The Coast Guard created their Restricted Duty Ribbon in March of 1984.  These military awards recognize personnel who have completed an unaccompanied duty tour.  When service persons are assigned to a duty location where family members cannot join them, the duty status is known as unaccompanied.  These military ribbons honor standard, unaccompanied duty tours which are normally one to two years in length and occur in remote locations such as Greenland or the Arctic.  The Restricted Duty Ribbon is awarded at the conclusion of the duty tour to honor this difficult service.  The Coast Guard has no corresponding military medals for these awards.

The Coast Guard is the only one of the five branches of service to offer these decorations for unaccompanied duty tours.  Additional awards of the Restricted Duty Ribbon are denoted by bronze or silver Service Stars.  These military ribbons are worn below the Coast Guard Sea Service Ribbon and above the Coast Guard Basic Training Honor Graduate Ribbon in the order of precedence for all military awards.   The Restricted Duty Ribbon is available as a lapel pin, and in both the traditional slide on or custom thin ribbon configurations.