Ideal squadron size

[RiverAux]

If you had your druthers and the best recruiting and retention program on the planet, what do you think the ideal size would be for a squadron and upon what is that based? 

Lets assume the squadron is a fairly typical composite squadron with 1 airplane and a van and is fully equipped for ES work.  Lets also assume that everybody is a very active participant in the program and that there aren't any "ghost members".

Officers
18 Aircrew Members (including 6-9 pilots)-- I'd like at least 6 people for every seat on the airplane

15-30 Ground Team Members -- Some of the ground team folks may also hold aircrew ratings, but this would be in addition to the 18 aicrew noted above).

6-10 Mission Staff Support folks of various types that don't participate in air or ground programs.  Should have enough to run a small mission base on their own if necessary. 

2-5 Officers focused primarily on external aerospace education & community relations (# would vary depending on size of your community and surrounding area).  These folks would be going out to schools and doing AE events, classes, etc.  These folks would also include 1-2 ES folks who would be meeting with local sheriffs, police, government officials in their own town and any surrounding ones without other CAP units and maintaining relations. I'd expect them to be doing 1-2 events/meetings a month.

5-8 Officers focused entirely on the administration of the squadron filling the most critical leadership positions over both the Officer and Cadet Programs.  May have ES jobs, but they are in addition to the folks noted above.  Other staff jobs can be filled part time by other members of the unit noted above. 

Cadets
Somewhere from 30-40 would be a good number. 

So, in total my ideal CAP squadron would have 46-71 Officers and 30-40 cadets for a total of 76-111.  Keep in mind that these are all ACTIVE members.  Obviously, I'm thinking that there would be a very strong ground SAR component and that the community relations team would be generating quite a few local missing person-type missions. 

Your thoughts?

[Major Carrales]

Don't forget to include "migrants," those that enter the unit due to their movable jobs and stay any where from 6 months to 2 years...but will remain temporary.

Some of our best officers that have left lasting impressions are those that have been "migrants."  I'll have more later...have to run now.

[RiverAux]

well, thats hard to plan for.  Lets assume that we can fill those holes as they appear. 

[DNall]

Fairly typical Sqs get both a van & a plane? That's wrong. There's not enough for each Sq over 50 (on the books) to have just one of those items, much less both. Anyway... perfect world we're talking here right?

I think the number would depend highly one the community, and also on the amount & type of ES work to be had.

I do think 35 cadets is about the right size for a really functional program, and I mean the same 35, not you have 60 on the books & it avgs 35 at a meeting but they're never the same, you need consistency. You need 3-5 really good officers in the CP shop. Cadets can't train for ES till SrA, apply w/ parent consent, and pass an interview.

Six full aircrews sounds high. It'd be nice & sure keep the plane busy, but 3-4 crews (x3 slots) is a better number. That still lets you have an alert rotation with plenty FROs & ability to cover AOBD/ops/flt ops positions & also have someone on crew development & training. So call that 9 full-qual, with 3-5 additional in-trng under the flt ops shop.

On GT... what you NEED is two 4-man teams (adults only) with at least half GTL rated & competent. That allows you to expand to 4-6 (maybe 8 ) teams with cadets involved. That lets you support significant ops for a type-III incident, but still able to deploy one or maybe two teams to Katrina style stuff for a week plus. Again 5 or so trainees/UDF types at the bottom (excluding cadets). These guys also self support their own training, GBD, etc.

You said 6-8 mission staff... I'm not saying no to that, but it can & would be mostly drawn from other places on your list. You need a good comm shop of 3, plus a cadet or two. Most of your branch/OSC/PSC would be drawn from the above. You would like to have an in-house IC/AL (you need an AL to coordinate this size operation w/ local EMA & jusrisdictions). You'd want a ES trng/mgmt sections too of 3 that probably needs to be over & above. So I'm still saying 7 there, but clarifying your category.

I would like to have an external AE officer, but a good PAO with some backup is real important. So 2-3 officers in that external shop is good.

PD, safety, logistics (doubles as LSC)

Command/line staff you need 3. Admin/pers (doubles as FASC).

Man, you're talking 80 active members there. A lot of places that's a group.

