Overdue for De-NORKification of our Uniforms

can we just stop with the institutional cringe?

There is nothing personal here in the use of Admiral Cooper’s picture or in Kimo Fanell’s article over at American Greatness, Restoring America’s Warfighting Ethos: Too Many Ribbons… Clean Up America’s Military Awards Program. It is just an opportunity to point out again a problem that a lot of us continue to hope for action on: the obscene bloat of awards, badges, and pins.

The Navy isn’t even the worst offender.

The admiral’s appearance, while lawful and within standards, does raise the issue of the Pentagon’s awards system, where America’s senior military officers are able to obtain, let alone wear, that many rows of ribbons, awards, decorations, and badges—the latter of which are worn throughout a career just for being assigned to a command. In other words, how does the existing U.S. military awards program actively promote the Secretary of War’s call to restore America’s warfighting ethos? Unfortunately, the answer is that it does not.

No, not even close. Just the opposite, it has now become almost a joke.

Let’s go to the Army for a moment.

Ignore the ribbons, just look at all the flair.

We’re not too far from here.

Cooper and Miley are not even the most over-blinged, they are just a couple of the most high profile.

The farcical “everyone gets a trophy” issue has to be at its peak. It has been an issue for decades and really can’t keep going like this.

Consider that FOGOs from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s received maybe one or two Legions of Merit (LOM) for 30-plus years of service, yet today the Commander of CENTCOM is wearing five LOM ribbons—and his career is far from over. The result of these institutionalized “end of tour awards” and other participation rewards undermines the principle of a merit-based reward system that is based on courage under fire. It is time to end this institutionalized erosion of the American warfighting ethos.

Is it time to RETVRN?

I know there is a “just the top-3” vibe that is nothing new. It was around when I was a JO, but the problem here is institutional. It is a patronizing mindset that, as a result, inject additional cynicism into the system and dilutes truly exceptional performance in a sea of participation trophies.

We need a root-and-branch reform of awards. As a pleasant secondary effect, it will save countless hours of work and personnel effort.

Just one example of hundreds of thousands for you to ponder. A friend of mine, now a Chief in a different rating, spent a full deployment to Afghanistan doing absolutely nothing, nothing, but processing joint-award-participation-trophies. That was it. A year processing absolute fiction and hyperbole.

In the end, that is what this is: fiction and hyperbole.

We can do better.