CAP A/C FLEET FUTURE

[Frenchie]

In my humble scanner opinion, every Region (if not every Wing) should have at least 1 bird equipped with a FLIR turret and a few aircrews trained to use the sucker.

They have handheld units which are relatively cheap and easy to use.  This might be the best solution for CAP as they can be easily transferred between aircraft and could also be used by ground crews.

[Frenchie]

One other capability I see which should be expanded in the future is highbird communications.  If the airborne repeater platform could be adapted for use by other government agencies, imagine the possibilities.  Imagine flying highbird airborne repeater missions over a disaster and greatly expanding the communications abilities over a wide area for multiple agencies.  All for about $100 per hour.  Who else can do that?

[thefischNX01]

In my humble scanner opinion, every Region (if not every Wing) should have at least 1 bird equipped with a FLIR turret and a few aircrews trained to use the sucker.

They have handheld units which are relatively cheap and easy to use.  This might be the best solution for CAP as they can be easily transferred between aircraft and could also be used by ground crews.

Actually, there are other options.  If it's IR we're after then there are UAV payloads we can look into.  Even color cameras that can fit under our cessna are available.  One of the members in my unit works here, and there are other options available, but to illustrate my point http://www.baiaerosystems.com/payloads.html . 

[Frenchie]

The question becomes, why would we want an installed system that's completely inflexible, much more expensive, and more difficult to operate when you can get one the size of a camcorder that's just about as easy to use?

That gives us the option of moving it to other aircraft or even ground units, and if we want to upgrade or have it repaired, the entire aircraft is not down.

I just don't see much advantage to an installed system and I see lots of disadvantages.

[DNall]

Low-tech and low-cost has always been CAP's strength.

True, but people are expecting more today than they were in the past.  If all we offer is the ability to fly a grid with Mark 1 eyeballs at 1,000' or take photos with off-the-shelf cameras, our usefulness is going to be pretty limited.  Bear in mind that in the not-so-distant future the choice is going to be between the above and a NG-run UAV......

This is my concern/view as well.

Our usefulness is the same as always.  Keep in mind the cost to deploy a CAP aircraft is about $100 per hour.  Nobody can compete with that or even come within a cab ride of competing with that.  In that regard, we have no competition.

That's not entirely correct - let me illustrate:

Scenerio A)
You can fly ONE CAP sortie over a target area for $100/hr. That's really only 100 because I'm not factoring in the purchase cost of the airframe (AF subsidized), cause I got free crew & outsourced maint. It also comes with some downfalls. I can only use it when I can get a qualified crew (thinking CD or other clearance mostly), and that is not going to be a stable crew like when I put people on orders & pay them.

-versus-

Scenario B)
I can fly the same sortie with a predator (reaper) for about $500/hr & that's including gall the infrastructure & personnel. I get the same full-time crews that are familiar working with me versus three volunteer crews to cover the same number of sorties... etc.

Now, how many mark I eyeball CAP sorties do I have to put over that target area to achieve roughly the same probability of detection as the UAV? Lets just say for the sake of argument it's five sorties. Do I have the time with missing folks on the ground to put five sorties over that target versus one UAV sortie?

Firewatch missions?  Nobody can do it cheaper.  Military low level route surveys?  Nobody can do it cheaper.  ELT searches?  Nobody can do it cheaper.  And there will always be a need for someone to go out and mow the grass with a set of Mark 1 eyeballs for whatever reason.  Again, nobody does it cheaper.

When your firewatch sortie finds something, we put FLIR over it to find hot spots & tell ground/air fire assets where to put their water. How long does it take to get that forestry aircraft on station? Imagine if you could just stay there & relay that info. Imagine if you could do that with realtime video. I can do that with a UAV, and I'm getting a Sq of them down here at Ellington to do exactly that.

