Which combat patch can i wear

As a result, the uniform can be leveraged for change. Famously, retired Gen. This policy conveyed an external message with the goal of binding the unit together. Given these institutional biases, how does the US Army build the mindset and skillset necessary for victory in a period of persistent competition?

Reform the combat patch. Army SSI-FWTS reform represents an opportunity to better posture the service to succeed in competition by signaling and stewarding the skills required in future operations.

Current policy guidance and future projections alike show the nature of conflict shifting toward great power competition. For the first time, the National Security Strategy proposed an era of continuous competition—one that challenges the US security community to rethink nearly three decades of policy. However, just as during the previous iteration of great power competition, there will be demands for combat capabilities beneath the level of armed conflict.

The Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning replaced the binary war-and-peace model, introducing the competition continuum of cooperation, competition, and armed conflict. Rather than resort to armed conflict, states will utilize all instruments of power across the multiple domains of air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace. This is why the Pentagon has called on the force to foster a new, competitive mindset that encompasses the skills necessary to succeed. The combined weight of policy and conflict projection shows a drastically new competition focus, at levels less than armed conflict, requiring drastic mindset and skillset changes.

Success here proactively stabilizes a competitive space for future US tools and interests, providing the opportunity to leverage diplomatic, information, and economic tools to maximum effect.

It also counters competitor destabilization efforts. The Army partly recognizes this truth already, allocating the vast majority of troop deployments to competition. As outlined in the Multi-Domain Operations concept, these units demonstrate a forward, credible deterrent in geographic areas where state interests collide. Whether through partnered training or stabilizing presence , they attempt to counter adversary reconnaissance as well as defeat adversary information and unconventional warfare.

These operations communicate strategic priorities originally set forth in the National Security Strategy. Unfortunately, Army performance, as part of larger joint force, historically struggles below armed conflict. Non-combat operations like those in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo exemplify where military action did not successfully create space for implementation of all national tools of power. Similar action today leaves opportunity for destabilization by competitors across domains —opportunity more likely exploited at faster rates in the future.

In a new era marked by a non-binary relationship between peace and war as well as a reduction of absolute US superiority , improving performance in competition matters. However, one does not need to look far to see why the Army historically underperformed in competition below armed conflict.

The service does not prioritize it—and you can see it in the uniform. Image credit: Capt. Political science literature discusses the uncoupling of the intent of policy and its implementation effects. A stagnant policy can change over time because of a dynamic environment. This separates the policy from its intended outcome.

This drift can occur at any organizational level without proper controls such as continuous goal reassessment. Unguided policy change, driven not by institutional reform but by a continually changing environment, causes unintended consequences over time. As a result, any organization must revisit even its most cherished traditions. In the modern US Army, earning the right to wear a combat patch is a revered accomplishment. In economics, signaling is a process by which one party reveals scarce information to another to overcome information gaps.

These signals are heuristics of past experience. Properly structured signals and incentives can induce certain behaviors. The uniform is an implicit symbol of institutional priorities that facilitate more efficient communication. Amongst these signals, combat experience is by far the most represented: SSI-FWTS and combat badges on the field uniform, in addition to overseas service bars and service ribbon devices on the dress uniform.

Signals are not perfect. No two experiences that earned soldiers the combat infantry badge are the same, nor do they necessarily portray current proficiency.

Nonetheless, signals remain powerful manifestations of credibility and authority. Ultimately, credibility is derived by what an institution chooses to highlight. The Multi-Domain Operations concept outlines capabilities necessary to prevail in multi-domain competition—such as calibrating force posture, building partner capacity, and understanding competitive environments. Yet they are practiced daily by much of the force in deployments below the level of armed conflict. Symbology and its effects are important components of several different fields of scholarship including anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science.

Similarly, Army leaders can widen the meaning and prestige currently associated with the SSI-FWTS to include competition, reflecting the shifting warfighting focus in the recent National Defense Strategy.

Unfortunately, signaling and symbology can negatively impact unit performance. Further, it creates ingroup — outgroup effects , both within deployed task forces and within the larger force. This, in turn, creates risks to retaining and promoting the right talent.

Soldiers can perceive significant professional advantage or disadvantage based on a combat patch either amongst unit leadership or formal promotion boards.

As a result, a unit patch provides a measure of individual worth effecting both career decisions and service satisfaction. However, the US Army is leaving untapped sources of individual motivation and group cohesion on the competitive sideline. The revised regulation could appear as follows—based on the current AR paragraph 19—17, a, 1 , a and with revisions in italics:. Using this definition, the Army uniform offers more ways to build the competitive mindset. The Army should also award overseas services bars for competitive zone deployment time.

Our argument is not intended to minimize the sacrifices, heroism, or skills required for combat deployments. They deserve recognition for the experience gained in the most challenging and dangerous circumstances. Deservingly, there are still many ways to reward performance in combat—like the Combat Infantry Badge, Combat Action Badge, and Combat Medical Badge, as well as the new combat-related device for awards.

