AF wastes money doing missions CAP can do at little cost

[CAPPAO]

This story in the Sherevport Times has me scratching my head.

Why would the USAF be proud of the fact that very expensive bombers were used to take pictures of disaster areas when CAP can do it for so much less cost to the taxpayers?

Once again, when it comes to keeping our parent organization briefed about our capabilities, apparently not everyone gets the memo.

In fact, according to CAP, we offer our clients:

1. Aerial imaging with ability to quickly transmit high resolution digital photos within minutes. Have ability to contact aircraft to re-task or request different photo orientation.

2. Able to perform aerial reconnaissance of critical infrastructure such as power plants, gas pipelines, and reservoirs.

3. Can accomplish missions at a fraction of the cost of other agencies. Members are volunteers who are reimbursed only for expenses.

4. 100+ Satellite-Transmitted Digital Imaging Systems (SDIS) used to transmit still-frame digital pictures in near real time. Can also communicate directly with these aircraft from almost anywhere.

5. Typically $120 - $160 per hour of flight time, depending on aircraft used.

Anyway, read the aricle below and tell me that as a CAP member and taxpayer you aren't annoyed. (well, everyone but Sparky Carales in Texas will be. He's never annoyed when CAP is passed over for a mission that is perfectly suited to our resources!)



B-52s fly search-and-rescue missions after hurricanes
September 24, 2008

B-52 bombers at Barksdale Air Force Base put surveillance advancements to good and peaceful use in a pair of missions flown last week.

The sorties were "an effort to gather both high resolution digital imagery and full motion video of the destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Ike," states a release from the 917th Wing, the Air Force Reserve unit at the base.

The Wing's 93rd Bomb Squadron provided one of the crews, with the other supplied by the 96th Bomb Squadron of the active-duty 2nd Bomb Wing.

"This is the first specialized use of the B-52 in a strictly humanitarian role as a search-and-rescue platform using advanced forward-looking infrared and visible light video recording equipment," the release states. "Both missions took more than 700 images of oil platforms, oil tankers and the shoreline infrastructures along the coast between Galveston and Houston."

The missions also gathered more than two hours of full-motion video of the destruction, current flood area and routes suitable for emergency recovery crews to get in and out of the affected area, which should help agencies and teams trying to provide aid to the stricken area.

"Barksdale B-52s and aircrew from both the 917th Wing and 2d Bomb Wing have been on intermittent alert for a potential search-and-rescue application since Hurricane Gustav," the release said. "These two flights were considered a test of the concept of operation for future use of the B-52 in a more expanded role in assisting with rescue efforts on land and at sea."

[LtCol White]

There are many cases that can be made to justify these flights so I don't think it is appropriate to say that USAF is wasting money on this.

Depending on weather conditions, CAP aircraft cannot fly. The B-52 is unaffected by this. CAP does not fly over water missions out to oil rigs. The B-52 can accomplish the mission MUCH faster than a CAP aircraft so the urgency of the info plays a role in who does it. As the article states, this was also a feasibilty test by USAF for this use of the B-52.

There were CAP aircraft flying damage missions after the storm so you can't say B-52s did it all and CAP sat on the ground.

[heliodoc]

^^^

Hard to argue..

How about AF proficiency flights???  Would you rather have aircrews Stateside, parking it??

[Flying Pig]

I would agree the B-52 is a rather large SAR platform....however, their optics and imaging capability is unbelievable and nothing CAP has even compares.  The equipment I have on my C206 at work leaves CAP in the dust.  Im not annoyed.

Here is what most people dont understand.  Those B-52's fly ANYWAY.  The pilots are still being paid the same amount whether they fly or not, the fuel for those bombers is bought in hundreds of thousands of gallons at a time in bulk.  The pilots train, they do proficiency flying etc.  Im sure they spent a few hours doing their mission and headed back.  I dont think they broke the bank doing it. This time, they were able to get some time in and did something useful for a stateside mission and it made the base a valuable asset to the community during a peacetime mission.

As far as Maj. Carrales?  I dont think Ive ever read anything about him being happy about CAP being passed over for anything.

[CAPPAO]

What I understand as a taxpayer is that the B-52s cost approximately $25,000 per flight hour to operate and that CAP flights cost only $120 to $160 per flight hour.

What I understand as a CAP member is that while the USAF is trying to come up with creative new reasons -- like taking images of disaster areas -- to justify keeping and maintaining their B-52s, our SDIS system is more than adequate to do the same task and is already paid for.

Bottom line is that when assistance is needed, the USAF would rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to do something CAP already knows how to do at little cost.

What a waste for everyone.

PS to Flying Pig: Thanks for sticking up for Sparky. Now I know he has a least one friend.

[G+10]

I have to disagree. What Flying Pig and Helidoc said about training flights is spot on. Those guys would have been shooting instrument approaches, flying low level, what have you. As a taxpayer those flight hours are a sunk cost.