You may be the cheapest per hour option, but what you actually have to be is the best return for the dollar option. In the past that has been true of CAP. As technology increases, gets cheaper, and is fielded by lots of other folks... CAP has to move forward (beyond eyeball alone) in order to become or remain that best option for the dollar.

Just look at how our capability has expanded with relatively cheap additions.  The Becker system and SDIS adds a lot of capability.  Lots of bang for the buck there.  Imagine flying over a fire or any other type of disaster and providing pictures in real time.  Imagine quickly finding a PLB equipped hiker in a remote area.  All for $100 per hour.  Who else can do that?

Toss on a $50k FLIR system run off a laptop by the MO with the MS still looking out the window & it still costs $100/hr to fly the bird. Now you can find that non-PLB equipped hiker in the woods; you can route search and expanding square from LKP the same night a plane goes missing & have a really good chance of finding it before you put 10 sorties up the next day trying to figure out what's rural trash piles & what isn't.

I think the 2 problems we have are that many government entities don't know what we can do (or even that we exist), and we are not fully using the capability we already have by adequately keeping people trained.  ICS should fix the first problem as will the rising cost of fuel.  When the cost of operating turbine or jet powered aircraft goes up exponentially, government entities are going to be looking for cheaper solutions out of necessity.  They already are, in fact, and congress has taken notice also.  As far as the training issue goes, we are just going to make that problem worse by adding technically sophisticated systems we don't need.

We kind of use ICS internally, and are saying we're going to actually get in line with it fully. That's nice, but it's still mostly internal. It doesn't do anything to raise awareness. Getting more involved with customer agencies, running real joint exercises rather than just a couple demo sorties... that's how you raise awareness and build interoperability. It's about personal relationships and team building, not some paper manuals.

I already addressed the cheaper per hour versus cheaper per return issue. The kind of FLIR system I'm talking about is very low-tech off-the-shelf intuitive to operate & existing online govt trng avail for free on how to do so. I'd like to field something like that on 2/3rds of our airframes, but I'd certainly start by running them on the GA8s.

Look at how much money was spent on the Archer system, and how many aircraft have we found with it? It sure sounded like a good idea at the time, but how useful has it been?  Certainly some technology is good, but it has to be small.  It has to be lightweight.  It has to be ridiculously simple to use. It has to be cheap.  And there has to be lots of bang for the buck.  Otherwise we are just better off sticking to what we already do well.  Other systems might sound sexy to that chick you're hitting on in a bar, but do they really help in the big scheme of things?

Agreed. Archer sucks. For that money I could have already fielded all those FLIR systems. ARCHER just innately sucks, but the tech side of the problem is there's so few of them. If you had crews that spent lots of time on a system, they'd understand it a lot better. G1000, GPS... all that stuff was new to folks, but now they're using it successfully cause they've had lots of time to play with it. You put a system (and the training for it) out to the masses, rather than on a dozen platforms spread all over the country, and it'll work.

They have handheld units which are relatively cheap and easy to use.  This might be the best solution for CAP as they can be easily transferred between aircraft and could also be used by ground crews.

NHQ tested these and found them not to be very capable from an airborne platform. I tend to agree with that assessment. Try using 20x binos from a 1000 AGL moving/bouncing platform, and then detune the focus a bit to simulate the return delay on a FLIR system, and try doing it at dusk. You really need a stabilized system with good resolution return.

One other capability I see which should be expanded in the future is highbird communications.  If the airborne repeater platform could be adapted for use by other government agencies, imagine the possibilities.

I've mentioned that before too. Tunable repeaters that function with P25 & you're in business.

[cap801]

Well, UAV's still can't fly in national airspace without chase aircraft or ground observers, so until the FAA rewrites the reg's, they're not going to be a viable platform for anything except combat surveillance in war zones.  If and when the FAA rewrites the regs, it's going to be a huge change for VFR flying, since "see and avoid" doesn't work well when there's nobody in the UAV to be doing the seeing and the avoiding.  And while some have FLIR pods that can rotate around and look for temperature differences, they still can't spot things when the airplane is the same temperature as the surroundings or when the FLIR pod fails.  So nobody needs to worry about CAP becoming obsolete just yet.

