Awards and decorations of the United States Air Force are military decorations which are issued by the Department of the Air Force to Air Force service members and members of other military branches serving under Air Force commands. Of all five branches of the United States Armed Forces, the United States Air Force and the United States Coast Guard currently maintain the highest number of active awards and decorations (while the Air Force has more ribbons, the Coast Guard has more medals).
United States Air Force awards were first created in 1947. At that time, Air Force members were eligible to receive most U.S. Army decorations and Air Force veterans of World War II were entitled to continue displaying World War II campaign medals.
In 1962, following the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Air Force began a concentrated effort to create its own array of awards and Air Force members could no longer receive decorations of the United States Army as a matter of course. By the end of the Vietnam War, most of the modern day Air Force decorations had been established and Air Force members were also entitled to receive and wear all inter-service awards and decorations (see also the interservice Air Medal-which ranks above Aerial Achievement Medal).
By the start of the 21st century, the Air Force had created several new ribbons as well as an Air Force specific campaign medal known as the Air and Space Campaign Medal. Since then, members of other military branches have been known to comment upon the high amount of awards and decorations that the Air Force bestows and some Air Force awards (such as the Air Force Training Ribbon) are not permitted for wear on United States Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps uniforms due to the awards having no equivalent in the sea services.
In February 2006, the United States Air Force ceased issuing new awards of the Good Conduct Medal, however, the medal was reinstated in February 2009. The AFGCM has also been back-awarded to those who were in service during the three year break in new awards. By retro-actively awarding those who deserved the medal, it is as if the medal had never been taken away.
Air Force members are also eligible to receive approved foreign awards and approved international decorations. The currently issued active Air Force decorations are as follows:
Read more about Awards And Decorations Of The United States Air Force: Civilian Awards, Public Service Awards, Special Awards and Trophies, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words decorations, united, states, air and/or force:
“Let the realist not mind appearances. Let him delegate to others the costly courtesies and decorations of social life. The virtues are economists, but some of the vices are also. Thus, next to humility, I have noticed that pride is a pretty good husband. A good pride is, as I reckon it, worth from five hundred to fifteen hundred a year.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)