All organizational structures are by nature a pyramid. That doesn't have anything to do with using officer versus enlisted titles. So you didn't answer my question. Why should all members be officers by default versus enlisted?

Quote from: afgeo4 on April 26, 2008, 07:25:45 PM

Quote from: RiverAux on April 26, 2008, 06:42:23 PM
CAP basically has the same rank pyramid as every other organization that uses such titles.  We have a fairly wide base of lower ranking officers with a few on top.  Making the pyramid have a wider base by encompassing NCO ranks won't essentially make anything any better, just different. 

Based on a recent post (I don't remember by whom) the most populous grade for officers is Capt. There are less 1st Lts and even less 2nd Lts. That's not a pyramid. That's a diamond. The presence of NCO grades could sway many non-promoting officers to go into the NCO corps, creating less stagnation in grades and a stronger backbone, allowing for stronger, better leaders to promote up the officer chain.

That's one aspect. My thoughts on the subject are more about the nature of the grade. Our officer grades are mostly meaningless cause the standards & promotions are mostly meaningless as well as crowded.

I favor a base enlisted system (current PD program), with a seperate officer tract. Going officer should require a selection board, some education level, and a much more intensive education cycle over a year or so, then board to appoint to 2LT. Further specialty track/PME/TIG (longer than they are now) reqs plus selection boards for every subsequent promotion, and must promote to command/staff at an appropriate command level (field grade belongs to Gp/Wg).

What that does is make all officer grades more scare, therefore more meaningful, and seeks rise thru merit of quality people. The field isn't crowded with people here just to do the job. Those folks stay on the enlisted side & continue as before.

QuoteWhy should all members be officers by default versus enlisted?

No reason in particular, but then again there is no particular reason to change what we have now that would be worth all the commotion, conflict, and effort, it would take to implement.  I've thrown out some ideas myself for massive restructuring of rank & PD, but when it comes right down to it, this entire issue has very little bearing on our actual operations. 

I think it does bear on actual operations in two key ways.

First is inter-agency. Regardless of how anyone feels about it, our grade insignia has meaning to everyone outside our org. When they see specific grades, they associate it with certain levels of authority, training, experience, merit based accomplishment, expertise, professionalism, etc.

Enlisted/NCO grade would be more reflective of the truth. While officer grades could be restricted to people of which that expectation holds true. While I don't believe the CGAux system is the way we should do it, they are a good example that I think holds true of that statement.

I know you & I agree that CAP ES is in or at least approaching a period of historical change. As that occurs, we're going to be moving more into the multi-agency environment. In doing so, it would be my preference to better align the meaning of our grade with expectations a civilian EMA might have for national guard personnel, within reason of course.

Second, there is a serious leadership gap across our organization. There's a lack of quality internal development of leaders/managers. The pool from which we choose positions is muddied to the point of clouding out quality leaders, and in turn pushing them away from the org.

I believe if we had a smaller clearer pool of well qualified candidates that we could focus better training, mentorship, etc on them to develop into the leaders we need as successive levels. We've talked about this at length, I won't drag back off into that conversation again.

All I'm trying to say is:

1) It's only fair to provide existing NCOs a route to promotion.

2) It's reasonable to consider starting new members in enlisted ranks & advancing them to officer later in their career if that's appropriate to them & their position, given serious legitimate training.

3) It's reasonable to place 18-21yo members in Amn - SrA ranks & do away with the confusing FO system.

4) The stuff I discussed might or might not be a good idea, but it isn't something we would do right now in one swoop. It's something that could be implemented in time, AFTER we have an enlisted system working.

Regardless if you agree with the policies or justifications, I think it's hard to argue it's not reasonable for them to even consider such items, don't you?

I'm sure that if we put our minds to it we could come up with at least half a dozen very reasonable, logical proposals for a major restructuring of our senior member program that have been extensively discussed here on CAPTalk. 

The problem is that each of them is probably valid and might be a good way to run the program, but then again each of them has major issues within it that would make it basically unworkable without driving off a whole lot of people and hurting the organization in other ways. 

What we have now has worked pretty well for nearly 70 years and while everyone admits it has flaws, it gets the job done. 

Quote from: lordmonar on April 23, 2008, 06:13:23 AM

Quote from: Eclipse on April 23, 2008, 12:01:11 AM

Quote from: lordmonar on April 22, 2008, 11:47:39 PM
I have an idea for an NCO corps...