What was this thread about again?  Oh...fleet restructure.  Well, I hope we hang on to some 172's for flight training.

[Frenchie]

That's not entirely correct - let me illustrate:

Scenerio A)
You can fly ONE CAP sortie over a target area for $100/hr. That's really only 100 because I'm not factoring in the purchase cost of the airframe (AF subsidized), cause I got free crew & outsourced maint. It also comes with some downfalls. I can only use it when I can get a qualified crew (thinking CD or other clearance mostly), and that is not going to be a stable crew like when I put people on orders & pay them.

-versus-

Scenario B)
I can fly the same sortie with a predator (reaper) for about $500/hr & that's including gall the infrastructure & personnel. I get the same full-time crews that are familiar working with me versus three volunteer crews to cover the same number of sorties... etc.

Now, how many mark I eyeball CAP sorties do I have to put over that target area to achieve roughly the same probability of detection as the UAV? Lets just say for the sake of argument it's five sorties. Do I have the time with missing folks on the ground to put five sorties over that target versus one UAV sortie?

You're assuming the FAA would ever allow a system like the predator to operate domestically and I think that's a very poor assumption.  All of the FAA's Visual Flight Rules are based on see-and-avoid.  First off, to allow UAVs to operate domestically would require a complete re-work of all of the FAA's VFR rules.  That's not something the FAA is going to be very receptive to doing in the first place.  Next, even if the FAA were to allow such a thing it would have to be much more sophisticated than the predator.  It would need sensors to allow avoidance without vision, which is by no means a small order.  So now instead of a $500 per hour predator, you're going to need a much more advanced system that's going to cost quite a bit more to operate.  As far as the predator goes, so far the FAA has issued exceptions only in a few circumstances for very limited areas with quite a few restrictions.  I don't see them being allowed carte blanche to all airspace anytime soon and probably not ever.

When your firewatch sortie finds something, we put FLIR over it to find hot spots & tell ground/air fire assets where to put their water. How long does it take to get that forestry aircraft on station? Imagine if you could just stay there & relay that info. Imagine if you could do that with realtime video. I can do that with a UAV, and I'm getting a Sq of them down here at Ellington to do exactly that.

In my experience with firewatch missions, I don't see the value of FLIR.  It's easy to see the hot spots from the air.  They are the ones burning and smoking.  On our firewatch missions, CAP aircraft actually complemented forestry service aircraft.  The forestry service used their spot planes to direct water drops, while our aircraft stayed up high and advised the ground assets.  It worked quite well.

As far as the Ellington UAVs, my understanding was they were only to be used for border patrol and even then in very limited circumstances.  After the UAV crash in AZ, that entire program is delayed until at least 4 more years and depending on the full NTSB report, it may never happen, which would be my guess.

We kind of use ICS internally, and are saying we're going to actually get in line with it fully. That's nice, but it's still mostly internal. It doesn't do anything to raise awareness. Getting more involved with customer agencies, running real joint exercises rather than just a couple demo sorties... that's how you raise awareness and build interoperability. It's about personal relationships and team building, not some paper manuals.

ICS is not just internal to CAP.  A working ICS is becoming a condition of federal funding and will continue to be so for all emergency response entities.  As ICS is fully implemented, ideally all the pieces and parts will start learning to work together.  Hopefully real joint exercises will be a part of that, but we'll just have to wait and see.

I already addressed the cheaper per hour versus cheaper per return issue. The kind of FLIR system I'm talking about is very low-tech off-the-shelf intuitive to operate & existing online govt trng avail for free on how to do so. I'd like to field something like that on 2/3rds of our airframes, but I'd certainly start by running them on the GA8s.

