Our community uses a Decorations and Awards system to incentivise, motivate (and amuse) our membership and potentially gain new members. This system is intended to motivate our player base and attract new members for 5 RANGER.
Awards are a way of rewarding the membership for actions in the ARMA battlespace, during combat operations but also outside it. As a nod to those members who don’t perhaps always get it right, there is also a series of ‘meme’ awards.
The Awards and Decoration system aims to bring tradition to 5 RANGER and create opportunities for ceremonies to assist unit cohesion. Certain awards and qualifications may assist a member in obtaining promotion.
Some of the following decorations and awards are either inspired by, or taken from, the available military awards and decorations of the United Kingdom. There are also types of awards suggested by members of 5 RANGER.
The use of awards in 5 RANGER is in no way intended to represent the real-life honours awarded to Service personnel for either their courage or Service.
"Meme" awards may be issued across all ranks of 5 RANGER and their intent is to bring a light-hearted effect to the decorations and awards system. The ribbons for these awards are suitably outrageous and flamboyant.
A Meme award is not something that a member can actively try and get - It is for a spontaneous act, as seen by the individual nominating for the award.
As mentioned previously, these awards are issued privately by Discord DM. Should the recipient wish to share in their (mis)fortune of having the award, that is their decision!
Note that the intent is not to reward any members for being purposely ineffective and will be frowned upon. Further ribbons may be available in the future.
Recommendations are to be made by a person senior to the member being recommended, in the form of a citation to the 5 RANGER Honours and Awards Board (J0). The citation is to name the individual and outline the action(s) carried out with the date of the action together with the name of the award they are being nominated for. It is for the Honours and Awards Board to decide which Award is to be given – if at all. The citation does not need to be an essay, but must be clear, concise and evidenced based.
Lastly, a nominee for an award is not to be told they have been nominated – to avoid disappointment!
There is no requirement to provide a recommendation or citation for a campaign ribbon as these are to be issued by 5 RANGER command staff at the end of an operation.
It is to be noted that in order to qualify for a campaign ribbon, a member has to have attended at least 2/3s of the whole operation as judged by the Honours and Awards Board.