Thoughts on NESA being the primary tool for teaching cadets ES

[xray328]

I've noticed that teaching ES to cadets has its difficulties.  My own cadets don't seem motivated to attend the training sessions because it's being delivered in bits and pieces. What is CAP's expectation in teaching the cadets ES at the squadron level? I'm sure there's some highly successful ES training being done throughout the county but it almost seems like if you don't have a highly trained ES member pushing it the cadets loose interest.  From speaking to my own cadets, they need a goal and one that is quick and obtainable, not one that might take them a year to achieve.  Should we just push them towards NESA?  I've heard nothing but great things about the schools there and the cadets could get everything done in a week.

[Spam]

Both cadets and officers need to recognize that especially on a volunteer basis it takes quite some time just to COVER the required material, then to demonstrate/evaluate the required tasks to standard on an individual basis.

I think the frustrations you mention for cadets are coupled with (a) being used to a daily dose of education and training in school highlights for them the generally amateur/volunteer nature of our usual instructor caliber (we just aren't trained to teach, most of us), and (b) the volume of the material does not lend itself to progress via local weekly meetings unless the unit abandons the required cadet contact hours, which we shouldn't do.


I am a big fan of NESA, and most other standing, in residence schools. They offer a great way to gather a good deal of information all at a gulp, along with some well prepared and staged practical experience taught by a staff that's generally been doing it for a while, and does it to standards. Yet, I think they'd be the first to tell you that drinking all that info at full pressure from a fire hose merely prepares the trainee to go train to proficiency in his/her specialties back at the unit level, via exercises with his/her unit.


A step down from scheduled schools are the various local ad hoc "cram it in a long weekend" attempts, which pretty invariably produce a questionable level of qualification, and a dangerously low level of task proficiency, at least in my experience. Many local efforts also suffer from a lack of cross pollination with a lack of insights from a broader pool of not just skilled, but highly experienced staff. However, here and there, some units and Groups do manage to maintain a cadre with a rehearsed core skill set, and do put on quality local training events.


My inclination is to locally foster a culture of ES heritage instruction on a weekly basis (one module a week, nominally 10-15 minutes) as a portion of our required Activities and Leadership contact hours. I have the expectation that this should be senior, (GTM1), train the trainer qualified cadets executing to standards. I have the expectation that we wont see significant progress as a unit with this alone, though, and thus we schedule weekend intensive training days/FTXs. So, finally, back to your original point, having given that context: we then have to make sure that the local training "gene pool" doesn't get "inbred" by encouraging members to attend formal in residence schools such as NESA on a frequent basis to bring back tips and techniques.

Working for us, YMMMV...


Cheers
Spam

[Ed Bos]

I hear NESA is pretty good. No reason it should be the primary means to teach ES though.

I believe that there are enough things to fill weekly meetings for cadets though. I'd recommend saving ES training for weekend bivouacs and ES-specific training time.

The CAP Cadet Program is a valuable mission that deserves to have its time unabridged by shoehorning ES training into it.

I respectfully disagree with Spam (though I see his point), I don't think 10-15 minutes gives ES enough due diligence, and that could be time better spend expanding leadership, aerospace, fitness, etc.

That's 2 cents, don't spend it all in one place.

[LTC Don]

NESA for cadets is great as a cadet learning and leadership program.  Does it lead to being able to respond to more missions?  Nope.  At least for the 'ground team' skillset.  Airplanes just aren't falling out of the sky that often so the questions become:  What training brings the most value in terms of being able to respond to an actual mission?  What am I training for?  Missing Persons or Missing Aircraft, or both? 

In terms of missing persons, NESA doesn't provide that skillset, yet those are the most common missions available nationwide.  Missing aircraft, not so much.

For aircrew training, NESA is the ticket.  Highly beneficial and recommended.  For 'ground team' training, the actual mission value is highly questionable.  If NESA would start offering the NASAR programs like SARTECH II and I and spend a week doing it, that would be awesome and would give local ES officers something tangible to market to their local EM/SO folks..   

Better yet, if NESA would develop a hybrid SARTECH II and I course with the ground team missing aircraft skillsets then we'd be cooking bacon.  Insert favorite bacon graphic here.   :clap:


Insert dead horse graphic here.

[jdh]

Our standard meeting on the forth week is ES for everyone and I have one weekend a month (usually the 3rd weekend) that I run training for those that are interested in more ES that we also open up to other squadrons. This month we have a GA-8 coming in to train MS and MO, a check pilot coming in to do annuals for my pilots, a First Aid class for those that need it or want a refresher and then I have the normal ground team and Mission Base Staff training that I schedule for every month.