If you've seen me talk before about unit re-org - that's the one where Sqs become flts (small ones become dets), these focus exclusively on ops & trng (incl CP), 3-5 get paired together w/ shared command & control/admin/staff support (like a mini-gp using the Iowa strategy), call that a Sq.... well the reason I bring it up is that's about the size organization/manning/TOE you're talking about, only executed in a realistic fashion.

[MIKE]

On the cadet side, my ideal would be at least two full strength flights.  Thats 4 elements each of 12 people, plus a Guide, Flight Sergeant and Flight Commander each.  Then you can start thinking about having a Cadet Commander, First Sergeant and staff.  All positions filled with appropriately graded personnel.

[Stonewall]

I was at a composite squadron where I thought the numbers were perfect.

Our wing (NATCAP) had 2 planes and my squadron happened to meet at the Army Airfield where the planes were kept.  We also had a 15 pax van and 24hr access to our facilities, which were secure on the Army base.

We had about 25 to 30 seniors.  Many were pilots and the others were at least Observer or Scanner qualified.  It was the Commander's intent to have all seniors dual qualfied, as in, both air and ground ops specialties.  Thats how I got my Observer rating.  It really does help to be on the ground and know what its like in the air...and it goes both ways.

We had up to 40 active cadets, most of whom were all qualified in some ES specialty. 

We fielded two aircrews and two ground teams on several occasions.

It was an awesome feeling to have such a great squadron.  Seniors were in formation, we had 2 cadet flights, and one helluva ES team.

[DNall]

On the cadet side, my ideal would be at least two full strength flights.  Thats 4 elements each of 12 people, plus a Guide, Flight Sergeant and Flight Commander each.  Then you can start thinking about having a Cadet Commander, First Sergeant and staff.  All positions filled with appropriately graded personnel.

A standard full strength flight (in trng cmds) is 3 elements of 9, for 27 total plus 3 flt staff (Cmdr, Sgt, guide/guidon). I can toss up the reg ref if you're interested. The academy reg is the most clear on the subject.

Two full flights (60) plus cmd/staff (10) would be nice, but pretty hard to pull off.

[Psicorp]

Holy Logistics, RiverAux...if they were all active, you'd need to have some very good people for staff, very good people...with no outside life.   

A squadron that size would almost have to meet once a week in addition to one or two Saturdays a month just to be sure everyone is taken care of.

Not that I would mind in the least 

[DNall]

Holy Logistics, RiverAux...if they were all active, you'd need to have some very good people for staff, very good people...with no outside life.   

A squadron that size would almost have to meet once a week in addition to one or two Saturdays a month just to be sure everyone is taken care of.

Not that I would mind in the least 

Good people for sure, but manage your spans of control well & you can do it with a lot less effort than you think. That's real AF unit sizes though & would require equally capable leaders... that's where we're supposed to be as units (in theory), and where we are now is treading water to do the bearest essentials. So you talk about move here to there, and that's a big part of the crazy PD stuff a buch of us were talking about a few months ago. It sure would be nice to see that.

[ZigZag911]

15-20 active seniors:

2-3 aircrews  (9)
3-4 GTL         (4)
3-4 managers  (4)
3 MSA/MRO/trainees

Staff wise I'd like to see the breaksdown:

CC

DCS                      DCC
Admin/Pers            AE
Finance                 Leadership
PAO                      Activities
PD/Testing
LG
Ops
ES
Comm

Safety
Chaplain

Remaining 4 as assistants or trainees

Cadet side, 30-40 cadets, at least 4 cadet officers

I'd like to see half or more of cadets ES qualified: GTM/UDF/MRo especially

[Major Carrales]

Let's see what we can do with 35 active CAP Officers and 30 Cadets...

CAP Officers...

