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NEWS CIB vs. CAR - The Fascinating Minutiae

Hotdogs said:
Lots of things have changed in 40 years.



I have never heard of scenario 1 ever occurring. Not saying it hasn’t, but it’s nothing I’ve been privy to hear about. I know of many Marines awarded Purple Hearts without corresponding CARs if that’s anything worth noting, and that’s always struck me as odd. Most CARs I have seen awarded have been for direct enemy engagement regardless of MOS. Combat jump devices are a little bit of different story due to the knowingly placing yourself into an in extremis situation. As with most things - right time, right place, and right job. Earning a CIB or CAR is definitely noteworthy, but It’s not something I would particularly swoon over when it comes to career accomplishments.
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You’re right, it has changed. I just looked up the criteria in the Awards Manual. It says:

“The principal eligibility criterion is, regardless of military occupational specialty or rating, the individual must have rendered satisfactory performance under enemy fire while actively participating in a ground or surface engagement. Neither service in a combat area nor being awarded the Purple Heart Medal automatically makes a service member eligible for the Combat Action Ribbon (CR).”

And

“Direct exposure to the detonation of an
Improvised Explosive Device (IED) used by an enemy, with or without the immediate presence of enemy forces, constitutes active participation in a ground or surface engagement.”

So one instance makes one eligible. And the commander has a lot of leeway in saying what is direct exposure. Do you see the IED, mortar impact, etc. or are you inside the blast zone. @Sawnee’s example of a mortar round inside the FOB iOS a good example of the ambiguity in what defines direct exposure.

The CIB, on the other hand, requires:

“A soldier must be personally present and under fire while serving in an assigned infantry or Special Forces primary duty, in a unit engaged in active ground combat, to close with and destroy the enemy with direct fires.”

A CIB is not awarded for being exposed to an IED or a mortar round.

A CAB is probably the equivalent of the CAR as it is awarded to any Soldier who is personally present and actively engaging or being engaged by the enemy, and performing satisfactorily in accordance with the prescribed rules of engagement and there is no specific requirement for the enemy hostile contact to be direct.

The original proposal for the CAB was similar criteria as the CIB but it was for combat arms troops other than infantry. It got continuously watered down to include all Soldiers due to complaints about unfairness and exclusion by the non-combat arms MOSs.

The Combat Medical Badge is of similar prestige as the CIB as the CMB requires the Soldier to be a member of the Army Medical Department and assigned or attached to a ground combat arms unit which provides medical support during any period in which the unit was engaged in ground combat. The Soldier must be performing medical duties while simultaneously being engaged by the enemy. I personally think the CMB is more prestigious as the Soldier isn’t actively fighting but rather has to just “take it” while providing first aid to the wounded. Must wounded got wounded because they were more exposed to the enemy fire so the medic is probably more exposed too.
 
For what it's worth, I've only met two people within the Navy in my 14 years of exposure to active duty personnel.

The first was a AZ who I had to ask how she earned it - turns out she was on an IA/GSA as part of the security of some FOB in Afghanistan that came under a major attack that and that she directly participated in the firefight with her rifle. I'm not 100% positive since it's been 4-5 years since I asked the question, but I believe it was the raid on Camp Bastion.

The second was a SWO who was onboard USS Mason when it came under fire from missiles fired from the Yemeni coast.

With that said, anecdotally, it seems pretty rare in today's Navy. I've seen lots of Marines have them, but I'm also confident from what I know of them, they were all involved in direct combat with the enemy.
 
Hotdogs said:
Lots of things have changed in 40 years.



I have never heard of scenario 1 ever occurring. Not saying it hasn’t, but it’s nothing I’ve been privy to hear about. I know of many Marines awarded Purple Hearts without corresponding CARs if that’s anything worth noting, and that’s always struck me as odd. Most CARs I have seen awarded have been for direct enemy engagement regardless of MOS. Combat jump devices are a little bit of different story due to the knowingly placing yourself into an in extremis situation. As with most things - right time, right place, and right job. Earning a CIB or CAR is definitely noteworthy, but It’s not something I would particularly swoon over when it comes to career accomplishments.
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I agree with you.
 
Inside the Army the CIB is a genuine “I have touched the elephant” badge. It is an indication that one has closed with and engaged the enemy, and it is not easy to get. The EIB (Expert Infantry Badge) is considered a loftier badge among army infantry types...it is a genuine “I know how to touch the elephant” badge and indicates you are a master of your skill set. The EIB is the infantryman’s equivalent of the Army (or USAF) Master/Command pilot badge and is widely respected among army infantry types.

All that said, when I jumped to the Army National Guard I refused to take the EIB test...I told my commander my Marine training already made me an infantry expert!
 
I wonder when it changed. In 2004-ish, our squadron flight surgeon went TAD to support HCS-4 in Iraq. When he came back, I noticed he was wearing a CAR on his uniform one day and asked him about it. He said it was awarded because of the regular mortar attacks.
 
