"USAF Explorers"-WTH is this??

[RepublicofE]

I was hoping someone with direct experience with the USAF Explorers would respond before this thread died.

Not USAF Explorers, but I do have experience in USA Explorers.  They could very well have access to a base and support from their local ANG unit.  The Post I was involved with met at a local armory and the National Guard unit recruited heavily from my Post.  It most certainly could have a value to a local unit there.  Whether it really would increase the chances of getting an appointment to th USAFA, how do you know it doesn't?  Not every cadet at the USAFA was CAP.  If they have an understanding of what the USAFA is looking for, and can develop youth leaders that fit that mold, that certainly does give them a leg up to obtain an appointment.

The Exporer Posts operate by BSA rules, not USAF.  It really does rely on networking with local military types and recruiters as advisors.  That in all likelihood is what's going on with this particular post.  Before you snicker at their lack of active duty military experience, maybe you should take a look at CAP and see that we are full of members who don't have a DD-214.  It doesn't make them less capable of preparing our cadets for careers in aviation or the military.

It's entirely possible that these guys are a complete joke.  But I think it's a mistake to off-handedly dismiss them as such just because they're not CAP and doing things that many of our squadrons don't have the capability of doing.

"Not USAF Explorers, but I do have experience in USA Explorers.  They could very well have access to a base and support from their local ANG unit.  The Post I was involved with met at a local armory and the National Guard unit recruited heavily from my Post."

Interesting.  I've actually found two sites advertising a "US Army Explorers" program.  One appears to be just the ACA reincarnated under a different 501(c)3 charter after they disbanded, since after I first looked at their site they have accidentally reverted back to one of the former web designs of the ACA, suggesting they are the same domain.  The other has next to no information available but it claims to be part of Learning for Life.

"Whether it really would increase the chances of getting an appointment to th USAFA, how do you know it doesn't?  Not every cadet at the USAFA was CAP.  If they have an understanding of what the USAFA is looking for, and can develop youth leaders that fit that mold, that certainly does give them a leg up to obtain an appointment."

Look, I understand that a lot of things can increase your chances of getting into one of the service academies.  If being the caption of your high school wrestling team can improve your chances, then there is certainly no reason to believe the USAF explorers CANNOT do the same thing for you.  But the issue here is just how much it improves your chances compared to how much cadets and their parents are being led to believe it does.  I'd have no issue if one of their minor selling points was "oh by the way, this may also help prepare you for the Air Force Academy and may even improve your chances of selection, as several of our cadets have gone on to be accepted into the USAFA" the way CAP does. But it's not just a minor selling point, it's THE selling point for their organization.


"The Exporer Posts operate by BSA rules, not USAF.  It really does rely on networking with local military types and recruiters as advisors.  That in all likelihood is what's going on with this particular post."

I understand that, but what's throwing me off is all the USAF training missions this one explorer post is claiming to have participated in on its website.  Either these things are a lot easier for any organization to get in on and CAP should be ashamed of itself for failing to capitalize on opportunities that one BSA explorer post managed to get, or the commander of the USAF explores must have a lot of friends in high places with influence that not even the CAP BOG or CAP-USAF can get you.

"Before you snicker at their lack of active duty military experience, maybe you should take a look at CAP and see that we are full of members who don't have a DD-214.  It doesn't make them less capable of preparing our cadets for careers in aviation or the military."

The difference is CAP doesn't go around selling itself as being mainly a USAFA prep program.  Sure, we mention the percentage of USAFA cadets who were in CAP as a minor selling point, but this "USAF Explorers" makes it sound like and does everything to imply short of saying it outright that they've got some kind of special connection to the USAFA that allows them to increase your chances of selection in a  way that no other organization can.  That's what irks me here.  If they want their main selling point to be "we're better than CAP and JROTC at getting people into the USAFA" then their command staff should be mainly people who have served in the Air Force.  But even that wouldn't be good enough, they would also need people in regular contact with the USAFA, people to provide a lifeline to make sure their curriculum reflected what doolies would go through at the USAFA.  There is nothing on their site to indicate that they have such liaisons.


"But I think it's a mistake to off-handedly dismiss them as such just because they're not CAP and doing things that many of our squadrons don't have the capability of doing."

Hey, if all the stuff they claim to be doing is stuff they are actually doing, then props to them for being able to do it.  But again, the issue here is their claim to being a USAFA prep program.  Also, while most of our local units couldn't do a lot of the stuff they are doing, CAP as a whole should certainly be able to do it if they can.  Based on all the cool stuff they claim to have done, either A. they're lying, B. CAP NHQ isn't doing its job and is allowing CAP to be missing out on a lot of opportunities that should be ours or C. the commander of the USAF Explorers has a lot of mysterious connections that are allowing his organization to do stuff that CAP can't do despite its best efforts.