This recommendation is similar to the recent change in ribbon device policy. Small adjustments to uniforms can offer ancillary benefits including unit cohesion during policy change. Finally, while SSI-FWTS reform facilitates the competitive mindset necessary in future fights, it does not detract from garrison combat preparation. The military must still block and tackle. While the majority of deploying forces are destined for competitive environments, the majority of the entire force readies for high-intensity combat.

The Army can, and must, incentivize success in operations other than war and yet still prepare for full-spectrum conflict. The game is changing, and the US Army has work to do.

While new technological and doctrinal innovations will be critical, the Army must build a new mindset to succeed in competition. To get there, the things the Army deems most important and the way the service signals them, must change. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Thanks for your comment, Daniel. Although we are an Army organization, we feature articles about and by members of other services, which use different rank abbreviations, so we use the Chicago Manual of Style as our house style guide to maintain consistency.

However, this article was singularly about the Army, not the other Services. Human-in-the-loop editing and all that. AR only specifies using the three letter Army abbreviations for internal Department of the Army correspondence. The authors are not stupid, they are well educated and know how to write according to Army regulations.

As a serving PAO I run into this "gotcha! For anything going out to the public, I'll write Capt. The Navy, Air Force, and Marines also have their own internal-use rank abbreviations.

For anything that goes out to the public, all services follow AP Style guidelines. If the Modern War Institute writers have chosen to follow the Chicago style manual, there's nothing wrong with that. I'd have thought they would follow AP Style to be more inline with DoD, but if they chose differently, that's their business, and there's nothing wrong with it.

After Vietnam, it didn't seem to matter if you had a combat patch or not. There sure were a lot of privates PV2s with all sorts of medals, though Stolen Valor. Sorry to see that 3-letter Army ranks are no longer in vogue, but it seems that it's more important for civilian consistency to overrule decades of Army use.

Just like the black beret. Specialized units all wore berets before Originally the Army was looking to do away with Combat Patches and overseas combat service bars too. Everyone picks their own job and career field.

If you want to be Hooah, then you get all the things that come with Hooah. If you want to sit in a sub basement on a computer or in a trailer flying a joystick…. Believe it or not it's mainly a US-only view that the beret is a "trophy.

In these militaries simply wearing a beret itself isn't a "trophy. While wearing a PC is certainly more convenient, and while it's also arguably true that the black beret wasn't a great match for the hideous ACUs, I don't necessarily dislike the beret, nor do I agree that it stands as a trophy. Green berets, maroon berets, the now-tan beret of the Rangers, yes that's a trophy of sorts, and there's nothing wrong with that. But general wearing of a black beret really shouldn't be regarded as a "participation trophy" any more than it is in many if not most of our allies' militaries; it's just what they wear, and it looks sharp.

There's no reason it has to be different for us. Tabs, combat patches, skill identifiers, etc serve as inspiration and motivation. If you want earn these trophies, you currently have to seek them out and earn them. Stop the with the nonsense. I'm in Kuwait now which does not earn a patch.

But unit CSMs organize trips to the boarder crossing so they can make an X with their toes in Iraq sand to "earn" their patch. Most disgusting example of stolen valor I have seen yet. Nice try, Sharpshooter, but your comment about the 3-letter rank abbreviations is misguided. It has nothing to do with what's "in vogue" or not. Even with official Army or any DoD branch writing there are differences mandated by policy that depend on whether the writing is internal only or meant to be public facing.

By DoD policy, official military writing that's public facing must use the AP Style Guide abbreviations for military rank. That's not incorrect usage; it's actually mandated by DoD policy. The purpose behind this is to harmonize DoD public communications with what is used most commonly in the media, so that the public sees consistent and more easily understandable terms. Considering that each service specifies its own internal abbreviations that often differ from each other even when referring to the same rank title, this is a perfectly reasonable policy.

That is their choice, and there's nothing wrong with it. Following a style guide rather than just doing what each individual writer perceives as "in vogue" promotes internal consistency to their writing. Excellent points offered and focus on incentivizing future service especially at a period of time when the army struggles with recruitment, retention and a nebulous focus in the move to LSCO, large state actors and non-combat deployments to areas.

One does not need to enter a combat role to gain experience worth acknowledging, especially when we have the CIB and CAB among other awards to respect those who do.

Perhaps they should have used that "same level of operational knowledge" in an environment that would have resulted in being awarded a combat patch or CIB instead of keeping it all theoretical? Sorry Doug, did you have any control over being in a unit that deployed to an area that offered a FWTS?

Me neither. To your point, some of us have been lucky enough to get assigned into positions that enabled deployments. I made some if my own luck by choices made qnd by volunteering. I am on the fence on whether or not deployments to areas other than areas qualifying for hostile fire pay should be signaled with a right sleeve patch.

For the OCP uniform my first position is no, they shouldn't but I'd support adding something extra to highlight service away from garrison but not in a combat zone. Why not a tab in the right shoulder? I await the grumbling from others and must point out the multitude of non-kinetic support great Soldiers do all over the world. No control over unit assignment, duty station, whether that unit just got back or not etc…and so many other things that factor in.

