Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday eliminated the Distinguished Warfare Medal, overturning one of Leon Panetta’s last acts in the position.

The award — which had come to be known as the Nintendo Medal — recognized drone pilots and cyber operators.

Now, instead of a medal, individuals will receive a pin that will be placed on another existing medal — similar to a V that is pinned to a Bronze Star to indicate an award with valor.

The medal was established to “recognize the achievements of a small number of service men and women who have an especially direct and immediate impact on combat operations through the use of remotely piloted aircraft and cyber operations,” Hagel wrote in a statement.

Hagel ordered a review of the medal after hearing feedback from veterans groups, Congress members and others. The review “confirmed the need to ensure such recognition,” Hagel said, but “it found that misconceptions regarding the precedence of the award were distracting from its original purpose.

“The service men and women, who operate and support our remotely piloted aircraft, operate in cyber, and others are critical to our military's mission of safeguarding the nation,” Hagel continued. “I again want to thank my predecessor, Leon Panetta, for raising the need to ensure that these men and women are recognized for their contributions.”

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Department of Defense via AP

This Distinguished Warfare Medal with ribbon.

Amid a firestorm of protests from veterans’ groups and lawmakers, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a review of a new military medal for pilots of unmanned drones.

The Distinguished Warfare Medal for drone operators was ordered last month by former Defense Sectary Leon Panetta, but it was rankedabove the medals awarded service members who fought under fire on the front lines, the Bronze Star with combat V and the Purple Heart.

Critics among veterans and on Capitol Hill argued any medal for drone operators thousands of miles from the battle zone should be ranked below the traditional combat awards.

Defense officials said Tuesday that production of the new medal has been halted pending review by Hagel, who himself was twice wounded and earned two Purple Hearts as a combat infantry squad leader in the Vietnam war. Hagel took over as defense secretary from Panetta last month.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, will lead the review, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday.

"In light of concerns about the medal's place in the order of precedence, Secretary Hagel will work with the senior leadership to review the order of precedence and associated matters, and the secretary has asked that Chairman Dempsey lead this review and report back in 30 days," Little said.

"The fact of the matter is that production of the medal has stopped. No one has been nominated for this medal. No one is in training for this medal. So we do have time to make a final decision."

The new medal was the first combat-related award created since the Bronze Star in 1944 during World War II. The Distinguished Warfare Medal was placed just above the Bronze Star but lower than the Silver Star, the third-highest combat award.

Defense officials said that the ranking of the new medal recognized the changing nature of warfare. A Defense Department press release said that in addition to drone operators, a possible recipient could be "a soldier at Fort Meade, Md., who detects and thwarts a cyberattack on a DOD computer system."

"I've seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cyber systems, have changed the way wars are fought," Panetta said in announcing the medal. "And they've given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar."

But the thought of placing a medal for drone pilots — operating their aircraft from secure sites far from the battlefield — above medals for members of the military actually under fire drew a barrage of criticism from veterans and their families.

"I thought it was a joke at first," Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, 26, who earned a Bronze Star for his actions in Afghanistan, told NBC News. He’s now receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a traumatic brain injury sustained in combat.

Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House to place the medal below the Purple Heart.

Jim Miklaszewski is NBC News' chief Pentagon correspondent. Courtney Kube is an NBC News' Pentagon producer. NBC News contributor Bill Briggs contributed to this report.

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Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images file

A new medal for pilots of unmanned drones has been met with criticism by the military community.

Zingers about the Distinguished Warfare Medal, fired with the same deadly accuracy as drone strikes unleashed from computer screens, mock the U.S. military’s latest ribbon as “The Purple Buttocks” and “The Chairborne.”

A website about war-zone burn pits offers a photoshopped version of the medal as a glossy, gold Xbox controller. At Stars and Stripes, one writer quipped the fresh decoration — announced Feb. 13 by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to honor troops who direct cyberattacks and drone strikes — has ignited “an avalanche of Whiskey Tango Foxtrots.” And at an online store run by current and ex-military members, retailers joke that any recipients will have earned the award from “the safety of some air conditioned box while sipping on their mocha-frapachino [sic] that they picked up on the way in to work that day, and waiting for Papa John’s to show up with lunch.”

Boom. 

The shrapnel-packed jabs seem to be fueled as much by the non-combat medal's mere existence as by the decoration's rank: the Distinguished Warfare Medal is slotted by military brass slightly above the Bronze Star, long the fourth-highest combat award granted for heroism and/or meritorious service in battle.

Many of the so-called "Distant Warfare Medal" critics — and cutups — fully acknowledge the strategic value of cyber experts within the U.S. armed forces, especially as President President Barack Obama on Friday deployed American service members and drone aircraft to the African country of Niger, where they could be used to support a French counterterrorism mission in neighboring Mali.

Still, some can't help but smirk at the thought of a keyboard clicker eventually being pinned with a ribbon. And there are those in the service who thought the first mentions they read about the medal were a just a dash of military satire. After all, for men and women in uniform, sarcasm and dark humor are as common as camo and Hesco (a protective barrier). 

"I thought it was a joke at first," said Marine Sgt. Jeremy Lattimer, 26, who earned a Bronze Star for his actions in Afghanistan's Helmand Province where, in one three-hour stretch on Nov. 22, 2009, he led his squad as they maneuvered through enemy machine gun fire then helped another squad escape an ambush.

"When I saw that this has a higher rating than the Bronze Star, it seemed a little bit extreme," added Lattimer, reached by phone at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he's receiving treatment for a traumatic brain injury sustained in combat. "Whenever you start getting into (awarding) valor for someone in a box behind a computer in who knows where, I think that's a point where it starts rubbing people the wrong way."

Meanwhile, some military families are so disturbed by the new medal that punchlines seem out of line. 

Courtesy of Veronica Ortiz-Rivera

Marine Staff Sgt. Javier Ortiz-Rivera was heavily decorated in life. After dying in action, he was awarded the Bronze Star. In 2009, he and his wife, Veronica (left), attended the Marine Corps Ball.

Near Camp Lejeune, N.C., where Marine Staff Sgt. Javier Ortiz-Rivera was based before his 2010 IED-blast death in Afghanistan, his wife, Veronica, speaks softly and somberly about the value of the Bronze Star that the Marine earned posthumously. 

"To know that somebody sitting at a computer who never risked their life is going to get something that’s worth more, it almost puts less of a value on what my husband did and what so many other men have done," Ortiz-Rivera said. "To take that new medal and give it a higher classification than the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart is disrespectful. Maybe I’m just biased because my husband was killed in combat.

"It feels like it almost strips away a little of his heroism, honestly, although he is and always will be a hero to us," she added. "I'm not at a point where I can joke about" this new medal.

And for Army veteran Andrew O'Brien, who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, any humorous takes about any medals — no matter how they are earned — simply feels wrong, he said. 

"We are all on the same team," O'Brien said. "I believe they (drone operators) deserve medals just as much as anyone else and recognition for the things they do. I also feel (the humor) is an attack on them for what they do. To mimic a video game as an award? We are all part of the same fight."

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