ES Bivouac Checklist

[Ozzy]

So I've recently taken over the ES officer position at the squadron and I am currently working with the commander and cadets on developing goals for our ES program. While many cadets at the squadron were interested in ES and several have been to hawk, they never really had an ES officer that really went in depth with the training or that developed continuity at the squadron.

What I'm looking for in this post is basically a checklist that you use to successfully plan either an ES bivouac or squadron training day. I know different wings will do things differently, like NYWG requiring the bivouac permit to be looked at by legal, but there should still be a lot of common items that happen. My goal with this is to have a checklist anybody can use (As we say in the Army, Barney-style), and if followed will allow them to make sure all paperwork is in order and done in a timely manner.

[JC004]

Sgt:

This is something that has been in the pipeline for me, but gummed up by my hospital stay and medical crap.  As a result, I am producing the materials at a much, much slower rate than I usually would.  Feel free to tell me specifically what your needs are, and I will try, if possible, to put a higher priority on those, as long as they work well for the units that will be using my stuff.

Generally speaking, here's what I've ben leading the development on (and additional help from experienced personnel:

   
• A well-developed exercise OPORD, that has been evolving for 10+ years now with input from CAP-USAF and various members
• A full range of exercise materials
• Exercise Evaluation for dedicated Evaluators - not people with skin in the game.  When possible, these folks should be from different units and/or wing.
• As many Exercise injects as I can come up with.
• Exercise Controller materials.  Once I started using Controllers instead of having Mission Base make up the missions, scenarios, and tasks, I NEVER looked back.
• An exercise program that includes Tabletop Exercises (great for meeting nights), Games, Drills, Functional Exercises, and Full Scale Exercises.

I'd suggest starting with some tabletop exercises at meetings, having a couple communications exercises (also can be done at meetings), and that sort of thing. 

And of course you want to come up with fun training events, but you should keep in-depth training (like teaching everyone how to use a map/compass) separate from exercises and individuals' task evaluation.

Always design your exercises around specific learning objectives (TWBAT) "Trainees Will Be Able To:"

I am uploading some Master Scenario Events List (MSEL) examples.  These can be WILDLY different than a CAP exercise, but you should get the idea and be able to develop your exercise checklists from those.  Let me know if you have questions on them.

Try to make exercises fun and interesting:  http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=20217.msg371493#msg371493

You should spend some time focusing on individual gear and making sure everyone is properly equipped, plus knows how to use their stuff.  You should gjve everyone a gear list (we use an actual CHECKLIST rather than the messy list in the tasks book).  You should also give a class on UDF gear and a class on ground team gear.  Due to the time of year, you should include cold weather clothing and all.  We have an annual Cold Weather Clothing presentation as one of our safety briefs.  I'm just updating this year's to include the ABU.Then you should INSPECT their gear once they have it.  Consider some bulk purchases to cut the costs way down and make sure they have the right stuff.  Have some Sharpie Industrial markers and plenty of heavy-duty, strong zip bags of various sizes on-hand for gear inspection.
A successful field exercises -- overnight or not -- should include at least one Controller, some great scenarios that are REALISTIC (don't hide the practice beacon in the wing commander's official vehicle....people do it, and it's idiotic), have surprises (injects), and keep people on their toes.  Keep them engaged and do plenty of task training leading up to it, rather than doing a bunch of task training when they're supposed to be EXERCISING their skills.

Later down the road, do a Cadet-Run SAREX with seniors who are pretty much just there to make sure they don't kill anyone or smash anything.

Let me know if you have questions or whatever until I get some of my materials pumped out. 

[JC004]

CAPTalk has a limit on the number of attachments, so I have to put this one in a different post. 

This is essentially a To-Do List for preparing, executing, and following-up on an exercise (a pretty big one -- great for wings, but can be adapted for smaller or larger exercises).

It's pretty different as far as CAP-specific exercises go, but again, this is something you can just use as a framework/source of ideas while I work on CAP-specific versions.

Do keep in mind, though, that some people think things like the hotwash, AAR, etc. are unnecessary for CAP exercises and I think that's TOTALLY wrong.  When I've run After Action Reviews, then prepared the reports, we found VERY IMPORTANT issues like problems with group/wing equipment, etc.  We were also able to make a number of suggestions on improvements higher headquarters could make, and shook out some local stuff like how many GTLs we really needed to get qualified.

[SarDragon]

You might also do an advanced search for posts containing "exercise" by Stonewall. Lots of good stuff there.

[Eclipse]

Do keep in mind, though, that some people think things like the hotwash, AAR, etc. are unnecessary for CAP exercises and I think that's TOTALLY wrong. 

Learning from past mistakes / successes is a total waste of everyone's time. 

It's much more efficient to simply treat every exercise, regardless of scope, scale, or duty,
as if no one has ever done anything like it before in the history of CAP.

Experience has shown that experience shows nothing.

#Katrina #Kentucky #Sandy #Matthew

[JC004]

Do keep in mind, though, that some people think things like the hotwash, AAR, etc. are unnecessary for CAP exercises and I think that's TOTALLY wrong. 

Learning from past mistakes / successes is a total waste of everyone's time. 

It's much more efficient to simply treat every exercise, regardless of scope, scale, or duty,
as if no one has ever done anything like it before in the history of CAP.

Experience has shown that experience shows nothing.

#Katrina #Kentucky #Sandy #Matthew

That is exactly why I have written a proposal to replace the National Commander, National Staff, Region Commanders, and Wings Commanders with Cadet Airmen.

[Ozzy]

Thanks JC004, you gave out a lot of information. I'm still taking a look and processing all of it.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

[JC004]

Now that Halloween is over, go to all the drug stores and such, and purchase a bunch of severed limbs, fake blood, etc. at severe discounts.  Injured person scenarios ready to go.   

Exercise design can be fun, and can give you things that you can assign cadets.  There is endless material on exercise design online.

You can get tons of stuff like those sheets, and hack them apart for CAP-relevant use, delete entire columns, add things for convenience like charter numbers.  Exercise materials need not be totally standardized like ICS forms and such.  The attached 3 are interesting.

When you do larger exercises, it's good to add in some elements like a medevac demo or K9 team.  Usually all you have to do is ask. 

I'll be hopefully catching up on my ridiculous backlog of materials, and posting them as soon as I do. 

This one, while public health-oriented, has a bunch of checklists that can be adapted for CAP: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/php/339/339_toolkit.pdf