[Alaric]

NESA for cadets is great as a cadet learning and leadership program.  Does it lead to being able to respond to more missions?  Nope.  At least for the 'ground team' skillset.  Airplanes just aren't falling out of the sky that often so the questions become:  What training brings the most value in terms of being able to respond to an actual mission?  What am I training for?  Missing Persons or Missing Aircraft, or both? 

In terms of missing persons, NESA doesn't provide that skillset, yet those are the most common missions available nationwide.  Missing aircraft, not so much.

For aircrew training, NESA is the ticket.  Highly beneficial and recommended.  For 'ground team' training, the actual mission value is highly questionable.  If NESA would start offering the NASAR programs like SARTECH II and I and spend a week doing it, that would be awesome and would give local ES officers something tangible to market to their local EM/SO folks..   

Better yet, if NESA would develop a hybrid SARTECH II and I course with the ground team missing aircraft skillsets then we'd be cooking bacon.  Insert favorite bacon graphic here.   :clap:


Insert dead horse graphic here.

The issue with that of course is that the GTM Task guides are still oriented on the missing airplane versus missing person search.  NESA teaches to the CAP task guides which haven't been updated in more than a decade, until the SQTRs are updated why would NESA teach something different.

[Spam]

I hear NESA is pretty good. No reason it should be the primary means to teach ES though.

I believe that there are enough things to fill weekly meetings for cadets though. I'd recommend saving ES training for weekend bivouacs and ES-specific training time.

The CAP Cadet Program is a valuable mission that deserves to have its time unabridged by shoehorning ES training into it.

I respectfully disagree with Spam (though I see his point), I don't think 10-15 minutes gives ES enough due diligence, and that could be time better spend expanding leadership, aerospace, fitness, etc.

That's 2 cents, don't spend it all in one place.

Oh, no, I completely agree - 15 minutes a meeting isn't NEARLY enough to do much valuable training. It does however whet the appetite of cadets (and visiting recruits) for this important third mission. My point is that we only use this similarly to discussing aerospace current events.  I mentioned this by way of speaking to the OP's comment about cadet interest in the mission, that's all.

Cheers,
Spam

("whet the appetite"... for bacon? Jeez... now I've got pork products on the brain, sez Spam).

[winterg]

Would there be a kosher version without bacon for us kippah wearing ES types? LoL

[Spam]

Don makes a good point regarding missing person searches.

Neither NESA nor the NHQ curriculum cover any significant training objectives for missing person SAR, nor has CAP nationally worked out much of a CONOPS or weapons and tactics development for how our teams should work these missions. We perpetually see CAP teams who think they are experts in this mission set clumping through the woods in a line search, obscuring sign and scent, not using any probabilistic methodology, nor any modern missing person SAR equipment. Ignorance, as they say, is not a crime, though.

Yet, I'm sure that's not the fault of NESA, which is a schools command of sorts, not a tactics development program.

By way of analogy, USAF sends selected students to Fighter Weapons School and graduates patch wearers, but if the Nellis guys haven't worked out the weps and tactics to counter a given threat, then the fault isn't the school, its that we haven't accepted that we have a capability gap and worked to fix it as an organization yet.  I attended Red Flag a year ago, and we observed then-unaddressed issues that were prioritized for attention, but nobody would critique the schools for not teaching techniques that aren't approved/tested yet.

V/R
Spam

[xray328]

Thanks.  So as a senior member working with cadets that wants to enter the ES world what NESA course do you recommend? What should the cadets do down there? I was originally thinking GTM3, but it sounds like that might not be the best approach.  Maybe MSA?  I don't want to put a weeks effort into training that ultimately doesn't benefit the program or the cadets.

My sons hoping for an NBB slot so that takes care of his ES.  I was going to take my daughter (and hopefully some cadets from the squadron) down and spend that time getting our ES training done as well.

[TheSkyHornet]

I think you need to elaborate more on your teaching style. Are we talking death by PowerPoint, field activities, practical exercises in the classroom?

I guarantee you that if you spend an entire day of classroom teaching and then expect them to come back the following weekend for hands-on training, they won't remember anything from the classroom. They spend the entire week in a classroom. They don't want to have it when they come to the CAP meeting. It's their out. Keep in mind that not every cadet that joins CAP joins for the Emergency Services mission. Those that want to be in CAP for any reason whatsoever should at least have the minimum exposure to have an understanding of the ES mission and some training, but they don't need to be ground team certified or any of that.

Know your troops and know what their desires are. Target the ones that you know are not only interested but willing to qualify for that specialized training. And those who just want to treat it like a club need to have an alternative activity or they need to be addressed as to their future in the cadet program.

