique to the RPA folks, clarify existing awards to put these types of actions into perspective in the appropriate category.



We're all talking past each other - many in violent agreement.

I refer you back to my previous comments about being called 'racist'. The us v them doesn't help anyone. Does anyone remember when missileers got leather jackets? Oh, the whining that went on... there's guilt on both side of these arguments.

This works both ways. The challenge is, not that manned pilots are better or drone pilots are lesser, rather, that we're different. Everyone does have a role to play, even the finance guy at home station, or the admin troop, or the CE guy manning the fire station. What we lost in the early '90s with TQM is the fact that, yes, everyone is important and yes, we're all on the same team, but the mission statement doesn't end at your squadron's door. There must be a priority of effort and currently there is not. I'm off on a tangent here, but it's peripherally relevant because it speaks to culture. The man on the ground is the ultimate customer for the Air Force. Every organization needs to take its mission statement beyond their front door to the big AF mission statement of Fly, Fight, and Win (yes, I know there's an addendum about space & cyber space, but bear with me). Once they reach that and figure out where they are in that relative chain, they then need to take their mission to the man on the ground. Face it, in the AF, we're all 'support' at some point, generally speaking. I ask only that each organization inserts themselves into this priority chain - there is only ONE tip of the spear; the man on the ground. So, it's not that we're all not important, or that some of us are more important that others, rather, where we fit in the chain of tax-dollar to bullet-downrange is of relative priority.

Back on topic - I think the discussion needs to focus on whether or not we want to create a new medal that will further divide the military and if so, where it rightly belongs in the precedence of other medals.

All the rest is willy-waving.

 

They wear flight suits? That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. They're sitting in a box.

Do they wear a helmet too? You never know when that shipping container they're flying might fall off its pallet.

.

 

In case the toaster oven throws sparks on their stack of porn (sorry couldn't resist).