Look at how much money was spent on the Archer system, and how many aircraft have we found with it? It sure sounded like a good idea at the time, but how useful has it been?  Certainly some technology is good, but it has to be small.  It has to be lightweight.  It has to be ridiculously simple to use. It has to be cheap.  And there has to be lots of bang for the buck.  Otherwise we are just better off sticking to what we already do well.  Other systems might sound sexy to that chick you're hitting on in a bar, but do they really help in the big scheme of things?

Agreed. Archer sucks. For that money I could have already fielded all those FLIR systems. ARCHER just innately sucks, but the tech side of the problem is there's so few of them. If you had crews that spent lots of time on a system, they'd understand it a lot better. G1000, GPS... all that stuff was new to folks, but now they're using it successfully cause they've had lots of time to play with it. You put a system (and the training for it) out to the masses, rather than on a dozen platforms spread all over the country, and it'll work.

What I'd like to see is whatever system is used to have to prove its worth before being fielded nationally.  Hopefully national learned their lesson with the Archer system.  As far as training goes, it's just not practical to expect too much from CAP members who are volunteers and have limited free time to devote to such things.  So systems that are going to require a one or two week resident school and regular training just to stay proficient just aren't going to work.  It's hard enough just teaching the basic skill set to a large number of members.

[DNall]

UAVs are a work in progress. Of course they are not going to displace CAP's traditional missions tmrw. I'm saying that strong potential exists in the near future. I know for a fact that reaper Sqs are standing up all over the ANG, and that they all are also tasked with state missions of counter drug and SaR. I hope you understand the strong potential is there for them to supersede at least a good percentage of the operational work CAP does. It doesn't matter ultimately if they can do it cheaper or not. By being a dual purpose platform (domestic & combat missions) it automatically becomes a very viable alternative to CAP.

I'm not saying this to make a case that CAP is obsolete or soon will be. I'm very clearly stating that we need to increase our capabilities so as to become a more viable alternative for the majority of those domestic missions.

As far as the flight rules... you saw already the proposal for CAP to escort UAVs to the MOA for training of the "pilots" that are going to man these new Sqs around the country. I don't know if CAP will take up that mission nationwide, or if ANG/NGB/states will use other alternatives, such as helos for that transit leg. What I can tell you (from my guard state aviation officer) is they intend to have FAA close VFR airspace, just like we do on REDCAPs, in order to operate reapers in the target area.

As far as the Ellington UAVs, my understanding was they were only to be used for border patrol and even then in very limited circumstances.  After the UAV crash in AZ, that entire program is delayed until at least 4 more years and depending on the full NTSB report, it may never happen, which would be my guess.

The CBP program is holding, the military program is not. Overwater is the first planned AO, others will follow. It's still a developing situation. I'm also limited as to how much I can talk about publicly. It's going to take 1-2 years to fully stand up that unit anyway. You're talking about a point on the back side of that. And anyway, I'm referring to long-term competitive advantage, not next week. Do you build a fleet now for the next 20 years based on right now, or on the anticipated challenges & competition?

ICS is not just internal to CAP.  A working ICS is becoming a condition of federal funding and will continue to be so for all emergency response entities.  As ICS is fully implemented, ideally all the pieces and parts will start learning to work together.  Hopefully real joint exercises will be a part of that, but we'll just have to wait and see.

I understand very well what ICS is. It is a common way of doing business, that's it. It does not automatically cause you to work with anyone else, just makes it easier to integrate tactically when that strategic decision is made. We still have to do the same kind of strategic relationship building & selling others on our capabilities that we're not doing a hot enough job of today. ICS doesn't change that at all.

What I'd like to see is whatever system is used to have to prove its worth before being fielded nationally.  Hopefully national learned their lesson with the Archer system.  As far as training goes, it's just not practical to expect too much from CAP members who are volunteers and have limited free time to devote to such things.  So systems that are going to require a one or two week resident school and regular training just to stay proficient just aren't going to work.  It's hard enough just teaching the basic skill set to a large number of members.