First we must identify their duties....why do we need NCOs?

Since there can be no caste division of "workers" vs. "managers" in volunteer organization, we don't.

Col's will still be emptying the trash cans at unit meetings whether we have NCO's or not.

You missed my point....the NCO's would have a job....just like the Admin Officer, Ops Officer, and Logistics Officer.  His job would to teach the "military side" of CAP....specificly drill and ceremonies, customs and courtesies, military heritage and traditions.  The would generally fall under/with the Professional Development Officer.

Right now this instance...I agree with you (and I stated in my original post) that there is no need for NCOs.  We could use them in the training role IF.....IF we made such military training mandatory for our officer professional development.

CAP NCOs would not...I SAY AGAIN...would not fulfill the traditional role NCOs have in the real military for the simple fact that we have no airman to train and supervise.

But we DO! The Cadets. I would be fully in favor of seting up the NCOs so that they take care of the cadets.

Am I the only one on this thread who knows why the AF does not want CAP to have non-prior service members as NCO's? 

It has nothing to do with the lack of a promotion system or CAP enlisted professional development; it is because CAP tried this long ago and the result was a bunch of sloppy, fat slobs trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's.

Unless CAP starts holding people more accountable and upping the quality of training tenfold, there's no way the Air Force is going to even consider allowing non-prior service members to become NCO's. 
So if things remain the same, CAP will never have non-prior service NCO's. 

Sorry folks, but that is the cold reality sandwich the Air Force has served CAP.   It's time to focus more on quality training and accountability, and then consider the remote possibility of non-prior service NCO's.

In the meantime, I think there should be discussions about how to allow CAP NCO's to promote within CAP once they have retired or left the service.  That is a much more probable possibility.                        

     

CCSE,

Your argument does not really hold water.

If the USAF does not want non-prior service to become NCO's because they don't meet USAF expectations......you would think they would not want non-prior service officers to become sloppy, fat slobs pretending to be real officers.

I don't really think the USAF cares one way or the other.

The problem is simply we have built our organization around officers...which is fine and good as far as it goes...and there is no easy way of integrating NCOs into that organization.

That is why I think...as it is now...we should do away with NCO all together.

As it is...CAP NCOs are just a "I'm better than you" clique that has no real job and only serves to muddle the already muddy waters when it comes to CAP ranks.

Quote from: lordmonar on April 27, 2008, 01:42:41 AM
If the USAF does not want non-prior service to become NCO's because they don't meet USAF expectations......you would think they would not want non-prior service officers to become sloppy, fat slobs pretending to be real officers.

Yes, it does seem strange and a bit backwards, doesn't it?

However, DeputyDog (just look him up on the memberlist) told me in another forum that CAP did, in fact, experiment with having non-prior service NCO's and the Air Force did, in fact, suspend the experiment because too many unprofessional wannabes were trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's. 

But don't take it from me... send DeputyDog a PM.   

Quote from: CCSE on April 27, 2008, 02:06:21 AM
...told me in another forum that CAP did, in fact, experiment with having non-prior service NCO's and the Air Force did, in fact, suspend the experiment because too many unprofessional wannabes were trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's.  

Those are your words, not mine. I never said they were trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCOs.

However, you are looking at only one aspect of what I said. It was a combination of things that caused its discontinuance. It wasn't an experiment with an "enlisted program"...it was how it was.

Quote from: CCSE on April 27, 2008, 01:18:21 AM
Am I the only one on this thread who knows why the AF does not want CAP to have non-prior service members as NCO's? 

It has nothing to do with the lack of a promotion system or CAP enlisted professional development; it is because CAP tried this long ago and the result was a bunch of sloppy, fat slobs trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's.

Unless CAP starts holding people more accountable and upping the quality of training tenfold, there's no way the Air Force is going to even consider allowing non-prior service members to become NCO's. 
So if things remain the same, CAP will never have non-prior service NCO's. 

Sorry folks, but that is the cold reality sandwich the Air Force has served CAP.   It's time to focus more on quality training and accountability, and then consider the remote possibility of non-prior service NCO's.

In the meantime, I think there should be discussions about how to allow CAP NCO's to promote within CAP once they have retired or left the service.  That is a much more probable possibility.                         

     

So... a bunch of fat slobs trying to pass themselves off as Majors = GO, but a bunch of fat slobs trying to pass themselves off as Master Sergeants = STOP?