1) Commander--Mission Scanner/Observer (Alpha Aircrew)(UDF)

2) Deputy Commander Seniors/Admin Officer--Pilot (Alpha Aircrew)(UDF)

3) Deputy Commander Cadets--Mission Scanner/Observer (Alpha Aircrew)(UDF)

4) Finance Officer--Mission Scanner/Observer (Alpha Aircrew-Alt)(UDF)

5) Ops Officer-- Pilot (Bravo Aircrew)(UDF)

6) AeroSpace Ed Officer-- Pilot  (Charlie Aircrew)(UDF)

7) Publis Affairs Officer--Mission Scanner/Observer (Bravo Aircrew) (UDF)

8 ) Professional Development Officer-- Pilot (Cadet O-Pilot Pimary/ FRO Alternate)(UDF)

9) Stan Eval- Pilot  (Charlie Aircrew)(UDF)

10) FRO- Pilot (Cadet O-Pilot Secondary/ FRO Alternate)(UDF)


11) Emergency Services Officer--Ground Team Leader(Alpha Ground Team)(UDF)Mission Radio Operator, Mission Scanner/Observer (Charlie Aircrew)

12) Moral Leadership Officer-- Ground Team (Alpha Ground Team)(UDF), Mission Radio Operator

13) Communications Officer -- Ground Team(Alpha Ground Team)(UDF), Communication Unit Leader, Mission Scanner/Observer (Charlie Aircrew)

14) Squadron Leadership Officer--Ground Team (Alpha Ground Team)(UDF)

15) Personnel Officer-  Pilot (Relief Aircrew Pilot), Mission Scanner/Observer (Relief Aircrew)(UDF) Ground Team Leader (Bravo Ground Team)


Cadets in various stages of training...

[SAR-EMT1]

Ok question: EXCLUDING SCHOOLS
What is the most largest active unit -Composite or Senior - and what wing are they in?
I ask because, I was just wondering how realistic some of these are.
- again school / all cadet-  units excluded.

[lordmonar]

Nellis Senior Squadron has about 100 Members...I will say about 60-75% active.

[DNall]

Yeah I don't know excluding schools, but Sheldon here (school program) is the eiggest in the country w/ 315 cadets, better than a dozen teachers & parents involved.

Far as not schools or even straight cadet units, I don't know how anyone could answer that. I ,mean you can pull a number off a list if you have access to it (which isn't me), but how do you judge active versus inactive to get the real world answer to that?

If I had to guess I'd say 65 give or take, but that'd be extremely rare. Probably fewer than 15-20 units in the country with more than 50 (consistently the same 50 don't miss more than two mtgs per quarter year round & progressing). The truth is the active numbers in CAP are VERY VERY low from what anyone can tell.

[RiverAux]

Six full aircrews sounds high. It'd be nice & sure keep the plane busy, but 3-4 crews (x3 slots) is a better number. That still lets you have an alert rotation with plenty FROs & ability to cover AOBD/ops/flt ops positions & also have someone on crew development & training. So call that 9 full-qual, with 3-5 additional in-trng under the flt ops shop.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about ideal conditions.  Yes, you can take care of most mission needs with 3-4 aircrews, but I would want a squadron where IF YOU HAD TO, you could keep that plane in the air almost continuously for a week and for that you need more folks potentially available.  In my experience on any given day or night you only have a 1 in 3 chance of any CAP member being available for a missions, so those 6 aircrews are really only 2 aircrews actually available to fly and you would need both crews to keep that plane up (assuming maximum effictiveness in sortie turnaround). 

On GT... what you NEED is two 4-man teams (adults only) with at least half GTL rated & competent. That allows you to expand to 4-6 (maybe 8 ) teams with cadets involved. That lets you support significant ops for a type-III incident, but still able to deploy one or maybe two teams to Katrina style stuff for a week plus. Again 5 or so trainees/UDF types at the bottom (excluding cadets). These guys also self support their own training, GBD, etc.

I fully support using cadets for ground teams but the sad fact is that they are usually not anywhere near as available as adults.  With 15-30 adults you would have a good chance of fielding a 5-10 person ground team at any time with the possibility of more teams with the use of existing cadets.  Personally, if you can't field an adult ground team at all times I wouldn't even bother advertising the capability to other agencies. 

Keep in mind that my ideal squadron will hopefully be doing lots of real ground SAR missions and having only 8 adults means that you've probably only really got 2-3 available at any one time and if the kids are in school, thats not enough to be of much use to anybody. 

Also part of my ideal is that you reduce the amount of double-jobs as much as possible.  Most of the people in the primary administrative positions wouldn't have any significant ES role but would be people who really wanted to do the admin and may only do ES every now and again.  Your real ES workhorses would generally be doing the low-workload admin jobs (transportation, historian, etc.). 
I wouldn't intentionally force this on people, but would instead be a recognition of the fact that many people can or won't do more than 1 job really well at any one time.  I'd rather have the best mission pilot focus on flying rather than trying to make him into a great professional development officer too.  You can only ask so much of people and my unit would be large enough that this wouldn't be necessary. 