I didn't know the difference between Guard and Reserve nor had I any idea the infantry was itself a branch or job. I found out was infantry was when I got to Benning. I'm just one city boy who had no known family history of military service.

You guys make a lot of assertions and assumptions about what was in a kids brain at the recruiter's office. The problem is that thousands of young soldiers are increasingly choosing to not go on combat deployments and instead choose to join units like the 1st Cavalry Division. Why didn't these soldiers just volunteer for a combat deployment instead? It gets more baffling since some of these soldiers decided to become infantrymen a job that gives them no equivalent civilian skills beyond janitorial skills and yet they keep choosing to not go on combat deployments.

Oh well, I guess we will never know why these same soldiers chose to be born too late to go on combat deployments. With the exception of the article that advocated for ditch-the-Abrams and go back to light tanks like the famously successful Sherman zippo lighter in WW2, this may be the most intellectually bereft article MWI has published to date.

Assertion: Army performance historically struggles below armed conflict non-combat operations like those in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo.

Hint: Army performance in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo struggled under the common mastermind and commander-in-chief of those interventions, Bill Clinton. Lesson: Apply K. Tip: When you need to write a military academic paper, if your thesis is about how a uniform will dramatically change outcomes, you likely need to come up with a new thesis.

I have heard a lot of criticisms from senior folks about President Clinton but I never heard anything that indicated he micor-managed the National Security Staff or the Joint Chiefs. Given theses two Captains multiple factual errors, their complete lack of first hand knowledge of any of those operations and no evidence supporting the claim, their assessment that the Army "struggled" in them is questionable at best.

I agree with both your Lesson and Tip. I disagree that they wasted any time on research since I doubt any research was done at all.

Although the Captains are credited with four "operational deployments", their responsibilities during those assignments would be pertinent to the discussion.

Army Element of U. Between 31 July and a date to be determined, for Soldiers deployed to the U. Vote up. Vote down. SSG Delanda Hunt 6 y. Just go to the PX and buy whatever Patch you want, nobody cares and It don't mean much, because most people never left base camp and spent their time eating fast food and getting fatter. MSG Join to see 6 y. That is a terrible attitude to hold. Actually it means a lot SSG. If I see somebody wearing a 3 I.

If they say they supported them I ask which unit. If they do not know I ask them to take it off. SFC Join to see. Posted 7 y ago. The patch you wore over is the one you keep unless you were assigned to a different unit, or your company or platoon was attached to someone else. In that case you will have attachment orders authorizing you to wear the other patch.

I think we where authorized the 10th mountain SSI in 08 while attached too them as the last unit left behind in 3rd id. As far as I know we are allowed to wear the 10th mountain because we were supporting them for months until we were replaced. They all wore the 3rd ID patch. We worked at the Aerial Port and sent all the 10th Mountain guys home.

SSG Join to see 2 y. Under the old , we would have been authorized to wear the Electric Strawberry. Under the new AR , since 82nd has it's own patch, we wear the Alcoholics Anonymous patch instead. MSG Robert Mills. SGT Jon Maxwell 6 y. From personal experience when I was recalled and was attached to the national guard for a sort time, most did not want to wear their unit patch and we're looking for an excuse to wear the patch from one of the well known units.

SGT Brent Swanson 6 y. I have 3 to choose from. Obviously, not everyone wears a combat patch on their right arm, so these are proud displays of prior service for the soldier. The Army combat patch, officially known as the "shoulder sleeve insignia-former wartime service" SSI-FWTS , recognizes soldiers' participation in combat operations.

The Army has specific guidelines on when and how to wear the patch, which it has revised to reflect the fact that soldiers now are deployed at smaller echelon levels. After , only soldiers who were serving with large echelon deployed units, such as separate brigades, divisions, corps, Army commands, or higher, were eligible to wear the combat patch.

Once soldiers report to their first units , they should wear their command's combat patch on their left sleeves. When deployed to a designated combat zone, soldiers also may wear the company-level or higher patch on their right sleeves to reflect the units in which they serve. The right sleeve is used to signify what unit you were deployed into combat zones with; thus, it is called the Combat Patch. The left sleeve unit patch denotes what unit you are currently serving with.

The guidance states that when echelons below company level deploy, soldiers in those units may now wear the combat patch of the lowest-echelon command they deploy with, as long as it's at company level or higher.

In order to be eligible for the combat patch, soldiers must be serving in a theater or an area of operation that has been designated a hostile environment or serving during a war period as declared by Congress. The units "must have actively participated in or supported ground combat operations against hostile forces in which they were exposed to the threat of enemy action or fire, either directly or indirectly," according to the regulations.

The military operation also must have lasted for 30 days or longer, although exceptions can be made to this rule. Army personnel who served in a designated area as civilians or as members of another service who were not members of the Army during one of the specified periods are not authorized to wear the combat patch. Finally, soldiers who have earned multiple combat patches may choose which patch to wear.