Give me a break, man. This one I'm not buying for a second.

Quote from: RiverAux on April 27, 2008, 12:50:15 AM
I'm sure that if we put our minds to it we could come up with at least half a dozen very reasonable, logical proposals for a major restructuring of our senior member program that have been extensively discussed here on CAPTalk. 

The problem is that each of them is probably valid and might be a good way to run the program, but then again each of them has major issues within it that would make it basically unworkable without driving off a whole lot of people and hurting the organization in other ways. 

What we have now has worked pretty well for nearly 70 years and while everyone admits it has flaws, it gets the job done. 

That's not true though. The program we currently run is not what we've been doing all along. For the vast majority of our history we HAVE had an enlisted system that functioned much as I've explained. It was there when we were founded & existed well into the 70s as I recall (not a short experiment as described above). We've also been directly commanded by the AF CoC & not functioned as a corporation. I would argue that those vast shifts from the system that proved over generations to be highly successful have seriously damaged the organization to the state it's in now.

As far as losing members, I said this earlier today. I don't care! Our retention is crap now. Most members will be gone in 1-3 years, regardless of what we do. And they'll be replaced just as fast. That's if we do nothing at all. If we make changes to aggressively fix the key organizational problems that cause those major issues, then certainly big change will scare people off, but it'll also attract and hold a whole new group of people to replace them. Worst case is we won't be any worse off than we are now.

Add to that the statistics we were talking about active members... 35-40% active, minus cadets, minus not active in ES, equals can't remotely cover the AF standards for just their mission as defined in the Comm TA, much less step up to bigger missions or anything else of consequence, or for that matter come close to justifying our budget. In other words, it's already broke & been that way for years. You can keep laying on the ground or you can get up & move forward.

Of all the many issues CAP needs to be addressing, this just doesn't make the top 5.  Yes, some of our partners may think its a little odd that we have only officers on the senior side, but I'm not aware of that costing us one mission.  I don't have a problem with increasing standards and training, but that can be done within our current system.

And, you keep stating that we lose "most" of our members within 3 years which isn't quite right.  We lose some of our new recruits over that period, but those that stick with the organization tend to be lifers.  Such a massive change is more likely to drive out our existing long-term personnel. 

While we did have enlisted grades for quite a long time, I'm not aware of any evidence that CAP has ever consisted primarily of enlisted with a few officers.  Go back to the coastal patrol bases and they did have some enlisted around, it appears to me that the majority were officers. 

In any case, a primarily enlisted CAP will not happen because of the entrenced bias towards the special appointments for new members.  You'll need to get rid of that system first and then you might be able to get somewhere.  Too many of our leaders have used these routes to get their rank and to eliminate them would call their own qualificaitons into question and its unlikely they will do so. 

The large majority of people that join CAP are gone after three years. Just like the large majority of people who join the military are gone after their initial obligation is up.

As far as this being a top five issue, the rank portion of this is not. The multi-agency enviro & institutional leadership/standards/fairness issues are very much in the top five. Those are things that are not easily addressed w/o some dramatic paradigm shifting.

I know you have a problem with special appointments based on outside qualifications. While that system needs some tweaking, it's not a wide problem. Most people, including the large majority of corporate leadership, do not come in under such a program & do not advance thru it. What you get more of is political gaming thru positions. That really has nothing to do with promotions.

I guess to just be blunt about it... not everyone deserves or is capable of being a leader/mgr. The majority of any organization are workers. You pick the specially qualified & talented people to undergo intensive training to become career executives. Everyone else stay in the trenches, & rises from there to tactical leadership. We're not going to massively increase membership standards, so we need some other line in the sand that says who is in that leadership category, and then we need to focus training resources to develop those people, while not wasting those resources on people that are always going to be Sq/Gp level staff & tactical operators. The military does that with the break btwn officer & enlisted. That happens to be appropriate to our system, it just needs some tweaking.

Based on evaluation of data comparing rank to PD program level in my wing somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of senior members are getting some form of special appointment. 

^ I'd caution you not to trust that data completely. It's not entirely accurate, particularly for older paperwork that's not loaded into the system.

There are not that many special promotion avenues available & most members do not qualify. Other than pilot ratings, the others are not that common. Have you noticed an excess of CFIs in your wing? If that were really the case, you should be exploiting that advantage, which would grow your membership & drive down those stats.

