USAF SAR Evals, Are They Helpful?

[ELTHunter]

We are getting into that time of year where there have been, and will be a lot of SAR evals taking place.  I have been involved in a few of these, as well as many missions and non-eval SARX's.  I can't see a lot of benefit in the Eval's other than another opportunity to practice.  They tend to be more dog and pony show than actual real scenario practices.  How many actual missions do you have an army of staff at a large mission base with weeks to prepare and often practice, practice missions prior to the actual eval?

I understand the USAF needs to make sure we are trained to the approved standards, but I'm not sure I see a lot of value to the training preparing people for an actual emergency situation.  If you believe the old adage "you play like you practice".

If they really want to see how it really is, why don't they start at 0'dark thirty at the IC's house and see what a real mission progresses.  How many folks we can muster, what the stand up time is, etc.?

What's you opinion?

[davedove]

They're just like many of the inspections in the military.  Everyone jumps through hoops so that everything is polished.  Everyone knows it's not reality, but they keep doing it anyway.

[RiverAux]

I have yet to see a SAREVAL with a realistic ground SAR scenario as I mentioned in another thread. 

The air search and other scenarios are usually okay and probably do test most of our capabilities with the exception of air photo missions -- haven't ever seen them review the photos we actually took to see if we did a good job or not -- if we flew the mission we were successful in their book.

[bosshawk]

CAWG gets to play this game 8-10 June.  Will be interesting to see how it goes or doesn't go.  The practice earlier this month turned out reasonably well, thanks to the efforts of some really talented people who stepped in and made it happen.

I am usually unpopular when I say that I don't like to practice being miserable, but that is how I generally view SAREXs.

[isuhawkeye]

An offer was mead to the LO to send him to a FEMA exercise design course.  He declined stating that he doesnt do this enough

[arajca]

An offer was mead to the LO to send him to a FEMA exercise design course.  He declined stating that he doesnt do this enough

How about recommending IS-139 Exercise Design?

[CadetProgramGuy]

An offer was mead to the LO to send him to a FEMA exercise design course.  He declined stating that he doesnt do this enough

How about recommending IS-139 Exercise Design?

I have taken that course and it is informative.  The IS-139 does walk you through the principles of exercise design, however there is a major difference between executing principles and executing a design for a mission.

I for one am in the train of thought that you must train harder, more difficult, and in the nastiest of terrain and weather.  Thats when we get our calls.  2:00AM, nasty weather.

CPG

[RiverAux]

In my opinion SAREVALs should be designed by and evaluated by the most hardcore CAP ICs that can be found from outside the evaluated Wing.

Not to disparge the AF, but they don't get any training in what we do and how we're supposed to be doing it.  So, they don't really know how to design these exercises to really evaluate our capabilities.  Sure, if the whole mission staff is messed up they should be able to see and evaluate that but beyond that we can't expect much.

Ideally the evaluator should be more qualified in the field being evaluated than are the persons being evaluated.  In this case, the evaluators know less about how things are supposed to work than the people they're grading. 

[Pumbaa]

The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in action!

[ZigZag911]

USAF air sortie scenarios tend to be pretty good, innovative, and instructive....so are the problems they toss at the mission managers.....there does seem to be a weakness on the GT side (undoubtedly die to their lack of experience in this area), which could be remedied by getting some CAP region or national level 'subject matter' experts involved in the SAREVAL planning team.

[mikeylikey]

NO......SAREVALS are little more than a moral booster if you do good and a letdown if you suck.  Plus, if the AF wants to evaluate us......why arent they training us?  Can't and should not evaluate someone or something you are not willing to take the time with and help fix!

[flynd94]

CAWG gets to play this game 8-10 June.  Will be interesting to see how it goes or doesn't go.  The practice earlier this month turned out reasonably well, thanks to the efforts of some really talented people who stepped in and made it happen.

I am usually unpopular when I say that I don't like to practice being miserable, but that is how I generally view SAREXs.

What SAREX were you watching.  I was the IC (and Jim) of the NorCal base at RHV.   We had nothing but problems with the brain trust running the show at Castle.  It was one of the largest Charlie Foxtrot's I have seen in the Wing.   I am extremely nervous for the real deal.  Also considering that we are only going to sortie 6 aircraft.  Thats right 6 out of the 20+ we have.  I asked the question what if we have too many air tasks, the answer was we will tell the AF we can't handle it.  CAWG is trying to show the AF our uncapabilities on this SAREVAL.   It will be interesting to see the fallout from the exercise.