John

[davedove]

Exactly, the pilots need their flight hours.  This time, instead of just going up and flying around for a while, they actually did something useful.

In this case, getting CAP to do the mission would actually cost more because you would have the cost of the training flight plus the CAP flight.

[a2capt]

.. yup. They fly anyway, so why not use the opportunity to do something *different* ..

At least they're probably well aware of their onboard armaments at this point..

A friend that flew A-6's told me of all the 'antics' in training, such as locking on to cars on the desert interstate stretches, tracking them for 'targeting' practice, etc. Wanna visit someone across the country? See if the airport has flight support for your aircraft type- accomplish your 'mission' and go visit someplace for an afternoon.

They're flying anyway. They need to work the equipment in actual varied scenarios. So..

If anything, it's money saved- It could be said that they left CAP available for something else that they probably could not do with the B-52s as easily.

[Eclipse]

And you know....

...there are better ways to phrase your concern over this than the headline you used, which will now live in Google forever. 

[CAPPAO]

Yeah davedove and others, I guess it's better to have the USAF spending $25,000 an hour trying to teach their aircrews to take disaster images than to practice doing what these aircraft were designed and built to do -- fly low-level bombing missions!

So tell me, when they've perfected this new capability of theirs, do you think CAP will be getting more or less disaster recon missions than we do now?

PS to Mr. Eclipse: I stand by my headline, which is neither profane nor obscene, but the opinion of an informed taxpayer.

[DNall]

we're just winding down the largest civilian photo recon mission in history (supposedly), so I might be able to comment on some of this.

In fact, according to CAP, we offer our clients:
1. Aerial imaging with ability to quickly transmit high resolution digital photos within minutes. Have ability to contact aircraft to re-task or request different photo orientation.

Actually, pics were transferred between mediums, imprinted with all required data in the customer format, and had bad frames rejected. Then at the end of the day we'd fly a box of thumb drives to Austin - so 24hr turn around, and at the cost of an extra flight, plus a whole lot of incidentals you aren't accounting for.

2. Able to perform aerial reconnaissance of critical infrastructure such as power plants, gas pipelines, and reservoirs.

3. Can accomplish missions at a fraction of the cost of other agencies. Members are volunteers who are reimbursed only for expenses.

Members are screwed over to get your mission done... there's a whole lot of inbound/outbound sorties with a 3-to-1 ratio for volunteers to cover a position & rotate back out to work or just away. Those alone can be tens of thousands. There's also incidentals: we just bought a truck load of thumb drives; FEMA bought us a sat internet system, but we'll pay for the service; we got spot trackers for our GTs & aircraft, again paying for the service... there's a lot more cost involved there then the hourly fuel/maint cost of a cessna.

If you total it all up, is it still cheaper than the closest alternatives? yeah probably by a bit, but it's also probably less capable to the same extent.

4. 100+ Satellite-Transmitted Digital Imaging Systems (SDIS) used to transmit still-frame digital pictures in near real time. Can also communicate directly with these aircraft from almost anywhere.

You mean the sat phone with worthless autodialer & laptop? Is that really a "system" or is it more likely to be held together by duct tape. I've never seen this system work consistently. I'd favor real-time delivery of video, but stills should go back to a processing point before being sent on as raw data.


In other words, CAP's capabilities brief to the public/customers/etc is pretty much BS. 60 years ago we were capable of flying around with a camera to the window & bringing that info back to authorities. In fact, we did do that. So, what the hell have we accomplished. I swear half the time I really believe our members are here to fly for cheap and don't care at all about the mission. I don't want to believe that's true. I know it's not for so many great people. We MUST increase our capabilities in a serious way, not this BS they keep running out there.

[Eclipse]

PS to Mr. Eclipse: I stand by my headline, which is neither profane nor obscene, but the opinion of an informed taxpayer.

Assuming you filed a proper 1040 last year, at least you're 1/2 right.

Not only is your angst misplaced, benevolent partners in an endeavor air their grievances in private.  Next time you want to complain about our public image or relationship w/ the USAF, remember your contribution...

[pixelwonk]

For someone implying to be on the "NHQ Public Affairs Team" from the email address in their profile, I'd expect quite a bit more respect and/or at least discretion when referring to someone you don't care for.

The argument regarding the use of the aircraft is so full of holes it's laughable.

troll.

