Should the DoD redesign its medals and ribbons policy and precedence to give more importance to valor than "good work"?

I never recieved a bronze star and I am not fat or sat around watching others do the work, definitely do not drink coffee. Other than that you are correct

My Lt. Put me and my buddy in for soldiers medal but it was denied and never sent up and then downgraded to aam for pulling 4 people out of head on collision wreck in front of us going to morning formation. We pulled them out and dressed wounds with my first aid kit and waited for ambulance. Cant have soldiers with medal higher than leadership medals

Concur. More Awards and Decorations should be given to Enlisted personnel and NCOs and far fewer to Officers. The criteria should be entirely merit based. The AAM and ARCOM should be administrative. Awards beyond that should be for non-administrative achievements and actions.
As for the new AGSU, I prefer a simpler, cleaner look. Limit ribbons to a single row. No qualification badges or foreign decorations. Soldiers wear their SF, Rangers Airborne, Sapper tabs on their shoulders with their unit patch. Buttons subdued. Save the glitter for the ASU and formal occasions. The day uniform should be, well, a day uniform - like the current Class B. JMTC.

I do not like the fact that every time a soldier, Marine, Coast Guardsman, Airmen or Sailor does their job with any proficiency they feel they should get a medal. Your promotions and pay checks are for doing your job. Medals are for performing above and beyond. Shortly after the start of OIF/OEF, one received three medals just for deploying, and that didn't include overseas ribbon and any personal awards. I'm thinking that some of the performance awards should just be ribbons, and Valor awards, actual medals. Some of that needs to go for officers as well. Some of the awards they get just for doing their job running a command is ridiculous as well. I do understand the importance and weight of medals on the promotion list, but maybe more weight should be given on NCOERs, OERs, and EERs, but that has it's own issues as well. So the personal performance ribbons can be used as some weight on promotions, that prevents a SM from not being promotable because the evaluator doesn't like the SM. Bronze Stars and the such need to be reserved for combat operational achievements.

Same thing still going on today, Two weeks in to our tour in Iraq, platoon leader stated the E-6's would be receiving the BS as for their tour of duty medal, and that no-one below E-6 would be getting a BS, All the platoon leaders and platoon Sgt.'s got the BS as well. Means nothing now. Just a show up medal. As it was everybody else got an ARCOM for being in country. FYI, long story short, I was an E-5 during this time. not 1LT.

It is an important point to remember that General Eisenhower had over 33 awards and ribbons rendered to him by foreign governments. Therefore, before anyone starts commenting on his rack consisting of US Ribbons and it’s size the United States Government has had a policy in place on foreign medals and their authorized display.

I’m very proud of the 10 ribbons I earned during my service. Somewhere because I was just me and did a good job. Summer because I was part of a team that got the job done. Add a couple were what you were probably call valor I stuck my neck out I took a chance and make things better for my service. I see people that gave the service with his few as two or three and as many as a dozen or two dozen. Does it cost to know how to read the ribbons know a lot about the person and what they did and didn’t do. I don’t object to revising the rules are changing the number of ribbons and medals but I see nothing wrong with the way were doing it today

I have had a bad taste in my mouth when I left Vietnam . I was involved in a 15 day siege of a Special Forces camp . Going night and day making air drops and resupplying the camp and being lucky to survive . When leaving (PCS) going home they were handing out awards to all the clerks and non fighters . If it wasn't for the aviation unit putting me in for a Air metal with "V" I would have gotten nothing .
That was when I seen politics come into play as much as valor .

LTC (Join to see) - Very true statement that I can somewhat identify with Colonel...
I spent 20 years in the Navy, with 15 of those years on ships that did deploy and take part in “important” missions. However, due to the relative “peace” we enjoyed during my time in, frequent transfers, and other factors, I never happened to be in the “right place at the right time” to earn any extra medals or ribbons. I retired with my nice, tidy, single row with Nat. Defense, Good Conduct with 4 stars, and Sea Service with a few stars...
Didn’t worry me a bit though, I still was promoted and paid the same as the guys who had to spend more money on their ribbon rack than I ever did-LOL

The medals in Viet Nam was unit based. Not every unit gave out the same awards for EOT. In a few units you you had to actually earn your awards, while some had “packets”, like company commander packets, platoon leader packets, 1StSGT packets etc. not a very good system. What they should do, is tighten the criteria for earning the awards, and make justification harder.

CW5 Les Rayburn - I was late in the war 1971, what I observed was as Commissioned officers were facing a rift, they put in for medals every chance they could. Most warrants and enlisted, especially on first tour, were not thinking about the Army as a career. Had I not been wounded, I may have seen it as an career avenue once back in the world. But at the time medals were the furthest thing from my mind. Didn’t even know I got any until I saw my DD214.

I knew something was wrong with the system when I was awarded the Nation Defense Ribbon in boot cam. That was back when they had the draft.....

I imagine now you gotta issue ribbons for the amount of ice cream eaten and snarky food consumed. Anything to pump egos.