Just last weekend we had a deep point made with our cadets that this is not a mission-less JROTC babysitting program. This is a program with a mission, and that mission consists of two areas of education: Aerospace and Emergency Services, and the two are very much intertwined at times. If someone wants to treat this as a club where they get to play soldier, they need to find another place to go because we're not going to do this K-12 nonsense. We have a purpose and we're going to execute to accomplish it.

I personally feel that a lot of this lack of interest in the cadet program to do some of this training, especially for ES, comes from that fact that it's been a de facto standard to recruit, recruit, recruit. It's been roster-building. And now you have a bunch of people on the team that want to play golf with a hockey stick.

[LTC Don]

NESA for cadets is great as a cadet learning and leadership program.  Does it lead to being able to respond to more missions?  Nope.  At least for the 'ground team' skillset.  Airplanes just aren't falling out of the sky that often so the questions become:  What training brings the most value in terms of being able to respond to an actual mission?  What am I training for?  Missing Persons or Missing Aircraft, or both? 

In terms of missing persons, NESA doesn't provide that skillset, yet those are the most common missions available nationwide.  Missing aircraft, not so much.

For aircrew training, NESA is the ticket.  Highly beneficial and recommended.  For 'ground team' training, the actual mission value is highly questionable.  If NESA would start offering the NASAR programs like SARTECH II and I and spend a week doing it, that would be awesome and would give local ES officers something tangible to market to their local EM/SO folks..   

Better yet, if NESA would develop a hybrid SARTECH II and I course with the ground team missing aircraft skillsets then we'd be cooking bacon.  Insert favorite bacon graphic here.   :clap:


Insert dead horse graphic here.

The issue with that of course is that the GTM Task guides are still oriented on the missing airplane versus missing person search.  NESA teaches to the CAP task guides which haven't been updated in more than a decade, until the SQTRs are updated why would NESA teach something different.

True, NHQ and the powers that be play a large part in this, but beyond just standard bull-headedness, I can't image why NESA can't introduce other, Non-CAP courses that are more appropriate to today's SAR environment.

Cadets going to NESA into the ground team curriculum is still a good thing, with lots of meat and potato instruction, it's just that the training (and the Ranger training, for that matter) just won't translate into any kind of mission uptick because there just isn't any missions out there. So you go to Indiana for a week, get credentialed up after some great training, and then what?

Which, of course, is the Catch-22 for the entire membership.  Aircraft incidents do still happen, and occasionally, still need looking for.  So, the need is still there for us to have that skillset of looking for an aircraft in a potential multi-state environment.  How to justify the amount of effort to stay proficient in missing aircraft search is the question.  This is why I really like the idea of a hybrid SARTECH-II/I course with add-on modules specific to aircraft search, but with the missing person focus as the primary, not the other way around.  If the ground team curriculum could be tweaked to meet/exceed the SARTECH II such that a member could pass the exams with confidence, that would be great.

[sarmed1]

I think personally national schools that have a 1 week "0  to hero" course should be the exception vs the rule when it comes to training.  Besides the drink from the firehose issue, there is a high cost involved and the fact that they happen only once per year....generally speaking.  Basic skills are more than appropriate to be taught t the local level, and on the model of most CAP units much more effective.  I would also agree that in the limited schedule of the weekly meeting concept ppt should be limited.  Send them home with a thumb drive of powerpoints or recorded presentations to watch at leisure and work on practical skills during meeting time.....

Once they have the basic skills down, then look to using the multiple national schools for advanced training and/or reinforcement, tips, tricks or the something "special".

MK

[sarmed1]

SARTECH II plus CAP specific is not that hard of a stretch.  LESA's GSARSS (advanced) has been doing it since it was a TXWG only activity back in the early 2000's.

MK

[arajca]

In an ideal world, NESA would be the capstone of a 3 or 4 level pyramid of ESAs. The foundation is the group (if you have them) or wing ESA. Covers the entry level (group), mid level, and type 3 positions. The typical CAP mission type stuff. Next is the region ESA. Covers your type 2 positions, total wing missions, etc. NESA would cover the Type 1 positions, multi-wing/region incidents, etc. Each level would also provide train-the-trainer training for that level.

[xray328]

So again, what courses do you suggest for cadets/seniors to take there if ground team isn't useful in the real world?

[Holding Pattern]

So again, what courses do you suggest for cadets/seniors to take there if ground team isn't useful in the real world?

1. Check your state MOU for any details that might help.
2. Contact your local emergency coordinator and find out what qualifications he cares about.
3. Develop a list from the above 2 sources.

EDIT: Oh yes, send a message up your ES chain to see if someone did this homework first.

[Garibaldi]

So again, what courses do you suggest for cadets/seniors to take there if ground team isn't useful in the real world?

