It is only fitting that the announcement of a medal created for the digital age spawned its own Internet memes. As soon as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced the creation of the new Distinguished Warfare medal — immediately dubbed the Drone Medal — images such as the one below began appearing on blog after blog; in tweet after retweet.
The medal, Mr. Panetta explained, is intended to provide “recognition for the extraordinary achievements that directly impact on combat operations, but that do not involve acts of valor or physical risk that combat entails,” such as those piloting Predator or Reaper drones from a remote trailer. The medal has sparked much Photoshopped humor and heated online debate, much of it focusing on the Pentagon’s decision to rank it above the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, both given to troops in combat.
As the Distinguished Warfare medal heads toward production, more than 13,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that the status of the medal be revised.
“Bronze Stars are commonly awarded with a Valor device in recognition of a soldier’s service in the heat of combat while on the ground in the theater of operation,” the petition states. “Under no circumstance should a medal that is designed to honor a pilot, that is controlling a drone via remote control, thousands of miles away from the theater of operation, rank above a medal that involves a soldier being in the line of fire on the ground.”
This was a sentiment echoed by many on Twitter:
Similar commentary could be found in opinion pieces on news sites, such as The Business Insider, which called it “The Most Ridiculous Thing The Pentagon Could Do” and in longer anecdotes of protest on the comments section of the United States Air Force announcement:
2/21/2013 12:28:33 AM ET
I don’t like this at all my father was in ground combat from 1944 to 1945 in France Germany and Czechoslovakia his highest medal was the bronze star I have a copy of the award hanging in my living room I can’t even imagine what he went through. Now some guy sitting in an air conditioned building in Nevada is going to get a medal rated higher than the bronze star and the purple heart. I don’t care how many terrorists he killed or how many hours he sat in front of that screen how motivated he is or how well he does his job it is inconcievable to me that he or she can possibly earn a medal rated this high. Giving them a medal is ok but lets not degrade the honor of others who have risked their lives and in some cases actually been wounded in combat serving our country.
–Michael Sharkey, Trier Germany
According to the Defense Department, there is no controversy about the medal among military leaders. Each branch is in the process of drawing up their own specific guidelines and within two for four months, the first Distinguished Warfare Medals will be awarded.
“This is not a medal that will be awarded with the frequency of these other ones,” Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Defense Department spokesman, told At War, when asked why the medal should be above the Bronze Star.
Although there were some forms of recognition for drone operators and cyber operators before, none recognized truly exceptional acts of service, he said.
“This medal is visionary because it fills a void that existed before,” he said.
Although few people other than Pentagon officials came to the defense of the medal, some did circulate a piece by Maj. David Blair in the Air and Space Power Journal outlining the case for medals for drone operators.
For instance, consider a scenario in which Predator crews track a critical high value target to a safe house where he is then kinetically struck by a dynamically retasked F16. In this case, both platforms’ crews perform their duties with excellence and professionalism. Perhaps that excellence merits decorations, or perhaps “doing your job” shouldn’t merit decoration. Either way, giving the F16 pilot an award for heroism while excluding the Predator crews from consideration for the same sends a very clear message about what the institution believes is worth recognizing. This message ripples back into commissioning sources and light training pipelines, perpetuating perceptions and relative performance discrepancies through selection bias.
Published in July 2012, months before the announcement of the news medal, Major Blair’s piece did not address the flip-side: What happens when a member of the Predator crew receives a medal deemed more prestigious than the one awarded to the the F-16 pilot?