[hatentx]

I would have to agree with most everything being said.
1.  The 52's are flying anyways and are already budgeted those flight hours so make them do something productive besides touch and gos on my airfield.
2.  Hello FLIR.  I don't know about everybody else but our aircraft doesn't have FLIR.  I am not sure what Generation FLIR they are on but I am sure it is good enough to over lay and take picture at night.
3.  If a B52 upsets you doing recon and SAR well to let you know the Army had Apaches on stand by ready to be deployed in to the AO as well for SAR.  The reason for this is the optics.  It is to easy for an Apache and a Blackhawk to fly around at night Apache sees them and Blackhawk picks them up.
4.  As a tax payer I am glas to see these equipment used for more than profiecienty.  Koodos to the AF for useing the budgeted money to do more than fly circles.
5.  It was a huge area and while CAP were able to handle the responsibilities and most likely more it was a joint effort now just the CAP show.  Kinda a one team one fight idea.
6.  Now those aircrews have some good training for when they go down range or are deployed to some other country and have to do humanitarian missions or SAR mission over there.  Oh and believe me they happen over there all the time as well.
Sorry for my long rant.  Just wondering what those that are so critical did during it all.  And props to Major C for busting A$$ while this was going on.  A lot of stuff was going on in his neck of the woods.

[NC Hokie]

Yeah davedove and others, I guess it's better to have the USAF spending $25,000 an hour trying to teach their aircrews to take disaster images than to practice doing what these aircraft were designed and built to do -- fly low-level bombing missions!

Taking "disaster images" can be used to train for tasks such as damage assessment and target identification.  If they're gonna fly to do this anyway (and they are), it makes sense to get something else out of the deal.

BTW, B-52s don't do low-level bombing.

[notaNCO forever]

 The picture quality they get is probably a heck of allot better then what CAP photos are.

[wingnut55]

the GAO will get to the bottom of some things, lets face it the USAF is under the gun for many very bad decisions that are costly. With the Federal Budget about to go in the direction of the stock market, you can bet your sweet bippie CAP will be a shinning light in all the "Golly the Federal Government is Broke" how are we going to do this inexpensively??

However, we have to get real! do we really need 500 Aircraft?? some wings cannot get 150hours on their aircraft. Maybe we need fewer but a few more that are faster. The GA-8 is one, what an air pig, we needed maybe 6 really good Archer systems on a 180knot aircraft, 3 hours you could be 500 miles. Oh well, I think we used way too many b-17s in WWII but know one listens to me.

[LtCol White]

Yeah davedove and others, I guess it's better to have the USAF spending $25,000 an hour trying to teach their aircrews to take disaster images than to practice doing what these aircraft were designed and built to do -- fly low-level bombing missions!

So tell me, when they've perfected this new capability of theirs, do you think CAP will be getting more or less disaster recon missions than we do now?

PS to Mr. Eclipse: I stand by my headline, which is neither profane nor obscene, but the opinion of an informed taxpayer.

You may be expressing your opinion as a taxpayer, and you have every right to do so, but when you do it on here in the context of CAP, your opinion also reflects on CAP.  MANY of us here are working hard to strenghten our relationships with USAF both locally and nationally. These threads are public forums open to anyone who wants to read them and to make accusatory statements like this is not helpful at all since it does reflect on the organization and not just you as "Joe Taxpayer".

[Rangercap]

The picture quality they get is probably a heck of allot better then what CAP photos are.

Agreed... a 3000 lb airplane, with a scanner in the back seat holding an 8 megapixel Nikon SLR with a telephoto lens? or a B-52, gross weight 450,000 lbs, with a 22 MP or BETTER fixed digital camera... you can't ask for a better platform for aerial photography.

Brian
PAWG

[Major Carrales]

I think the main point most are missing here is that this is a major COMMUNITY (in the larger sense thus "all caps") effort.  An entire region of Texas, the nation's 4th largest city and a whole coastal community area are damaged in a HISTORY altering way.  The scope of the activity is huge.

Everyone has a role to play.  From CAP's photography mission to the boots on the ground via the police/fire/EMS to anything that can be provided...including the use of significant USAF resources like B-52s.

We are not in "competition" with these people...any of them...we are an augmenting tool that is used by the USAF and Federal authorities (sometimes State and local) as is seen fit in the larger sense.

I a pleased that my Nation's resources, like USAF B-52s, are involved in the effort "with" us.  We as CAP have done a lot in this mission.  We have been given a set of mission objectives to which Citizen Airmen answered the call.  Like militiamen in colonial times, I, and many many others, left my work...in my case my classroom...for three days.  An associate of mine left his employment with a large firm for as long.  Can none of you grasp the concept?  Will none of you?

What has been done en re Gustav and Ike from CAP Officers is a far more traditionally American concept than some of you will give credit.

That is the point...SERVICE.   Service in crisis times where we help our fellow humanity in a voluneer spirit without pay or the promise of anything more than the worth one feels when they have done their duty.

Once a person loses that sense of SERVICE...I would submit it is time for that person to leave CAP for more rewarding opportunities.  But, if you feel that call...like the Colonial militiaman that mustered to save his community from anything from fire to flood, invader to disrupting criminals...then this is your billet.