Pentagon creates special medal for drone pilots
Published: 13 February, 2013, 22:42
Reuters / Rick Wilking
The medal, reports the AP, “will be awarded to individuals for ‘extraordinary achievement’ related to a military operation.” Unlike other combat medals, though, winning this one wont’ require a soldier to ever step away from a control panel, let alone serve directly on the battlefield.
“The medal could go to service members who never set foot in a combat zone, but launch drone strikes or cyberattacks that can kill or disable an enemy,” the AP reports.
Rumors of an award for heroic drone pilots circulated last July, when the Washington Post caught the head of the Army Institute of Heraldry saying that the Pentagon had been briefed on a “unique concept” for a medal the celebrates UAV drivers. At the time, Charles V. Mugno of the institute said that his group had already completed six alternate designs for the medal but was waiting final approval from Pentagon. According to the AP’s latest report, though, the Defense Department has decided on the look of the item.
An analysis of recent drone attacks conducted last year by the non-profit, non-partisan New America Foundation found that the Obama administration has ordered drone strikes more than four times as frequently as during the George W. Bush White House. According to the organization’s latest analysis, US drone strikes in Pakistan have already killed as many as 58 people in only this year. A separate study from the UK’s Bureau for Investigative Journalism has concluded that those strikes under Pres. Obama have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians, despite US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s recent claim that those kills are in the single-digits.
When news of the medal first broke, journalist Glenn Greenwald, then with Salon, wrote, “Justifying drone warfare requires pretending that the act entails some sort of bravery, so the U.S. military is increasingly taking steps to create the facade of warrior courage for drone pilots.”
On his part, Pres. Obama has said the US drone program is kept on “a very tight leash” and his administration does not conduct “a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly.” Pakistani sources have claimed that US drone attacks have caused the death of around 50 civilians for every militant fatality.
Stucky says:
Where is the onion?
WHERE IS THE FUCKING ONION?????
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14th February 2013 at 4:58 pm
Stucky says:
I’ve been adjusting my joystick for nearly forty fucking years. Where is my medal?
I don’t think they should get a medal. Medals are small and they get tucked away in the drawer. They should be awarded something more visible. Like the hat below. They should be made to wear it in public at all times. So that normal people like me can spit on them.
Imadickhat.
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14th February 2013 at 5:11 pm
TeresaE says:
So, are we handing out the medals for missing the innocent children and spouses and neighbors? Or for hitting them?
I’m with you Stuck, where’s the fucking onion.
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14th February 2013 at 6:58 pm
Makati1 says:
Make sure it only costs 5 cents and come from China. metal coated plastic is a good choice of materials. You know, the poisonous kind that contains some spent uranium dust. Be sure to wear it daily over your heart. When the pain starts, ignore it. It’s just the spirit of those children you killed squeezing your heart.
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14th February 2013 at 9:46 pm
GreasedUpWillie says:
Holy fucking shit, this is serious? Medals are for valor, for injuries, for expeditionary or dangerous service, or service in a war zone (I was awarded five). What the fuck would you get this medal for “valor in the face of the air conditioning going out in the trailer”, “carpal tunnel in the line of duty”. Just when I think I cannot be any more disgusted with our government, they always find a way to get worse. What a sick fucking joke.
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14th February 2013 at 12:17 am
flash says:
purdy ain’t it?
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14th February 2013 at 8:38 am
nonner says:
dorner drones, the ones that kill, might be the cottage industry of the next gen. we could set up bases around the world to support 24 – 48 hour drones. police the whole world. take out the bad guys. pilot receives his black plastic binder with the days coordinates and target opportunities.
one kill one snort, oops, shot as in jim beam, a pilot’s dream. it would be ironic if flash’s medal were actually adopted, flash being a dyed in the wool drone bait
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14th February 2013 at 10:48 pm
SSS says:
I have two combat tours. I have medals reflecting same. I have lost comrades with whom I was very close. I do not like this.
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14th February 2013 at 11:51 pm
Thinker says:
I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t served. But somehow, I don’t see the “honor” in sitting there, killing other people without any danger to oneself. This detracts from the very real acts of valor, courage and honor that our troops display, often with great sacrifice.
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14th February 2013 at 12:16 am
sangell says:
For the past 1000 years or more, military forces have sought to put speed, stealth, armor or distance between themselves and their enemy. When the German U-9 sank 3 British cruisers in 1914 in one day it must have seemed horribly unfair. Some invisible enemy peering through a periscope firing a torpedo into a more manly surface vessel with heavy guns bristling from its decks. Was the U-Boat captain decorated. You bet.
