The Air Force Outstanding Unit Award is one of the unit awards of the United States Air Force. It was first created in 1954 and is awarded any unit of the U.S. Air Force (including Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard) which performs exceptionally meritorious service, accomplishes specific acts of outstanding achievement, excels in combat operations against an armed enemy of the United States, or conducts with distinction military operations involving conflict with, or exposure to, a hostile action by any opposing foreign force. The "V" (valor) device is authorized when awarded for combat or combat support service.
Multiple awards of the Outstanding Unit Award are denoted by oak leaf clusters on the ribbon. The Outstanding Unit Award ranks directly below the Meritorious Unit Award and above the Air Force Organizational Excellence Award in the precedence of Air Force awards and decorations. It is awarded to personnel who were assigned or attached to the unit receiving the award during the period it was awarded for.
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“He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
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—Jaroslav Pelikan (b. 1932)
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—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
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—Robert Graves (1895–1985)