[afgeo4]

CAWG gets to play this game 8-10 June.  Will be interesting to see how it goes or doesn't go.  The practice earlier this month turned out reasonably well, thanks to the efforts of some really talented people who stepped in and made it happen.

I am usually unpopular when I say that I don't like to practice being miserable, but that is how I generally view SAREXs.

What SAREX were you watching.  I was the IC (and Jim) of the NorCal base at RHV.   We had nothing but problems with the brain trust running the show at Castle.  It was one of the largest Charlie Foxtrot's I have seen in the Wing.   I am extremely nervous for the real deal.  Also considering that we are only going to sortie 6 aircraft.  Thats right 6 out of the 20+ we have.  I asked the question what if we have too many air tasks, the answer was we will tell the AF we can't handle it.  CAWG is trying to show the AF our uncapabilities on this SAREVAL.   It will be interesting to see the fallout from the exercise.

Perhaps that's exactly why USAF does CAP SAR evals. To see what capabilities they actually CAN bring to the table. Not on paper, but in real life.

On paper, CAWG has 20+ aircraft you say?  They can only task 6? Well... that's the real capability of CAWG then, isn't it? That's what the fallout should be and hopefully someone competent will get upset with it and figure out how to fix it.

[wingnut]

Oh gee,
part of what really bothers me about CAP is a 'see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil", you are absolutely correct in stating CAWG could not get more than 6 or 7 aircraft up in the air, this has happened many times, the USAF guys have the opinion that much of CAP is a flying club (heard it before have ya) I have flown with many pilots and observer/scanners who don't have a clue how to operate CAP radios, procedures, flight ops. Is it a sham?? It is if we present a paper Mache image to the Air Force. However, there are a few Squadrons who are above the rest and they are pulling the weight of the CAWG, some of them have lots of pilots but no CAP Airplane, I am a CAP retred rejoining after a 25 year absence, I see little change, except fewer pilots and cadets
( really few)  in the last year that I have been active I flew over 100 hours of missions and SAREX so I know of what I speak. I am disappointed, very disenchanted, we are being run by some senior Officers who many are not qualified to be in the supervisory positions, can't handle stress, and produce no meaningful results (Peter principle). I have flown with pilots who are flat out dangerous to fly with, we get  no facility support, no assistance for aircrews to obtain ANY safety equipment (flight suits, rafts, etc) why on Gods green earth would you make a member buy a surplus flight suit from Ebay when the Air Force is throwing them away, (don't give me crap about just ask wing) . Point is CAP is not user friendly, I am embarrassed to recruit anymore new members until I see some common sense taking hold. If not I will not waste anymore of my time going to a sarex and sitting on my butt watching a live F troop play.

I want to know what we get as a country for 25 million per year, maybe we should reconsider the 500 plane force and cut back to 350 and sink the rest of the money into training and STAYING CURRENT, that means being able to do what we say we can do.

Sorry just blogged my guts out

[flynd94]

The major problem we had in our practice session for the actual Eval was command and control.  The brain trust failed, failed miserably.   We had crews in NorCal for all of our assigned aircraft.  We just sat waiting while the folks at Castle tried to figure out what was going on.  Part of the problem is that they don't understand how to use ICS to their advantage, and the shear size of state.

The plan was to have 1 main base (Castle) and, 2 remote bases (Norcal-RHV, Socal-WHP).  They wanted to use the IMU2 in distributed mode.  We found out that the server couldn't handle it.  One would think you would test this capability before.  Next, they didn't think through how to get the taskings sent to the sub-bases.   We ended up making up our own taskings (we thought ahead and, had a plan B) for our crews so, they could get some practice in.  Also, you don't want to have crews sitting around all day with nothing to do.

The big problem in CAWG is that Ops has lacked strong leadership in the past couple of years and, now we are suffering.  We want to have to many Chiefs.  Its funny, we get one message from our DO, then the assistant DO says something different and so on.

Its a great show to watch but, sad at the same time.  Like the previous poster said, we have  many good crews out there but, a few ruin it for the rest of us.

