CAP Talk

I have been asked to write some new content for one of the classes I teach. The class is an Introduction to Emergency Management. This course is one of the first classes that those in the Emergency Management field take for their undergrad degree. The intent behind the question is:

Realistic View of the Relationship between Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters and their parent or host organizations. There are several more questions in the series but this is the first one. The questions are geared towards those with a "Military Reporting Framework". The questions are Emergency Response and Safety Focused.   

In my conversations with people in pretty much each category the CAP has a few squadrons with close relationships with USAF but it definitely is the exception and not the norm. CGAUX seems to have the closest relationship with their parent org.

SDFs are definitely in the "it depends on the state", some being the ignored child and some fully integrated into EM.

Another quasi-VOAD-like org that doesn't get as much notice are the police volunteer support orgs which again depend on locality for just how integrated they are.

Also consider fire department auxiliaries/support orgs/Fire Corps and CERT.

It also depends on the State.

I'm not overly concerned with our relationship to daddy AF.  I'm thinking in a different direction, and would be more interested in this:

Who has the closest relationship with their "client/customers"?

CAP seems to do well with FEMA. Many Wings and Squadrons have close relationships with local agencies.

We need to look outside the chain more than looking up the chain, if we want to be relevant in the future.

I think "parent service" is a misnomer in this case, the Air Force and Civil Air Patrol, Inc. are two separate entities tied together by public law that states one is the civilian auxiliary to the other. Only the government could concoct such a quagmire that leaves countless volunteers in their shiniest blues uniform standing at attention in their bedrooms thinking they are actually a part of the Air Force, while 99% of the Air Force is too busy doing their jobs to know what the auxiliary is or even consider if members of the corporation should also be considered part of the Air Force.

A VOAD born directly from an organization will always be more tightly integrated with the parent organization and thus have a closer relationship between groups. Consider a fire department that starts a CERT team or a police department that starts a volunteer uniformed team. Both volunteer groups rely in the parent organization for administration, funding, and frankly their entire existence. Compare that to CAP which is its own organization, has its own leadership, and its own revenue streams (mostly from Congress through the Air Force).

CAP is like the little brother the Air Force never wanted. Mom and Dad (Congress) said here's some money, keep an eye on your little brother, you're responsible for babysitting him. We don't care you had plans to go to the movies.

To etodd's point, the value of a volunteer organization should be judged by what it does for its customers, in this case the Federal Government (such as FEMA), the DOD (mostly the Air Force but some of the other branches too), emergency managers at the federal, state, county, and local levels (really varies here throughout the country), and to the American citizen (again uneven throughout the country). You can decide if that's worth 56 million dollars of taxpayer money.

Quote from: Fubar on May 13, 2021, 07:03:52 AMI think "parent service" is a misnomer in this case, the Air Force and Civil Air Patrol, Inc. are two separate entities tied together by public law that states one is the civilian auxiliary to the other. Only the government could concoct such a quagmire that leaves countless volunteers in their shiniest blues uniform standing at attention in their bedrooms thinking they are actually a part of the Air Force, while 99% of the Air Force is too busy doing their jobs to know what the auxiliary is or even consider if members of the corporation should also be considered part of the Air Force.

Somewhere either on the CAP history archive or the congressional records I once came across the original conversation of someone trying to explain CAP to Congress to get the laws made that created us. The lawmakers seemed very confused about us, especially the idea that we were paying to kinda sorta help the military but not really, but really.

CAP formally split from the USAF and became its own corporation less than a year before 911.  Had that action been delayed we would have become part of the DHS instead.  And probably the air part of the USCGAUX now.

The handoff has happened before - we were originally part of the Army.

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on May 13, 2021, 08:54:27 PMCAP formally split from the USAF and became its own corporation less than a year before 911.  Had that action been delayed we would have become part of the DHS instead.  And probably the air part of the USCGAUX now.

The handoff has happened before - we were originally part of the Army.

That's because the Air Force was a part of the Army at the time.

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on May 13, 2021, 08:54:27 PMCAP formally split from the USAF and became its own corporation less than a year before 911.  Had that action been delayed we would have become part of the DHS instead.  And probably the air part of the USCGAUX now.

