CAP Officers: What's the Problem?

[ddelaney103]

We've been going around and around on the whole "improving CAP Officers" business.

In an effort to come at it from another angle, I'd like people to talk about the problems instead of rushing to solutions. It might be easier to settle on a possible solution if we all agree on what we're trying to fix.

Here are a few of mine to start:

Skill Sets and Training - Many people are going on about making training longer or more challenging, but neither is really the point.  Our goal should be to figure out what a CAP Officer needs to be able to do.  The skill books for UDF/GTM are a good start on the Operations side, but we need to expand it to the other mission areas and administration as well.

In the AF, I have skill lists that get signed off to advance.  I also have checklists that lay out how the tasks are done.  In CAP we have only the vaguest descriptions on staff positions and little on required skills or tasks.  Figuring out what should be the required tasks might make running the org a lot easier.

Grade Inversions in the Chain of Command - As an AF SNCO at a flying unit, some of the things that bother people here are things I see every drill.  In the AF a squadron with a lot of field grade officers is par for the curse.  I don't even see grade inversion in the operational world as odd.  Often the senior leadership fly as the wingmen to the younger, but more experienced, line plots.

However, having sqdn's containing Colonels commanded by an Lt is very odd.  It opens up a can of worms concerning what grade means in CAP

I'd write more, but I'm fallling asleep at the keyboard.

[RiverAux]

I think the "problem" such as it is relates to the fact that there is no relationship between CAP rank and responsibility either in carrying out normal squadron duties or during ES missions. 

The problem with the problem is that you can't address problems with rank in relation to squadron responsibilities without messing up ranks in the ES field and vice versa.  For example, if ranks are based on status in the CAP administrative side of the hosue, then when a mission comes up you still have people of widely varying ranks spread throughout the ICS structure with rhyme or reason.  If you base the ranks on an individuals ES training (IC= Lt. Col) then when you go back to the squadron you would still have the possibility of Lts. commanding Lt. Cols.

I see no way to resolve that issue.   

And in both places you run into the problem of what to do with people that once had high rank (based on any method you choose), who are no longer doing that job but stlll maintain a higher rank. 

[arajca]

In the ICS topic:
The titles for the various positions (IC, Section Chief, Unit Leader, etc) were selected to minimize confusion between a responder's agency grade and their IC position. It is not uncommon to have fire chiefs and asst chiefs serving as unit leaders on incidents and have fire Lt's or Capts serving as section chiefs or branch directors supervising thier normal boss.

So to try to link a CAP grade to an ICS position goes against the idea behind the position titles.

[lordmonar]

Personally....I don't think there really is a major problem with CAP officers as is.

I would like to see better, clearer standards as ddelaney suggested.  This will help drive making out officer training better.

I got no problem with rank vs responsibility mismatch as much as I have with a possible rank vs ability mismatch.

Better training with clear pass/fail criteria would be great.

[DNall]

In an effort to come at it from another angle, I'd like people to talk about the problems instead of rushing to solutions. It might be easier to settle on a possible solution if we all agree on what we're trying to fix.

That's not a dif angle, it IS how we arrived at the conversation we're currently having. You just have to rewind to catch the begining.

Skill Sets and Training
Our goal should be to figure out what a CAP Officer needs to be able to do.  The skill books for UDF/GTM are a good start on the Operations side, but we need to expand it to the other mission areas and administration as well.

yes, no, maybe....
This is about what skill sets officers actually need for the jobs being discussed, which are beyond what we do now, which is by force because of NIMS, ELT tech - mission drop, declining standing of the cadet program in competition w/ others, overall resource shortage related to not being truly necessary to the AF or their budget especially in time of war, post 9/11 evolved needs of the country demand evolution of CAP like we did for civil defense in the cold war, etc...  That's the short version of the aforementioned rewind.

UDF/GTM? Leaving out the fact that the federal govt considers those to be worthless & not qualified to do anything (see also NIMS resource typing), I think we have a handle on the big dumb gorrilla go do simple job stuff. It's the capability to serve on command & general staff in the REAL ICS world. You can debate real military vs posers vs corporate flying club till the cows come home, but we actually do function in the full on ICS system side-by-side with paid emergency responders, or rather we don't since 9/11 cause we hadn't gotten our crap together on NIMS, but we will in the next couple years or so. The problem being our people may actually have a degree of techincal expertise that's useful at that level, and certainly we can push that way up, but we are NOT capable of leadership/mgmt/command at that level & because the two things are completely disassociated we don't even pick leaders to train for operational leadership roles, and we turn out with a cluster of some kind. A fire chief doesn't get promoted to that job cause he's a good firefighter. He goes up cause he can command at that level, and THEN is taught how to do the job.

In the AF, I have skill lists that get signed off to advance.  I also have checklists that lay out how the tasks are done.  In CAP we have only the vaguest descriptions on staff positions and little on required skills or tasks.  Figuring out what should be the required tasks might make running the org a lot easier.

Preachin to the choir my friend.

Grade Inversions in the Chain of Command - As an AF SNCO at a flying unit, some of the things that bother people here are things I see every drill.  In the AF a squadron with a lot of field grade officers is par for the curse.  I don't even see grade inversion in the operational world as odd.  Often the senior leadership fly as the wingmen to the younger, but more experienced, line plots.

However, having sqdn's containing Colonels commanded by an Lt is very odd.  It opens up a can of worms concerning what grade means in CAP

No doubt. What I see as the issue on that front is amazingly similiar to the operational leadership slots I mentioned before. We associate grade with position, but do NOT make the connection that it's supposed to be that way because it requires the skills & experience of the defined grade to do that job. We end up promoting people who don't have the necessary skill sets (because we've disassociated the two), and then putting unqualified people in positions w/o actually considering, meassuring (grade), or applying those skill sets to make the selections. We do our best to capitalize on what people bring to us from the outside world, but we do a horrible job of taking those skills and making them our own - forging them thru training into the CAP-way; and, we do a horrible job of developing our own people to higher callings.

I got no problem with an org that exists to use people's good will to accomplish AF missions, but we go from use to abuse & then can't figure out why they drop like flies. We have to sell people a set of expectations that's better than the outside world, that they want to step up & accept a challenge to excpand themselves to be involved in, then we need to bust our butts & back it up before they get jaded & bolt with a bad taste in their mouths.