Gatordev said:
I wonder when it changed. In 2004-ish, our squadron flight surgeon went TAD to support HCS-4 in Iraq. When he came back, I noticed he was wearing a CAR on his uniform one day and asked him about it. He said it was awarded because of the regular mortar attacks.
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Indirect fire was kind of a gray area. c2004 it was probably easier to get one of those for it; a few years later you could still get one, but you had to be doing something such as tending to the wounded during an attack and not just squeezing into one of the shelters with your newest, closest friends.

There was some policy guidance on it in the late 2000s but I can't remember if it was from N1 or even what it was (i.e. a NAVADMIN or something else).
 
CAB doesn’t equal CAR. I know Navy guys who were assigned to Army units on IA that received the CAB but big Navy said no to converting it to a CAR.

Policy now is IDF to a base doesn’t get the CAR awarded, you have to fight back. Gone are the days of an entire FOB getting it just because they were mortared. An example is the early days of HCS-4/5 in Iraq, a lot of guys got the CAR due to mortars, but later in Iraq HSC-84 guys didn’t.

The gray area now is the ‘satisfactorily performed under fire during an active engagement’ line. Current business rules basically translates to you need to have actually used some sort of weapon during the firefight (IED rules notwithstanding).
 
HAL Pilot said:
During Desert Storm, it was believed that the Iraqis had released hundreds of free floating mines into the Persian Gulf. Every ship had continuous mine watches with extra lookouts. On TR we did “all back emergency full” numerous times for floating green or black trash bags.

When it was over, every ship was initially able to submit for a CAR based on the “mine threat”. When they realized that was 40,000+ CARs just for the 4 carriers (1day was all it took and there were still transfers on/off during the war plus all the visitors), they decided the ship had to be in an area where a mine was actually sighted. That cut the numbers / eligible ships way down. There were few actually sighted and only the USS Tarawa hit a mine.

There were numerous appeals, IGs and congressionals over this too and it went back and forth a few times. Every CO want a CAR for his ship and every Sailor wanted another ribbon. It was quite the political hot potato.
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When I was on the Nimitz during 1991 we had to navigate around a mine, EOD then went out and detonated it as we continued on our way, but no CAR for us.
 
NavyOffRec said:
When I was on the Nimitz during 1991 we had to navigate around a mine, EOD then went out and detonated it as we continued on our way, but no CAR for us.
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We sent EOD out to blow up quite a few floating trash bags. Many times we only figured out were trash bags when the EOD boat reached them.

I’m not going to say it didn’t happen but as a OOD I got a brief before going on watch of what happened on all the carriers in the Gulf as we were all operating in the same box. I never heard this as part of that nor on the BG awards board afterward (we coordinated with all the other BG awards boards to make sure we were all use the same criteria, etc.). With the CAR debacle, the 100 miles off the Iraqi coast thing (or whatever it was) came about because that was the furthest verified mine sighting.

I also know after the war and our return to Norfolk there was a lot of bitching by some ship’s company that thought it was “bullshit we didn’t get a CAR when we had to dodge mines all the time”. They had heard all the 1MC announcements when we were dodging trash bags and never the fact it was a trash bag so they never knew there were no actual mines. This was mostly non-flight deck as the Air Boss always yelled at them to get back to work it’s just another trash bag.

But I wasn’t on the Nimitz so I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It could have.
 
HAL Pilot said:
We sent EOD out to blow up quite a few floating trash bags. Many times we only figured out were trash bags when the EOD boat reached them.

I’m not going to say it didn’t happen but as a OOD I got a brief before going on watch of what happened on all the carriers in the Gulf as we were all operating in the same box. I never heard this as part of that nor on the BG awards board afterward (we coordinated with all the other BG awards boards to make sure we were all use the same criteria, etc.). With the CAR debacle, the 100 miles off the Iraqi coast thing (or whatever it was) came about because that was the furthest verified mine sighting.

I also know after the war and our return to Norfolk there was a lot of bitching by some ship’s company that thought it was “bullshit we didn’t get a CAR when we had to dodge mines all the time”. They had heard all the 1MC announcements when we were dodging trash bags and never the fact it was a trash bag so they never knew there were no actual mines. This was mostly non-flight deck as the Air Boss always yelled at them to get back to work it’s just another trash bag.

But I wasn’t on the Nimitz so I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It could have.
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The put the pictures of the EOD guys blowing it up in our ships newspaper, I think they may be in the cruise book as well, I will have to dig it out and look.
 
NavyOffRec said:
The put the pictures of the EOD guys blowing it up in our ships newspaper, I think they may be in the cruise book as well, I will have to dig it out and look.
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All right then. My long time belief there were no actual mines in the carrier box has just been changed. Sorry for doubting your story.
 
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