Seems like what an air medal is for. But it seems like I see a lot more AF guys with DFC’s than Navy or Marines.
The Coasties were pretty liberal about handing them out at least a few years ago. A Whidbey SAR guy I was deployed with went on a rant about how they did some of the same SAR missions as some Coasties down south and got no medals but the Coasties got DFC's. He wasn't bitter about not getting anything , he thought what they did wasn't all that special, he was derisive of how the Coasties got theirs.
I'm sure the same sentiment applies to higher awards. If the C-130 guy gets a DFC, then now the DFC bar is lowered and the guy with an air-air kill rates a silver star or navy cross, etc.
The criteria for combat valor medals has gone up and down through the years, with many Vietnam-era air-to-air kills rating a Silver Star but most, not all though, Navy air-to-air kills since have rated DFC's. In WWII in some theaters and by some services DFC's were awarded like Strike/Flight Air Medals for a aviators who flew whatever the required number of missions. A little over 5 years later and the 'rule of thumb' late in the Korea War for a Navy aviator to rate a DFC was destroying a train, by then a pretty hard thing to do.
Al that said, from what the USAF has generally been more liberal than the Navy or Marines in handing out DFC's the last ~20 years.