I agree there are some big time lessons that need to be taken from the ARCHER fiasco. However, it should not turn us off from tech/sensors that can make us much more capable. We just need to do it right. A two-week in-res course is not going to work. Neither is a million dollar system that we can only field a dozen of. A system that we can field a 100-250 of over a 5-10 year period, with an already existing online training program actively used by the marines, that's starting to get more workable. Yes, it is going to require some experience for operators to get used to it, just as the G1000 & GPS did & still do. You can't dumb everything down to jump in the plane & take off level. Some of it is going to take some extra work. I understand that's a challenge, but eyeball searching is not going to be good enough forever. At some point there's a better mouse trap. We can stick to our guns & dare technology to pass us by when it gets around to it, or we can be out front while the economics still work in our favor.

And as far as the thread... I brought this up cause I think it's key to WHY we need most 182s & a decent number of 206s. Of course it would be nice to have a few 172s for instruction, but I see them having less & less use in our operational missions which justify their existence.

[Frenchie]

As far as the flight rules... you saw already the proposal for CAP to escort UAVs to the MOA for training of the "pilots" that are going to man these new Sqs around the country. I don't know if CAP will take up that mission nationwide, or if ANG/NGB/states will use other alternatives, such as helos for that transit leg. What I can tell you (from my guard state aviation officer) is they intend to have FAA close VFR airspace, just like we do on REDCAPs, in order to operate reapers in the target area.

Airspace issues bust open a whole new can of worms.  The expansion of the ADIZ and popup TFRs rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and the worm is starting to turn.  TFRs are getting harder to come by, even for REDCAPs.  There's already a strong lobby against operating UAVs domestically and that effort is growing.  I understand because you're in the business, you may think UAVs are going to take over, but I'm quite a bit more cynical when it comes to those types of changes because I've seen so many of them never pan out.  I prefer to take a wait and see approach rather than expending a lot of effort trying to met some challenge that may never materialize.

When I started working for the FAA I was told all VORs would be gone in 5 years.  That was 20 years ago.  Not a single VOR has been decommissioned.  Transponders and radios still aren't required equipment to this day and that push has been going on for decades.  GA has an extremely strong lobby and should not be underestimated.

[DNall]

I'm an Apache pilot, or working on it. Not a UAV guy. The Army reorg'd apaches into attack recon battalions. In the stability phase (iraq/afghan now) we do route recon/security & intel collection a lot more often then close air support.

I mention that because it costs a lot to fly my birds & we have to justify the expense enough to grab enough mission to stay alive too. UAVs & all that other stuff are competition for us too, both overseas & domestically - which is disaster, SaR, counter-drug, etc.

I don't know for sure what's going to happen with UAVs in the future. I do know it's going to be one hell of a mess if we put all these ANG Sqs around the country & they can't fly the birds or don't have anything to do (domestic mission).

They're not the only platform out there though. Stuff from FEMA is talking about FLIR as a standard for SaR aircraft (both fixed & rotary). That's far from final, but it's out there. We got FLIR on state & federal fixed wing around here, but it's mostly focused on counter drug & they don't want to either stress those resources or put all their cards out in the open. It's not a situation where we're about to lose our mission to those resources on my local level. It's that everyone else is getting more capable & we're sitting on our hands. That may be okay for this year, but how many more years will that stay true. Shouldn't we be looking to the future on this kind of thing?

More specifically, shouldn't we be structuring the fleet we'll be flying for the next 20+ years to have the payload capacity to support those potential necessary future sensors? ie 182/206 versus 172... meaning I support what NHQ is doing on this issue. It's too bad we're losing the 172s for training. I wish we could find a way to keep a few, but it's tough to continue justifying them operationally as we add payload.

[RiverAux]

I do know it's going to be one hell of a mess if we put all these ANG Sqs around the country & they can't fly the birds or don't have anything to do (domestic mission).