JMHO

[afgeo4]

That sucks. I think what sucks more is the fact that CAWG isn't the only one in the situation. It's difficult to put out fully trained flightcrews when we're all volunteers without unlimited funds and time. That's probably a very difficult thing to understand for USAF people since they get paid and trained, but it's true. CAP isn't a professional organization, we're a volunteer one.

[wingnut]

OK

So  How do we make it better, I for one detest the guys who show up to meetings and do nothing but criticize, I  know that we have a huge number of guys who are very capable, I have flown with crews that are more professional than any I flew with in the AF. No one can deny that we are for the most part an organization of professionals who volunteer much of our time and utilize our expertise in the support of CAP.   

[flynd94]

OK

So  How do we make it better, I for one detest the guys who show up to meetings and do nothing but criticize, I  know that we have a huge number of guys who are very capable, I have flown with crews that are more professional than any I flew with in the AF. No one can deny that we are for the most part an organization of professionals who volunteer much of our time and utilize our expertise in the support of CAP.   

We have spoken up and, our suggestions were downplayed.  We suffer from strong leader (DO), he is a great guy but, not the type to take the bull by the horns/getta er' done type.  Also, we suffer from too many chiefs who think they know what they are doing and have no clue.  Some of them have been around for decades so, its hard to get past them.  I will continue to hit my head against the wall.  I will also continue to build a strong ES program at the Sq level.

KS

[IceNine]

Sar-Evals as they currently stand are the equivalent of every other checklist on the planet.  A degree in college typically does not prepare you for a job in the real world it says that you completed the check boxes necessary for a piece of paper saying your know about the principles of a potential career field, nothing more.  Just as getting an outstanding on a mission is nothing more than saying that you complete the mission and instead of using crayon to write your op plan you thought it out and typed everything up.  The Evals are necessary but as they stand they are in no way even a decent representation of the abilities of a wing.  My thought is that the mission should be called into whomever happens to be the Alerting Officer/IC for the wing at the time.  And let them spin up the mission in there underwear in their bedroom like the typical mission would be run.  Everyone knows that IC's rarely get dressed when running a mission from the beginning let alone leave the house to set up an ICP.  If we get the opportunity to do a For real, no crap scenario and we fall on our faces then we at least have a starting point of where to re-direct our training efforts, and if we can pull off a 72 hour mission execution without running banker's hours then we are truly ready for "the real deal".  You'd figure after Katrina that would be "highly suggested" by our "Big Brother"

[ELTHunter]

Sar-Evals as they currently stand are the equivalent of every other checklist on the planet.  A degree in college typically does not prepare you for a job in the real world it says that you completed the check boxes necessary for a piece of paper saying your know about the principles of a potential career field, nothing more.  Just as getting an outstanding on a mission is nothing more than saying that you complete the mission and instead of using crayon to write your op plan you thought it out and typed everything up.  The Evals are necessary but as they stand they are in no way even a decent representation of the abilities of a wing.  My thought is that the mission should be called into whomever happens to be the Alerting Officer/IC for the wing at the time.  And let them spin up the mission in there underwear in their bedroom like the typical mission would be run.  Everyone knows that IC's rarely get dressed when running a mission from the beginning let alone leave the house to set up an ICP.  If we get the opportunity to do a For real, no crap scenario and we fall on our faces then we at least have a starting point of where to re-direct our training efforts, and if we can pull off a 72 hour mission execution without running banker's hours then we are truly ready for "the real deal".  You'd figure after Katrina that would be "highly suggested" by our "Big Brother"

I agree totally.  Sure we can get full crews for six or eight aircraft, ICP staff, full ground teams, and an operating comm network when we have two months and a practice SARX to prepare for the eval.  That, in no way, is Representative of our ability to stand up qualified people and equip them at a moments notice.  Yet every year, here we are taking weeks/months to prepare and recruit mission personnel and prepping equipment so we can put on a big dog & pony show complete with Powerpoint Slides and computer generated maps of the AO.  I understand that makes everybody feel good because CAP can say "look what we can do" to the Air Force, and the Air Force can turn around and say "look what we can do" to the 1st AF and FEMA.  I agree that it might provide a training opportunity for a lot of folks.  However, you end up spending a lot of training funding without uncovering any of the problems we need to know about in order to get better in real life.

Somewhere between the underware scenario and the dog & pony show lies the answer, IMHO.

Some might say that's how the real military does it, but that doesn't mean that it's the right approach.