In other words, I think you're wrong about the scale of that issue & that it certainly is not a problem in CAP. You may think it's unfair, but it's not effecting leadership failures of the org.

Oh, I'm fairly happy with the data.  While there very well could be some paperwork issues involved with some of these folks, I don't think it is that bad.  In particular I found that almost half of the Lt. Cols. and Captains hadn't completed the appropriate level.  It wasn't nearly as bad for Majors or Lts. 

Quote from: DeputyDog on April 27, 2008, 03:33:22 AM

Quote from: CCSE on April 27, 2008, 02:06:21 AM
...told me in another forum that CAP did, in fact, experiment with having non-prior service NCO's and the Air Force did, in fact, suspend the experiment because too many unprofessional wannabes were trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's.  

Those are your words, not mine. I never said they were trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCOs.

However, you are looking at only one aspect of what I said. It was a combination of things that caused its discontinuance. It wasn't an experiment with an "enlisted program"...it was how it was.

Semantics. 

You never said there were too many unprofessional wannabes trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's, but that is what you implied.  Here is what you wrote:

Quote from: DeputyDog on VAJoe.comWhen we had an actually enlisted program in the CAP, there were times where we had 20 year old Master Sergeants (senior side). At the time, new senior members that joined at under 21 who did not have the Mitchell Award could not promote to the warrant officer grades.

So enlisted promotions were at the discretion of the squadron commander. There was no actual specific professional development or qualifications for advancement or appointment in the CAP enlisted or NCO grades.

As you can imagine, it royally angered the active duty NCO corps by seeing a sloppy 20 year old CAP Master Sergeant or two. So the NCO corps complained to the highest levels, and then the Air Force "encouraged" the CAP to revise the enlisted program to be restricted to former, retired or currently serving military NCOs.

Technicially we still have an enlisted program for non-prior service members. A Senior Member Without Grade is actually considered an E-1. They can either remain at that level without a chance for advancement, or get promoted to either Flight Officer (if under 21) or to Second Lieutenant (if 21 or older).

So will we go back to it? No. A few years ago it was brought up at the National Board. It was shot down rather quickly. There were a few wing commanders who were in at the time of the change that remembered the reason for the change.

We have to weigh the benefits of having an enlisted and NCO program for non-prior service personnel (of which there are none) to how bad we will tick off the Air Force (which would be really bad). I think they made the right decision.

Emphasis mine.

So I may have been incorrect in my assertion that the original NCO program in CAP was an experiment, but in my eyes a "sloppy 20 year old Master Sergeant" implies someone of a high-caliber wannabe attitude. 

So my saying that "there were too many unprofessional wannabes trying to pass themselves off as "real" NCO's" was an accurate characterization.     

The NCO program in CAP wasn't an experiment, it was reality. It was in place for 10 or 15 years (maybe a few more), and seemed to work out. I don't recall too much about it because I was more concerned with cadet things back then. By the time I became an SM, it was on its way out, and there weren't any NCOs in my unit to ask about it.

There were NCOs at the beginnings & continuously until I believe the 70s, don't quote me on the dates though. The program itself has had several incarnations, as has the PD progression on the officer side.

At that final point there was little in the way of a PD program from NCOs, and there were problems. One of the justifications involved complaints by AFSA about the quality of our NCOs, or rather some cases of CAP NCOs representing themselves as real AF NCOs & abusing it. The same has been true on the officer side, including some prominent cases.

This isn't a history lesson. I only mention the historical existence of an NCO corps in order to point out that what we are doing now is not what we've always been doing. It is one stage in a rather continual evolution of the program. If the organization would be better suited to altering that system, then history is not a valid reason to stand in the way of such change.


Completely seperate from ^ that line of discussion... Even if the existing NCO system remains mostly unaltered, what would yall think about getting rid of FOs & making them E-1 to E-3 instead? It just seems to make more sense to me. 

Quote from: DNall on April 28, 2008, 08:26:50 AM
Even if the existing NCO system remains mostly unaltered, what would yall think about getting rid of FOs & making them E-1 to E-3 instead?

Remember that FO's are former Cadet Officers: a kid works hard to get there, then becomes a CAP Airman upon conversion to Senior Member, while someone a couple of years older joins, watches a video, maintains a pulse for 6 months and becomes a 2nd Lt?  That would be a hard pill to swallow.