The handoff has happened before - we were originally part of the Army.

Ummm, Congress chartered us as a "benevolent corporation" in 1947, no?

Quote from: JohhnyD on May 14, 2021, 01:05:24 AM

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on May 13, 2021, 08:54:27 PMCAP formally split from the USAF and became its own corporation less than a year before 911.  Had that action been delayed we would have become part of the DHS instead.  And probably the air part of the USCGAUX now.

The handoff has happened before - we were originally part of the Army.

Ummm, Congress chartered us as a "benevolent corporation" in 1947, no?

He's talking about our original charter during the war.

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on May 13, 2021, 08:54:27 PMCAP formally split from the USAF and became its own corporation less than a year before 911.  Had that action been delayed we would have become part of the DHS instead.  And probably the air part of the USCGAUX now.

The handoff has happened before - we were originally part of the Army.

The governance changed, but CAP has been a corporation since 1946.

Quote from: Fubar on May 13, 2021, 07:03:52 AMOnly the government could concoct such a quagmire that leaves countless volunteers in their shiniest blues uniform standing at attention in their bedrooms thinking they are actually a part of the Air Force,

CAP is like the little brother the Air Force never wanted. Mom and Dad (Congress) said here's some money, keep an eye on your little brother, you're responsible for babysitting him. We don't care you had plans to go to the movies.

You can decide if that's worth 56 million dollars of taxpayer money.

Oh my, those first two lines had me rolling on the floor awhile.

As for the $56 million:

98% of the Saves are being done by a handful of folks on the cell phone team. They could easily be splintered off elsewhere for very little money.

FEMA could hire commercial aerial survey firms for disasters for far less money than the $56 million each year.

If our Congressional charter had an expiration date of December this year, and they held hearings to justify the expense .... CAP Hdqs would have to do quite a song and dance, along with some smoke and mirrors.

Quote from: Fubar on May 13, 2021, 07:03:52 AMI think "parent service" is a misnomer in this case, the Air Force and Civil Air Patrol, Inc. are two separate entities tied together by public law that states one is the civilian auxiliary to the other. Only the government could concoct such a quagmire that leaves countless volunteers in their shiniest blues uniform standing at attention in their bedrooms thinking they are actually a part of the Air Force, while 99% of the Air Force is too busy doing their jobs to know what the auxiliary is or even consider if members of the corporation should also be considered part of the Air Force.

A VOAD born directly from an organization will always be more tightly integrated with the parent organization and thus have a closer relationship between groups. Consider a fire department that starts a CERT team or a police department that starts a volunteer uniformed team. Both volunteer groups rely in the parent organization for administration, funding, and frankly their entire existence. Compare that to CAP which is its own organization, has its own leadership, and its own revenue streams (mostly from Congress through the Air Force).

CAP is like the little brother the Air Force never wanted. Mom and Dad (Congress) said here's some money, keep an eye on your little brother, you're responsible for babysitting him. We don't care you had plans to go to the movies.

To etodd's point, the value of a volunteer organization should be judged by what it does for its customers, in this case the Federal Government (such as FEMA), the DOD (mostly the Air Force but some of the other branches too), emergency managers at the federal, state, county, and local levels (really varies here throughout the country), and to the American citizen (again uneven throughout the country). You can decide if that's worth 56 million dollars of taxpayer money.

The descriptor "parent service" was just used as a generalized term. I am trying to pose the questions in the same manner as I will for the Assignment I am creating.
I did not include organizations such as CERT and similar groups based on Fire Departments and such as most of them are founded by and within their own organization and supported with similar structures. As noted those born within have a more tightly integrated structure already that morphs into the same for the volunteers.

Quote from: etodd on May 14, 2021, 04:03:38 AM

Quote from: Fubar on May 13, 2021, 07:03:52 AMOnly the government could concoct such a quagmire that leaves countless volunteers in their shiniest blues uniform standing at attention in their bedrooms thinking they are actually a part of the Air Force,

CAP is like the little brother the Air Force never wanted. Mom and Dad (Congress) said here's some money, keep an eye on your little brother, you're responsible for babysitting him. We don't care you had plans to go to the movies.