[DNall]

Why not 60 aircrews & we'll keep the plane going all year? Fact is the plane is going to be flown by pilots outside your unit also, and no unit anywhere can or should be in continuous ES operation for a week by themselves, no matter what their capabilities. If they have something running that long then there'd be 20 planes parked on the line with 300 people signed into the mission. What you need locally is the initial deploying teams & that's it. You want a couple teams so when people can't go (alert rotation) you can still field a team. You don't need to sustain forever though.

5-10 person GT? Are you crazy? The only time a team is that large is to haul cadets around for the experience. 4 is the number, and the only reason its that high is so you can break into to elements & still have a wingman.

Far as low-speed jobs on ES operators... that's fine & everything, but you understand the two functions don't occur at the same meetings. And double-duty as you call it is normal in the real world too. An F16 pilot is also doing a staff job in his unit, and his flight proficiency is obviously a bigger deal. If we go to a NIMS system that requires so much ES training that it becomes a constant pursuits (like being a very active vol firefighter), then I understand what you're saying a little better. And lots of luck finding a truck load of people that want to do mostly admin.

[RiverAux]

5-10 person GT? Are you crazy? The only time a team is that large is to haul cadets around for the experience. 4 is the number, and the only reason its that high is so you can break into to elements & still have a wingman.

Lets face it, the primary reason that CAP is not used more in GSAR relates to the fact that we generally don't have the number of qualified people to ensure any degree of availability when called.  To do that you need many more people available than will be on the actual ground team.  Frankly, you just cannot count on cadets to be available for GT work about 75% of the time so I don't believe in even really counting them.  If they're available thats great -- we'll expand out as much as we can with them. 

But, a 4-person ground team is not going to be enough to impress any county sheriff.  They will not call out somebody who can only promise them 4 people on any given day.  You may be able to talk them into it, but I wouldn't waste 5 minutes of my time setting up meetings with folks to familiarize them with CAP and our local capabilities if that was all I could offer them. 

Yes, you could get by with a 4-person team, but are you saying that 4 people on a ground team is ideal?   

If we go to a NIMS system that requires so much ES training that it becomes a constant pursuits (like being a very active vol firefighter), then I understand what you're saying a little better.

And that is where I'm coming from.  We are going to have a tough enough time keeping people ES current in the future that if I had a preference I wouldn't ask them to take on administrative duties that require any significant time. 

[DNall]

Lets face it, the primary reason that CAP is not used more in GSAR relates to the fact that we generally don't have the number of qualified people to ensure any degree of availability when called. 

Key words there being "qual'd" & to a lesser extent "avail," not so much quantity, and not at all numbers per team.

I agree cadets should not be counted as primary. You need two all-adult teams on rotating alert. You can always fill from the down team if someone can't go, or with a trainee or cadet. When cadets are more avail then you can split your 2 primary teams into 4-8 lesser qual'd teams for UDF or light GT work.

But, a 4-person ground team is not going to be enough to impress any county sheriff. 

How many PJs does it take to impress a county Sheriff? I live in teh state of "one riot, one ranger," and my Sheriff is a retired Texas Ranger (not baseball), as will be the guy set to follow him when he decides to retire.

You're thinking too small. CAP units are not an island unto themselves. If the county needs help on a major search, you can put 300 qualified people out there from all over. If you want a GT together in 30mins to start a mission, you get 4-man teams.

Yes, you could get by with a 4-person team, but are you saying that 4 people on a ground team is ideal?   

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's an industry standard recognized by NIMS as well. It's supposed to be a leader, asst leader, comm/df, med; and everyone is cross-trained to an extent. When you get to type I incidents they talk about deployable teams of 48 with their own command & control element. That's 12 individual teams plus command elements.

If we go to a NIMS system that requires so much ES training that it becomes a constant pursuits (like being a very active vol firefighter), then I understand what you're saying a little better.

