Announced by the Secretary of State in Iraq today:
Op SHADER Medal
Good news for aircrew but the criteria exclude all those outside Iraq and Syria, e.g. Reaper crews, CAOC staff and the engineers (and others) thrashing themselves year-in, year-out to keep the fight going. From SofS's words it sounds as if some kind of further review into medallic recognition is under way, and damn right. The WW2 Defence Medal could be awarded for spending 1 year overseas in a no-threat environment, and if that was good enough in the 1940s, then there simply has to be a way of recognising those who have already spent 18 months or more deployed on SHADER. Far from protecting some notional 'historical' threshold for medallic recognition, I fear that all the talk of 'risk and rigour' in recent years has simply raised the bar further and further... and we can't even award an ACSM if there is no medal-earning service to start with. If we can't award a GSM08 to those in Cyprus and the Gulf (which would be an acceptable compromise, in my view) then there really should be some kind of lower-level award, counting toward an ACSM, that allows recognition of the severe and ongoing personal sacrifices some people are making for this campaign.
Edit to add:
CAS tweeting along same lines