You can decide if that's worth 56 million dollars of taxpayer money.

Oh my, those first two lines had me rolling on the floor awhile.

As for the $56 million:

98% of the Saves are being done by a handful of folks on the cell phone team. They could easily be splintered off elsewhere for very little money.

FEMA could hire commercial aerial survey firms for disasters for far less money than the $56 million each year.

If our Congressional charter had an expiration date of December this year, and they held hearings to justify the expense .... CAP Hdqs would have to do quite a song and dance, along with some smoke and mirrors.

I think you would be really surprised by how much work CAP actually does for the AF. The escort missions, green flag and the various Air Defense exercises like Falcon Virgo all add up. If I remember correctly, CAP missions / sorties are the majority of the sorties on a daily basis tracked by 1 AF in their Air Tasking Orders.

Quote from: Larry Mangum on May 14, 2021, 02:11:48 PMI think you would be really surprised by how much work CAP actually does for the AF. The escort missions, green flag and the various Air Defense exercises like Falcon Virgo all add up. If I remember correctly, CAP missions / sorties are the majority of the sorties on a daily basis tracked by 1 AF in their Air Tasking Orders.

That semi-apocryphal rhetoric falls into the same category as "CAP performs 95 percent of continental U. S. search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center."

True enough to publish, but the truth needs considerable explanation and asterisks, and
it's functionally meaningless to the majority of the organization.

Any time a CAP airplane is in the sky, it's a mission, the majority of which no Robert A. Cinader fan
would ever classify as a "mission".

Quote from: Eclipse on May 14, 2021, 02:51:47 PMAny time a CAP airplane is in the sky, it's a mission, the majority of which no Robert A. Cinader fan
would ever classify as a "mission".

Plane X need an oil change. Pilot flies an hour to drop it off. Another pilot elsewhere flies an hour to pick the first pilot up and take him home. Then the second pilot RTB. A day or two later four sorties are flown to bring the plane back. EIGHT sorties and EIGHT hours on the planes .. just to get the oil changed, or annual, or any other MX.  We see this over and over. As pilots we love the free flight time. But its an incredible waste. And REALLY bloats the number of sorties flown that we love to advertise. LOL

First,  blame that on the system.  A flight from airport A to airport B to retrieve a pilot, return him to airport C and then return home to airport A shouldn't be "three sorties." But there it is. This is partly due to how things get accounted by CAP-USAF/1AF.

Second, if you're doing that as 8 sorties, it might be helpful to find a more efficient way.

Third,  and this annoys me to no end,  the need to create "just in case" sorties for a possible broken airplane or a "had to land out because we got the 'AP Bladder Full' caution light a hundred miles from home."

Quote from: etodd on May 15, 2021, 12:09:11 AM

Quote from: Eclipse on May 14, 2021, 02:51:47 PMAny time a CAP airplane is in the sky, it's a mission, the majority of which no Robert A. Cinader fan
would ever classify as a "mission".

Plane X need an oil change. Pilot flies an hour to drop it off. Another pilot elsewhere flies an hour to pick the first pilot up and take him home. Then the second pilot RTB. A day or two later four sorties are flown to bring the plane back. EIGHT sorties and EIGHT hours on the planes .. just to get the oil changed, or annual, or any other MX.  We see this over and over. As pilots we love the free flight time. But its an incredible waste. And REALLY bloats the number of sorties flown that we love to advertise. LOL

How far away from you is the Authorized Maintenance Facility that does your oil changes?
Maybe you guys and your Wing Aircraft Maintenance Officer need to see if you can get a closer facility authorized.
So instead of your everpresent LOL maybe you could actually try to help fix the system.

Civil Air Patrol1 (5.6%)
Coast Guard Auxiliary16 (88.9%)
State Defense Forces0 (0%)Other
(Local Only)0 (0%)None0 (0%)
Do not have any experience with other VOADS1 (5.6%)
Total Members Voted: 18

Voting closed: May 19, 2021, 12:40:47 pm