30 years later peering through a periscope in the North Atlantic was a death sentence. If anything the U-Boat commander then had to be a lot braver than the one in 1914 but with no enemy vessels sunk he would go to the bottom with no medals.
Decorations are earned, as often as not, by the circumstances and technology one goes into combat with. Had you flown in Jap Zero in 1942 you might become an ace. Fly one in 1945 and you got shot down. No difference in the bravery or flying skill, simply the quality of the aircraft and pilots one faced. Life ( and death) is not fair.
The guys hitting their targets with drones are no different than the 19th century soldier firing a rifle at a man equipped with a musket. One dies the other is decorated.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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14th February 2013 at 12:38 am
Zarathustra says:
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Japans leading fighter ace, flew nothing but a zero. He flew it long after it had become obsolete. He was never shot down and never lost a wingman, but rather died as a passenger on a transport. Once asked if the F4U (Corsair) was a difficult plane to shoot down, he said, “No, it just takes a bit longer.”
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14th February 2013 at 2:23 am
Atlee says:
A Wii Warfare medal is absolutely disgusting. Can they get a Purple Heart for spilling hot cappucino on themselves, combat wrist fatigue, or a butt rash from prolonged contact with their chairs? Perhaps they can program their displays to flash “Game Over” when they make a successful strike, and start catagorizing their targets by points. 100 points for a combatant, 125 for a civilian, and extra 50 if the civilian is a child. How much are the supporters for this sickeningly indifferent, detached and sociopathic form of butchery going to like drone surveillance when it’s over THEIR heads?
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14th February 2013 at 4:02 am
fool on the hill says:
SSS:
Hear hear brother welcome home!
And let us not forget our brothers who suffer from the unseen wound, PTSD.
As for these dickheads I would submit this design:
A metal plated plastic asshole made in China with a black ribbon having a wide yellow stripe slightly off center.
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14th February 2013 at 6:54 am
eugend66 says:
Joystick warriors suck donkey dick.
So there!!
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14th February 2013 at 7:06 am
flash says:
..of the meritless, by the meritless, for the meritless.
Rank Incompetence
Turf wars are the one kind our generals know how to win.
By William S. Lind • February 1, 2013
Photo: World Affairs Council of Philadelphia (CC)
It was tragic that the career of General David Petraeus was brought down by a mere affair. It should have ended several years earlier as a consequence of his failure as our commander in Afghanistan. Petraeus, like every other theater commander in that war except Stanley McChrystal, could have been replaced by a concrete block and nothing would have changed. They all kept doing the same things while expecting a different result.
Thomas Ricks’s recent book The Generals has reintroduced into the defense debate a vital factor the press and politicians collude in ignoring: military incompetence. It was a major theme of the Military Reform Movement of the 1970s and ’80s. During those years, a friend of mine who was an aide to a Marine Corps commandant asked his boss how many Marine generals, of whom there were then 60-some, could competently fight a battle. The commandant came up with six. And the Marine Corps is the best of our services.
Military incompetence does not begin at the rank of brigadier general. An old French proverb says that the problem with the generals is that we select them from among the colonels. Nonetheless, military competence—the ability to see quickly what to do in a military situation and make it happen—is more rare at the general officer level. A curious aspect of our promotion system is that the higher the rank, the smaller the percentage of our competent officers.
Why is military incompetence so widespread at the higher levels of America’s armed forces? Speaking from my own observations over almost 40 years, I can identify two factors. First, nowhere does our vast, multi-billion dollar military-education system teach military judgment. Second, above the rank of Army, Marine Corps, or Air Force captain, military ability plays essentially no role in determining who gets promoted. (It has been so long since our Navy fought another navy that, apart from the aviators, military competence does not seem to be a consideration at any level.)
Almost never do our military schools, academies, and colleges put students in situations where they have to think through how to fight a battle or a campaign, then get critiqued not on their answer but the way they think. Nor does American military training offer much free play, where the enemy can do whatever he wants and critique draws out why one side won and the other lost. Instead, training exercises are scripted as if we are training an opera company. The schools teach a combination of staff process and sophomore-level college courses in government and international relations. No one is taught how to be a commander in combat. One Army lieutenant colonel recently wrote me that he got angry when he figured out that nothing he needs to know to command would be taught to him in any Army school.
The promotion system reinforces professional ignorance. Above the company grades, military ability does not count in determining who gets promoted. At the rank of major, officers are supposed to accept that the “real world” is the internal world of budget and prom
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14th February 2013 at 7:24 am
Stucky says:
“The guys hitting their targets with drones are no different than the 19th century soldier firing a rifle at a man equipped with a musket. One dies the other is decorated.” ——- sangell
Actual X-ray of sangell’s brain
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14th February 2013 at 10:58 am