"USAF Explorers"-WTH is this??

[Nuke52]

Um, did you guys even look at their webpage??  Well, I did, and it looks totally legit to me.

I mean, it's not like you can just go around saying you're the national commander and you awarded yourself different medals and stuff.  Duh.

[Eaker Guy]

Um, did you guys even look at their webpage??  Well, I did, and it looks totally legit to me.

I mean, it's not like you can just go around saying you're the national commander and you awarded yourself different medals and stuff.  Duh.

I did, and I refuse to put myself through the torture again. To good to be true. Besides, we would have heard about them if they were legit.

[Bryce7454]

It's funny how he talks about how much of a better opportunity that program is than CAP. But also brags about his CAP awards.

[Panzerbjorn]

Eh, it just looks like an Explorer Post, nothing more.  I was involved with a similar post when I was in college that was Army oriented.  The Boy Scouts doesn't prohibit posts like this to exist, but they don't exactly go out of their way to advertise or support either because of the military context.  The premise behind them is just to get kids interested in enlisting.

Presumably, the guy in charge is taking his experience from CAP and applying it in a BSA context.  Nothing inherently wrong with that.  His résumé looks kind of strange, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him a fraud.

[RepublicofE]

Eh, it just looks like an Explorer Post, nothing more.  I was involved with a similar post when I was in college that was Army oriented.  The Boy Scouts doesn't prohibit posts like this to exist, but they don't exactly go out of their way to advertise or support either because of the military context.  The premise behind them is just to get kids interested in enlisting.

Presumably, the guy in charge is taking his experience from CAP and applying it in a BSA context.  Nothing inherently wrong with that.  His résumé looks kind of strange, but I wouldn't go so far as to call him a fraud.

Well for being "just an Explorer Post", they sure seem to have a lot of access that goes beyond what even a lot of CAP units are able to get.  This one explorer post that is in now way officially affiliated with USAF still managed to get base access for their meetings, and, according to their website, have done several training exercises with the Air Force involving USAF aircraft.  So either the website is lying, or CAP is missing out on a lot of potential opportunities by its own fault, or this "Colonel" has a lot of friends in high places and connections that not even the CAP BOG or CAP-USAF can get you.


Also, I see what you mean about there being nothing inherently prohibited or wrong with the program (besides redundancy).  But what's troubling is this guy has never been in USAF yet he is selling the program as a USAFA prep thing.  His vice commander was in USAF but was never commissioned, and his other "command" officers may be USAFA graduates, but there's no way to tell since their bio sheets seem to be inaccessible.  At any rate, there's no indication anywhere that they have any type of relationship, formal or otherwise, with USAFA, OCS, or AFROTC to make sure their curriculum and training regiment continues to reflect life in those programs beyond just "the way they did it when I graduated 25 years ago" or "the way I would run USAFA if I was the commander there".  If they just want to be an alternative to CAP for those who are more into the intensive military lifestyle, I still say it's redundant but fine, whatever.  But when your sales pitch is that it will increase your chances of nomination and selection to one of the service academies, you should be packing a lot more credentials.  Frankly I'm surprised the Air Force hasn't noticed them (someone higher up than whoever is letting them use the base) and said to them "hey, if you want to continue being a knockoff of CAP and acting like you're affiliated with us even though you're not, fine.  But please stop implying to people that you have any sort of relationship with our officer training and commissioning programs that would lead them to believe you can seriously help them get in in a way that no other program can, or we will be forced to publicly denounce you as a scam.  We will not be part of a scheme that deceives teenagers in such a way."

[RepublicofE]

What I see here is a senior member in CAP who tried for years to fight the BS in the regulations (or, more likely, kept trying to remake CAP into something it was never meant to be no matter how much the existing common sense regulations wouldn't let him), got frustrated, decided to go off and form his own CAP after nailing his 95 Theses to the door of NHQ, got some buddy of his who was in the Air Force to let him use the base, recruited some old friends from CAP who probably didn't even show up to meetings anymore, talked some of the cadets in his unit into forming the first generation of cadets in his new cult, realized that just making a clone of CAP but just one where he didn't have to listen to NHQ or CAP-USAF and their regulations would be just like Dailymotion compared to Youtube, so he needed some kind of edge for his program, so he decided to sell it as a USAFA prep program to make it appear like it had something to offer that CAP doesn't.  And again, that last bit is what's most troubling.  I also can't help but wonder how many of those cadets are teenagers who got kicked out of CAP and JRTOC.

[MSG Mac]

Let it go. The USAF Explorers are not in any way affiliated with nor a threat to CAP. If their cadets and the AF are benefitting from the organization-Good for them. If not, it will fade away.

[RepublicofE]

Well their site says they've been around for 15 years.  I guess by your test that means the USAf finds them valuable.  Me, I still have my doubts.

[winterg]

Well their site says they've been around for 15 years.  I guess by your test that means the USAf finds them valuable.  Me, I still have my doubts.

At this point I would just forget about them. They are a non entity as far as we are concerned.  This is a CAP forum, and I don't know that we have, or plan to have, any interaction with them.  Take anything on their website with a grain of salt and move on.

[THRAWN]

This is still a conversation? Mods, little help locking this? Please?

[PHall]

This is still a conversation? Mods, little help locking this? Please?

Why?   What Board rules are being broken?  It will die eventually, I hope?

[RepublicofE]

I don't see how this thread is less relevant to CAP than some of the other threads in this board.


There's one on the first page asking people to post their cosplay pics, for example, and that one has a lot of responses with no one calling for it to be locked.

There's a reason I put this thread in the Lobby rather than another board.

[THRAWN]

It's not that it is less relevant and not that it has broken any of the "rules". There is nothing more to be said about it. The horse is dead. Let's get back to uniforms...

[MSG Mac]

I agree!!!

[RepublicofE]

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

[MSG Mac]

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

It's been up for three weeks, if they were going to respond or comment, they would have by now.

[Luis R. Ramos]

Thrawn, here is your wish come true.

What uniforms are worn by the "USAF Explorers?" Do they have the same amount? Do they beat their uniform topics to death like happens in here???

[RepublicofE]

From what I can tell from their photos, their basic uniform is a flight suit.  Their cadets also wear BDUs while their adult staff wear multi cams.  There's a good chance they don't wear blues.  They have some photos of people wearing blues but they appear to be USAFA cadets and people who are actually in the Air Force.

[abdsp51]

Irregardless their page hadn't been updated in ages by the time I left AZ.  I found no affiliation with the AF through sources and doing some other looking around the rest of the so-called explorer posts don't exist. 

Nothing in the few pics they have show they are that special or really do much of anything.  I am sure we can ask the folks at the service academies for a break down of accepted cadets that have some type of cadet program experience. 

If they were that good they would be far more know than what they are.

[Panzerbjorn]

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.