First, you need to take the GES CAPT-116. Get your top half of the SQTR signed off by a competent SET qualified GTL, and get those out of the way. If you are in the south east region, you could go to WESS, Alabama's emergency Services academy, which is spread out over 5 weekends and only costs like $25 total. Most of the other schools are more costly, but NESA is worth it, at Camp Atterbury in Indiana. I've sent cadets and seniors to both activities and they highly recommend them. I'd stay away from Hawk Mountain unless you are really into living rough and humping your gear for a week.

For the money, NESA or one of the other regional SAR schools. You can get with your local department of emergency management to see if they offer or know who is putting on the FUNSAR/SARTECH classes. Those have more real-world applications CAP can be involved in that don't involve ELT chases.

[TheSkyHornet]

So again, what courses do you suggest for cadets/seniors to take there if ground team isn't useful in the real world?

As yourself this:
What are the likely scenarios that my squadron may be engaged in?

Where I live, it's very rare to hear of CAP being called for search and rescue. If anything, it's an ELT search. Ground teams are virtually "useless" as you indicated. Still, we do have them. It's unfortunate because they really could have a major role. But what about natural disasters (floods, tornadoes, etc.)? Are there things that could happen that your squadron can contribute to? At the very least, you can at least do some in-house training and preparedness. ES doesn't necessarily require you to have to go to some far away training course. There's a lot you can teach right there at your home base that may or may not require sign-offs. If participation is a problem, I would recommend doing some team-building stuff first with an ES-oriented objective to get the ball rolling, then use those courses as the extra perk to start the process of actually have a team legally capable of doing ES missions in CAP.

You'll find that when it starts off slow, it's not going to correct itself over the course of a week or month even. You need to prove to those cadets that they have a purpose, and sometimes, that means forcing their hand a bit so they see that there's more they can do, and that they want to be part of the real team.

[THRAWN]

As a former squadron commander and wing ES Director, the best thing my wing did with respect to ES was find out what was needed and train to that need. How to do that? Interact with your partner agencies: FEMA, State OEM/EMA, County OEM/EMA...find out if your state has a SAR Council and how to get on it. Same with a state Emergency Management Association. When I first started showing up for the Emergency Management Association meetings, I got the "CAP? Oh, you're like the Boy Scouts, right?" treatment. After a couple of localized and PD disasters, we didn't get that and got a seat at the big kid table. It might take some time. Over the past decade-decade and a half, there have been some issues with the performance and attitude of some CAP assets. Don't let that discourage you.

It's good that the ideas about how the ESAs were supposed to work (wing, region, national each dealing with specific parts of the puzzle) is still around. When the whole ESA concept was developed, that's what the plan was. How it morphed into the "instant GTM, just add attitude" of today is the question. The answer lies in empire building, but that's for another place...

Localized training is the way to go. Again, reach out to the partners in your wing. Ask to observe their training. Invite them to yours. Get a couple of squadrons together once a quarter and do some flying and GT coordination, missing person searches and train the way that you'll be searching.

[Spaceman3750]

I'm a little late to the party here, but here goes.

NESA is great for teaching a large number of people some cool followership, leadership, SAR, and outdoorsman skills in a restricted period of time. The utility of the SAR skills at home will 100% depend on the working relationship your local unit, group, and wing has with the public agencies that make up your AO (and that's a whole other topic). The rest of them should be highly valuable regardless.

The national curriculum as it stands today does introduce some key topics related to missing person searches: types of search formations, how to implement them, missing person clues, etc. however I would agree with the statement that it doesn't go far enough in preparing our ground teams for the task. The tendency of our GTLs to jump straight into line searching an area (as pointed out above) brings up a couple of deficiencies not only in how we do searches in general, but also in how we train our GTLs to think and act (at NESA, I feel like we do a better than average job of training GTLs how to apply the right technique to the right problem, but we can always improve too). What we have today is something, but we can do better.

In the meantime, you would be well served to build relationships with SAR teams from your other local agencies and train your team alongside them. Areas differ, but the folks I've met so far in the SAR community at large lead me to believe that if you're willing to identify a weakness in your own team and ask for help to improve it, they would love to help you out, because ultimately they're the ones you'll be working next to in the field. I rarely hear of a problem in CAP that is unique to CAP - everyone has similar problems, let's work together to solve them.

By the way, NESA GSAR presents students with a mixture of aviation related scenarios and missing person related scenarios. Because of that, you can know that your students coming home will have had at least cursory exposure to both. It's up to you and them to improve those skills.

[Ed Bos]

Well said, Spaceman.

As for the other folks with ideas for improving NESA, will we be seeing you out there this summer? Applications are open now. We can't improve it without YOUR help, just saying.

Cheers!