And that is where I'm coming from.  We are going to have a tough enough time keeping people ES current in the future that if I had a preference I wouldn't ask them to take on administrative duties that require any significant time. 

I understand what you're saying. In that case it'd be like internalizing a SaR org that does nothing but that & it takes all their CAP time to get & stay at speed for that one specialty. That's reasonable.

The way I approached that was to transfer all those staff functions away from the unit That's the make local units into flights, push mgmt to the Sq level which is basically a mini-Gp, follow the Iowa plan on the minature scale kinda thing. I think that's gonna be the best way to get that done. You're not seriously going to get the majority of units in CAP at the 80-100 active member range, and even if you did and it became minimally possible to function like an actual Sq should, why would you want to do all that locally rather than centralizing some that stuff away from your operators.

By the way, the NIMS standards aren't that hard. I actually think they are MUCH easier to work with than the CAP standards. CAP has you physically demonstrating every single task every three years. It's like starting over again as soon as you get qual'd, and that's somewhere between silly & insulting. With NIMS you go to some schools & do some additional training that initially is going to put you at a higher level than we are now, but once you're there then you don't have to repeat all of it over & over again, you just have to keep up your training thru practice enough that your agency says you can do the work & the state/feds (we don't know yet) agrees enough to issue you a card. After you get the rating, it's much easier to maintain than what we're doing now.

[RiverAux]

you just have to keep up your training thru practice enough that your agency

of course if the "agency" is CAP, then we're stuck with the current situation. 

[Stonewall]

While I was at Mount Vernon Composite Squadron in DC Wing, I think we had the ideal squadron.  I was there from 1996 to 1999 then from 2000 to 2003.  I served as Deputy Commander for Cadets the first tour and ES Officer the second.

My experience there was the best of both worlds as far as strong CAP squadron and a strong ES CAP squadron.

Every ground team we ever fielded were made up mostly of cadets.   We'd usually have 2 seniors and as many as 4 cadets per team, sometimes more, sometimes less.  From the time of initial call we were launching ground teams inside one hour and aircrews weren't far behind.

We included cadets in every aspect of emergency services, from mission base support to air operations.  90% of our missions, however, were run out of the MC (IC's) house unless it was more than a ELT mission.  We were very serious about training cadets in GSAR and even had them teaching at the Region level during the annual SAR College.  We were the only wing to do that since most people don't believe cadets are capable of doing such work.

The key to counting on cadets for 24 hour call-outs is communicating with the parents.  Every GTM/GTL qualified cadet, once a year, got a letter sent to them along with an availability sheet.  Perents had to list when their cadet could be called.  Options included 24/7; weekends Fri to Sun evening and school holidays.  There was also an area for notes and special conditions.  It may sound like work but it wasn't.  We all know that there are the "regulars" who could always be counted on.  In 15 years in National Captial Wing, I never once went on a mission without cadets.  We'd average about 10 to 15 ELT missions and 1 or 2 extended missions a year; usually a lost person or overdue aircraft.  Home schooled cadets are good for extended missions.  On two separate occasions, we had 2 different cadets remain on a mission for more than a week. 

Times were great back then.  We started a campaign to get every squadron member into a set of perfect BDUs.  I wish I could find the picture, but at one time we had a flight of about 15 seniors, 2 solid flights of cadets, and a good sized T-flight in their temporary uniforms (jeans and black t-shirts tucked in).  4 solid flights and flight commanders and command staff in a huge armory.  Dress-right-dress, looking as professional, if not more, than an active duty squadron/company.

Sorry, just remembering the good old days.

My new squadron doesn't seem to support cadets doing actual ES missions and our squadron performs more sorties than some wings, so I'm thinking there are plenty of opportunities for cadets to at least get called out over a weekend to find an ELT, run comms or otherwise help out at mission base.    I plan on changing that though.  I just wish I could find another "ground pounder" senior member to help shoulder some of the load.

[RiverAux]

As I said, I'm for using cadets when available but I think its hard to argue that you need to be able to respond to missions during the daytime during the workweek in order to be a credible GSAR force (and I'm talking "real" SAR and not just ELT missions which don't need more than 2 people).  For that you need a large contingent of adults, a portion of whom would be able to get off work on any given day for a search and possibly for multiple days. 