[RepublicofE]

Hmm....seems the site has been taken down.  Wonder if this thread had anything to do with it.

[Johnny Yuma]

OMG, they're a BSA explorer post sponsored by an Air Guard unit and by all accounts a very successful one. If I had to guess, it was started by CAP members sick and tired of being handcuffed by regulations written by lawyers while the BSA's explorer post rules were basically, "if it involves the hospital, jail or a shotgun wedding don't do it"

There was an Explorer post sponsored by an entire National Guard Engineer Battalion here in KS for many, many years that had about 100 members stretched across various guard armories all over Southeast and East Central Kansas. The post was the best recruiting tool the guard had in the area and the battalion had a fully manned unit for years.

[RepublicofE]

People complain about how "CAP is now run by lawyers" all the time, but I've found that much of these complaints are frivolous.  I don't see a lot of people in CAP being "handcuffed" by regs.  What I do see is a lot of unnecessary redundancy and ambiguity in the regs.  But I'm calling it now, anyone with a  complaint about CAP members being outright "handcuffed" by regs needs to cite a specific example of what they would like to do that they are "handcuffed" on.  CAP regs do tend to make it unnecessarily difficult to do some beneficial things, but the things that are outright banned are usually banned for a good reason.  If you want to do something and you find that the regs absolutely tie your hands on it (not just make you knock on a few more doors than you should have to, I mean categorically forbid it) then chances are either A. it's not practical for a normal CAP unit, B. it violates common sense and shouldn't be done in any volunteer youth organization or C. it falls outside CAP's mission scope and best practices and you need to find yourself another organization if you want to do it.

If that other organization is a USAF themed explorer program, fine, but then that raises the next important question: what was it you were wanting to do all this time that CAP wouldn't let you do, that you exhausted all options in CAP to attempt, and that was so important to you that you wanted to go ahead and do it with or without CAP's help but still closely related to CAP enough that you found you couldn't do it in any other existing organization in the country so you had to make your own little version of CAP?

Running your organization on the notion of "if it involves the hospital, jail or a shotgun wedding don't do it" is a recipe for disaster.  The USAF and the ANG don't operate on that principle, so why should your organization that you are trying to get them to sponsor operate on it?  Basically, your'e putting your organization in the hands of your notion of common sense and that of your close friends.  But what happens when you all leave the organization and the people who take over from you have another idea of common sense.  Besides, even with you in charge at the moment, all it takes is one member to decide to push something a little too far because his idea of "better judgement" wasn't quite in line with yours, and you've got a potentially very bad incident on your hands.  The court's not going to care that "we trusted him to use his better judgement and we never set an example for him to do that or said it was okay".  CAP's official regulations afford it some protection when things do get out of hand because of a stupid member or two, but by deliberately choosing to not have such formalities for your own organization, you are inviting individual members to test their boundaries and create problems, and the fact that you didn't have much in the way of formal regs by deliberate design will be the first thing the plaintiff's attorney seizes on.  And even if it isn't something bad enough to land your organization in court, it will at least force your command structure to write a formal rule about that specific thing to prevent further incident, and then viola, you now have regs like CAP.

[RepublicofE]

The site's back up now.

[Johnny Yuma]

People complain about how "CAP is now run by lawyers" all the time, but I've found that much of these complaints are frivolous. {snipped}

Wrong.

{more snippage}

Running your organization on the notion of "if it involves the hospital, jail or a shotgun wedding don't do it" is a recipe for disaster.

You've never been in a BSA Explorer post, have you?

[RepublicofE]

People complain about how "CAP is now run by lawyers" all the time, but I've found that much of these complaints are frivolous. {snipped}

Wrong.

Explain?

Running your organization on the notion of "if it involves the hospital, jail or a shotgun wedding don't do it" is a recipe for disaster.

You've never been in a BSA Explorer post, have you?
[/quote]


For the record, it has not yet been established on this thread that this is in fact a BSA post.  The website only mentions Learning for Life once in passing, and even then only hints that it might have lineage to BSA, but doesn't say for sure and at any rate no where at all does it claim to be a BSA post.

[winterg]

Republic, I am curious.  Since you joined this forum at the beginning of the year, you have posted in exactly one thread.  This one. That you created. About a group that has nothing to do with CAP.  Might i make a suggestion that you forget about this Explorer group and explore the wonderful CAP related arguments found elsewhere on this site? 

[RepublicofE]

I have actually, I just haven't posted in any of them, but I've looked at other threads.  I also read all of Eclipse's post history.

[SarDragon]

Hey, mods, we need to give this guy the "Too Much Free Time Award" if he's had time to read all 24,869 of Bob's posts.