What Is an Expeditionary Medal? Types, Eligibility, and Benefits

An expeditionary medal is a U.S. military award given to service members who deployed to a foreign area and took part in a designated operation. You qualify by serving at least 30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days in the area of eligibility, and the time requirement is waived if you were engaged in combat.¹ More than one expeditionary medal exists, and which one you receive depends on when, where, and what operation you supported.

What Separates an Expeditionary Medal from Other Service Awards

Expeditionary medals sit inside the broader family of campaign, expeditionary, and service medals maintained by the Department of Defense. What distinguishes them is deployment: you had to be there, not just serving during the right period. The National Defense Service Medal, by contrast, went to anyone on active duty during a designated conflict period regardless of location, and its most recent eligibility window closed on December 31, 2022 for service from September 11, 2001 onward.² An expeditionary medal requires that you actually went abroad or flew missions into the theater.

Each Military Department makes its own eligibility determinations, but the underlying framework comes from DoD policy, and the criteria always turn on where you served, when you served, and which operation you supported.¹

The Main Expeditionary Medals

Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal

The Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (AFEM) is the most broadly applicable of the group. President Kennedy established it through Executive Order 10977 on December 4, 1961, covering qualifying service back to July 1, 1958.³ It applies to three categories of operations: U.S. military operations, operations supporting the United Nations, and operations assisting friendly foreign nations.¹

Two limits shape who receives it. The AFEM is only awarded for operations where no other U.S. campaign medal has been approved; once Congress or the DoD creates a dedicated campaign medal for a theater, the AFEM no longer applies there. The original executive order also requires that recipients encounter foreign armed opposition or face an imminent threat of hostile action by foreign armed forces.³

Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal

The Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal (GWOTEM) was approved in March 2003 for service members who deployed abroad on or after September 11, 2001 in support of War on Terror operations.⁴ The eligibility period is open-ended, with no announced end date.

Service inside the United States does not qualify under any circumstance. Service members who qualified for the Afghanistan Campaign Medal or the Iraq Campaign Medal after April 30, 2005 cannot also receive the GWOTEM for the same service, because those dedicated campaign medals replaced it in their respective theaters.⁴ That reflects a broader rule across these awards: no service member receives more than one campaign or expeditionary medal for the same period of service.

Navy Expeditionary Medal and Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal

Before the AFEM existed, branches issued their own. The Navy Expeditionary Medal and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal both predate 1961 by decades, and they recognize landings on foreign territory involving armed opposition, or service under circumstances that merited special recognition where no campaign medal was awarded.⁵ A single service member cannot hold both.

Eligibility Requirements

The standard time-in-area requirement across most expeditionary medals is 30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days assigned to a unit operating in the designated area. If the operation itself lasts less than 30 days, serving its full duration satisfies the rule.¹

The time requirement is waived if you were engaged in actual combat or performed duties considered equally hazardous.⁶ Aircrew who flew sorties into, out of, within, or over the area of eligibility in direct support of a qualifying operation can qualify based on those missions rather than ground time.⁴ Each Military Department can grant exceptions to the standard criteria, so an unusual situation is not automatically disqualifying.¹

How the Award Is Processed

Expeditionary medals are not nominated the way a Bronze Star or Purple Heart is. They are administrative: your branch verifies from your service record that you meet the criteria, and the medal is authorized automatically.¹ In practice, the unit’s administrative section processes it after the deployment. Medals occasionally fall through the cracks during high operational tempo or unit transitions, which is why some veterans discover years later that an award they earned never made it onto their DD-214.

When You Earn the Same Medal More Than Once

A second qualifying deployment does not produce a second medal. You wear a device on the ribbon instead, and which device depends on your branch. Navy and Marine Corps recipients wear a bronze service star for each additional expedition, with a silver star replacing five bronze stars.⁵ Air Force and Army recipients wear a bronze oak leaf cluster for second through fifth awards, with a silver cluster replacing five bronze.⁷

What an Expeditionary Medal Does for You as a Veteran

Under the PACT Act, veterans who served in a theater of combat operations during a period of war after the Persian Gulf War and received an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, a service-specific expeditionary medal, a campaign medal, or another combat theater award established by federal statute can use that award as part of their eligibility to enroll in VA health care.⁸ Having the medal listed on your DD-214 can shorten the enrollment paperwork.

One thing an expeditionary medal does not do: it does not by itself qualify you for the IRS combat zone tax exclusion. The tax benefit has separate requirements — service in a designated combat zone, qualified hazardous duty area, or direct support area, plus receipt of hostile fire or imminent danger pay as certified by the DoD.⁹ Many recipients meet both, but the two determinations are independent.

Fixing a Missing Expeditionary Medal

Because these medals are processed administratively, sometimes they never reach the service record at all. The route to fix it depends on which situation you’re in.

If the Medal Is in Your Record

Standard Form 180 requests information from your military personnel file, including awards and decorations. You can mail it to the address for your branch or file electronically through the National Archives’ eVetRecs system at archives.gov.¹⁰ Use this route when the medal is documented but you need a physical replacement or a copy of the paperwork.

If the Medal Was Never Recorded

Use DD Form 149, an application to your branch’s Board for Correction of Military Records under 10 U.S.C. § 1552.¹¹ Select “Decorations/Awards” as the category and explain what you’re asking the board to correct and why.¹² Include supporting evidence such as deployment orders, unit records, or travel vouchers showing you were in the qualifying area during the eligible period. The boards must exhaust the request before final disposition, so older cases can still be corrected. Submit the completed form to the branch mailing address listed on Page 3, and keep your originals: documents sent with the application are not returned.

1
Department of Defense. DoDM 1348.33 Volume 2 – Manual of Military Decorations and Awards: DoD Service Awards
2
Air Force’s Personnel Center. National Defense Service Medal
3
National Archives. Executive Order 10977
4
Air Force’s Personnel Center. Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
5
Naval History and Heritage Command. Navy Expeditionary Medal, Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal
6
Naval History and Heritage Command. Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
7
AF.mil. The Book – Air Force Awards Guide
8
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. New PACT Act Benefits and Services for Gulf War Era Veterans
9
Internal Revenue Service. Combat Zones Approved for Tax Benefits
10
General Services Administration. Standard Form 180 – Request Pertaining to Military Records
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 10 – Section 1552 Correction of Military Records
12
Defense.gov. DD Form 149 – Application for Correction of Military Record