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I know that weapons kill. And I know that drones can be particularly deadly. That’s the destructive nature of war, after all. But does the US really need to feature the symbol of death on their military badges?
The insignia above is the symbol of the US Navy’s Executive Office for the Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons Program. They are a boring department, in charge of acquisitions. They’re not a combat unit. The sit behind desks, not in bunkers. They spend their days looking at spreadsheets and specs, evaluating unmanned airplanes and missiles. And sure, among the many weapons they have procured you can find the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. But that doesn’t really matter. Their symbol is still unnecessarily grim—not to mention horribly designed.
Of course, this is not the first time that the reaper has been featured in military insignia. During World War I, a French aviation squadron included this symbol too. Other units did the same through the decades. More recently, the American Fighter Squadron 101—a US Navy F-14 Fleet Replacement Squadron based at Naval Air Station Oceana—also included a flying reaper on their badge. They called themselves the Grim Reapers.
But the most famous use of death symbols belongs to someone else: all the Nazi SS and Waffen SS units featured skulls on their uniforms. That’s not a very good example to follow. In fact, in an era in which the US military is sometimes perceived as unnecessarily aggressive by most of the world, perhaps it would be a good idea to avoid featuring skulls and bones on emblems.
Independent of their historic use, however, this case is particularly horrendous. Especially since this is not some wacky pilot-designed badge for an attack squadron but just the insignia for an office, a department of the Navy in charge of UAV and weapons acquisitions. Pencil pushers, serving up death by spreadsheet.
The fact is that 99.9 per cent of the military badges out there don’t feature the reaper or skulls and bones. Some of them are dumb, some of them are aggressive and full of fists, wings and lightning. But no death symbols in them. The military is obliged to deal with death, certainly. But that’s no reason to celebrate it. [Instagram]
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As they’re paper-pushing, maybe that’s what you look like after you’ve worked there long enough….
http://youtu.be/tEJ7zMNXVjM
I was going to post that… good sketch
After reading that heading my 1st thoughts were of that sketch, sadly only funny sketch they did apart for the ‘Jesus and The Good Samaritan’.
Come on Jesus (not that I imagine he reads the comments over on this site too) you can’t have an article in which you mention Death Symbols the US miltitary and even bunkers without mentioning the ‘Death Wears Bunny Slippers’ badge of the Nuclear Missile Command…I’m pretty sure I even read about it on Giz…
http://antinuclearinfo.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/badge-missiliers.gif
anyone else think of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3JKcExmQlA
you have to wonder what their thought is. half of the job of the army is to keep the peace too. just like when the US troops invaded iraq years ago and they had to tell the soldiers to remove ‘ kill em all , let god sort them out’ off their helmets as they werent supposed to kill everyone
Peace through superior firepower
They weren’t supposed to kill everyone? They did a good job of trying to.
Great choice in clip btw.
When the US military uses so many different euphemisms for killing people it’s good to see a little honesty somewhere.
Exactly! It’s ALMOST like honesty for once!
Why just pick on the yanks? The Lancers have a skull and crossbones capbadge. In fact most forces around the world do
People are trained to kill and to survive others killing them, you cant just expect them to take on the ethos of a warrior and then conform to a ‘pc’ viewpoint
Perhaps because the author of this article is a yank ?
Surviving being killed is a pretty tough thing to do…
“But does the US really need to feature the symbol of death on their military badges?”
Yes, Jesus, yes they do.