NTSB mission

[RiverAux]

Over on CAPblog http://capblog.typepad.com/ there is a story about CAP assisting the NTSB in picking up parts from a crashed airplane.  In it Midway6 says

CAP is really good at finding complexity in the simple. I was amazed at how a simple request for assistance from a federal agency was turned into nearly a week of teeth gnashing and hand wringing. Gosh, no wonder we have no missions, because when one jumps up and bites us on the ass, we have a collective-freak out on our hands. 'nuff said.

This sort of surprised me as we've been getting fairly quick approval for non-standard missions.  The NOC has had their act together as far as I've been able to tell (at least on this issue).  Granted, none of ours involved this particular incident type, but it doesn't seem that terribly complicated.  Heck, CAP did it for the shuttle disaster a few years ago, so I don't know why it would have taken all that long to get approvals. 

Anyone else have some perspective on how easy it has been to get approvals for "weird" missions from NOC? 

[lordmonar]

Well since we Midway6 did not elaborate on the what the problem was other than it took a week.  We can only speculate.

[RiverAux]

Wasn't really asking for info on that mission, but whether anyone else has been seeing week-long delays between mission request and approval for emergency missions. 

[Eclipse]

While the physical searching may seem like a simple thing, the mission itself, especially from a regulatory standpoint, was anything but.

In the end, we went from a call from the NTSB, to mission execution, in about a week.  As this was not an emergent situation, and the agencies had never worked together, this doesn't seem too bad to me.  Those same jobs that we have thhat afford us flexibility and the funds to participate need a little notice, too, ya know.

To start, ILWG is nothing if not conservative, so there was no way anyone was going anywhere until the I's and T's were handled. 

Phones and emails were fast and furious between the agencies, HLS directors, local LEA, and legal counsels.

This was a fairly large operation in a major city, with the search area covering mostly private property.  You don't just drop 30 people into a neighborhood in camoflague (in today's terror-phobic world) without making a few phone calls.

What mission type would this be?  A,B, or C?  CAP Regs and policies indicate that support for a federal agencies be A-Missions, but this went as a "C".   Can't explain why, but I know the discussions were "interesting".

Who goes?  UDF?  Hmmm...we're not DF'ing, so its not a fit.  GT?  Better fit, but those [darn] uniforms are an issue, and these GT-types tend to be a little gung-ho.  GT won because of their independant / team orientated operational abilities, the cold weather, and the fact that this was essentially a HUGE line / hasty search.

What about cadets?

Hand-picked teams or an all-hands call.

There's more flavor to all the above, as well as other less tangible issues.
Some of the urgency, or lack thereof was appropriate.

This was a first-try for people on several sides.

Frankly, based on some of the things CAP has been doing lately, the organization as a whole is getting less conservative.

[RiverAux]

Frankly, based on somme of the things CAP has been doing lately, the organization as a whole is getting less conservative.

I tend to agree as I've seen some missions approved that I wouldn't have thought could have gotten through the NOC.  I think we're probably better off with the NOC making these calls as I think if it were left to the Wing Commanders, some would probably never take some missions while others may tend to stray to far afield.  Now that there is good positive control on all missions, I think having the NOC make the call on exactly where "the line" is probably works out to more missions. 

[Eclipse]

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