Degree-scale B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background sourced by primordial gravitational waves is the so-called smoking-gun signature of inflation. The detection of these primordial CMB B-modes is often described as would-be evidence that inflation occurred at or near the scale of grand unification, that the inflaton rolled over a super-Planckian distance in field space, and that gravity is quantized. In this talk, I describe a class of inflationary models that serve as a counter-example to these claims. Models involving classical non-Abelian gauge fields can produce observable gravitational waves at energy scales far below the scale of grand unification without the quantization of gravity, or super-Planckian field excursions. I show how the gauge field background violates parity, leading to the helical polarization of the gravitational wave background; a signature of this class of models. I also discuss the propagation and backreaction of fermions on the background field configurations, and some subtleties associated with renormalization of fermions in axion backgrounds.