[Stonewall]

As I said, I'm for using cadets when available but I think its hard to argue that you need to be able to respond to missions during the daytime during the workweek in order to be a credible GSAR force (and I'm talking "real" SAR and not just ELT missions which don't need more than 2 people).  For that you need a large contingent of adults, a portion of whom would be able to get off work on any given day for a search and possibly for multiple days. 

Is CAP a "credible GSAR force"?  Are we certified and recognized as such?  Is there such a certification?  And since when do we not consider an ELT going a "real SAR mission"?  Every time you get called out, whether it be for a missing person or ELT, you have no clue if that ELT is distress or non-distress.  Now history tells us that most are non-distress, but could you imagine the fire department that took their time to get to a fire alarm because 80% of fire alarms are false?

I have never considered CAP to be a rapid deployment force, but we did have a squadron goal of having a ground team rolling within two hours at any given time.  That being said, I've never had a job where I could gaurantee my ability to leave work for a mission.  So regardless of cadets being available during daytime work hours, I'd say a majority of adults are equally unavailable during those hours.

I am all about representing CAP as a professional, but the truth is, I'm a professional Police Officer, not a professional Search and Rescue Technician.  Most people I knew up in DC (I don't know many of the seniors here just yet) were in the same boat.  On many occasions we'd get a call at 11:00 a.m. and not get underway until 15 or 16:00.

I'm not trying to take anything away from CAP.  The fact is we do save lives.  We work with several other agencies; federal, local and volunteer, to reach the common goal of saving lives.  I've never told anyone that "if you wanna do search and rescue, go join a volunteer SAR organization".  Thats not how I am.  But no different than the other non-paid SAR groups out there, we're volunteers and sometimes our availability is dependent upon family, jobs, other personal committments and for cadets, school.

The other thing to consider is that we're the only "SAR organization" that isn't primarily focused on SAR.  SAR, or Emergency Services, which is a broader field than just SAR, is only 1/3 of CAP's purpose.  Granted, many of us, me included, love that aspect of our mission and take it very seriously.

Just sayin'.  YMMV.

[RiverAux]

Is CAP a "credible GSAR force"?  Are we certified and recognized as such?  Is there such a certification?

Generally not, but we should be.  And in many places we are the best available for better or worse. 

That being said, I've never had a job where I could gaurantee my ability to leave work for a mission.

Exactly!!!  That is why I said you needed 15-30 gt-qualified adults to be assured of having enough of them available to put out a 5-10 person ground team at all times.  Everyone has an outside life and that is why CAP needs an incredible amount of redundancy in order to be counted on 100% AS A UNIT.

[RogueLeader]

I don't know about "ideal" size, but I would think that it all depends on the local need and interest.
As far as SAR respose time, we are training to where we can have several groud teams as well as numerous air crews, so then we would have an "alert" schedual, so that if anything happened, we know who would get the call, and be able to roll within an hour.  We aren't there yet, but we are working towards that goal of being a relable asset to the state.

[Stonewall]

My [new] squadron already had an alert plan that changes every week.  I'm not a part of it yet, probably because the ES types (read: Seniors) don't know me since they meet on a different night.  But I get an email every so often with an updated "alert team" schedule.

Seems to be pretty effective since this squadron performs like thousands of missions a year it seems.  I was shocked to hear that "we" participated in more missions than most wings did last year.  You'd think they need a hand from a fully qualified ground pounder.  Time will tell, I'm still new.

[jimmydeanno]

Ok question: EXCLUDING SCHOOLS
What is the most largest active unit -Composite or Senior - and what wing are they in?
I ask because, I was just wondering how realistic some of these are.
- again school / all cadet-  units excluded.

When I left Langley Composite Squadron (VAWG) there were aproximately 90 members on the books, and 65 were active.  The membership was split about 50-50 cadet and seniors.

Having that many people especially if they are all new exept a few is a logistical nightmare.  Imagine having 20 cadets taking the curry exam on one night...not to mention the other 20 cadets testing.  Now get all those cadets through PT too...

It's challenging, but I'd say that a good solid group of cadets 15-20 is ideal, and about 10 seniors.  On the volunteer side, it becomes too difficult to manage a squadron that large unless you have a bunch of retirees that can devote 40 hrs a week to CAP. (no offense guys...)