Oh, I don't know -- A lot of those Air NG fighters don't have a whole lot to do most of the time. 

[DNall]

They're heavily tasked by 1AF. There's mission there for reapers also, but the CG won't like it, and if they can't fly then it's a big problem.

[RiverAux]

My point being that a significant percentage of people and equipment assigned to the Army and Air NG have very little "domestic" usefulness other than as raw manpower as far as the states are concerned. 

[DNall]

That point would be wrong. Our fighters are very busy with domestic mission. All of our units have major state response missions, and train actively for it.

[cap801]

As far as the flight rules... you saw already the proposal for CAP to escort UAVs to the MOA for training of the "pilots" that are going to man these new Sqs around the country. I don't know if CAP will take up that mission nationwide, or if ANG/NGB/states will use other alternatives, such as helos for that transit leg. What I can tell you (from my guard state aviation officer) is they intend to have FAA close VFR airspace, just like we do on REDCAPs, in order to operate reapers in the target area.

1st, if UAVs start operating unescorted in MOA's, I, and a lot of other people (such as EAA, AOPA, the NBAA, etc), are going to be very ticked off.  Given the fact that they cannot "see and avoid" and that VFR traffic can transit MOA's as they please, hot or not, this is a serious problem.  If you meant restricted airspace, then I can understand.  However, as a member of one of those CAP units that has been attempting to acquire a chase mission for UAV's, I can tell you now, it's not going to work out.  The AF can't rely on volunteers who have other jobs (there's that point again) to be ready to escort an airplane out of a base, and then come back 20 hours later and pick it up.  Our chief pilot in our unit is a retired base commander of our local air force base and did so at the rank of Colonel in the USAF.  And despite his lobbying, this mission isn't going to work.  And given that these principals apply broadly (this entire organization is made of volunteers and anyone who operates a $3 mil predator unit is probably doing so for a living), I don't see this mission working anywhere else.  But who knows.

[DNall]

You would hope CAP could schedule a crew for the outbound and another crew for the inbound, and by recruiting enough pilots and working closely with flight scheduling you'd be able to make it work. If that's not possible then that's too bad for CAP. It's not going to stop their ops either way. I would just expect to see budget shifted around for them to buy a couple Cessnas.

Predators actually cost a whole lot more than 3mil, and a Sq of them is obviously many times that number. The commander of that unit is almost certainly not full-time, nor are almost anyone else. There would be a very small skeleton staff of full-timers. Maybe half a dozen. They MIGHT be able to run a sortie without calling people in, but it's not real likely. The way it usually works is the aircrews schedule when they want to fly, it gets signed off & approved, then the ground crews sign up on the schedule to support. Almost everyone involved are traditional drilling reservist/guardsmen, and they may or may not be getting paid to work during the month. They almost certainly are not getting reimbursed for travel, and some are coming from several hundred miles away to be there 5-7 days a month just to stay qualified.

[cap801]

The commander of the Predators here is going to be a full time, active duty AF officer, as will all of his/her pilots.  This obviously isn't the case everywhere, but there aren't many places where CAP units are trying to get a UAV escort mission (or at least that a quick Google search revealed), so this is at least one of the few examples.  We failed to get that mission despite having a high ranking, retired Air Force officer who knew who to (lots of assonance there) contact about such a mission.  At the operations tempo they're proposing, they would essentially need a crew ready to pull aircraft in and out of the missile range on a 24/7/365 schedule.  Even if this was our largest squadron in the wing (in Albuquerque) with 30 pilots to pool from, it just wouldn't work.  Now, one idea was to have these UAV pilots fly the escort missions when they need to (since AF pilots can fly CAP aircraft with relative ease), but it's been proposed to make it possible for UAV pilots to not be actual pilots that have been through AF pilot training, so that wouldn't work out in the long run.  We also determined that you would need about 3 aircraft to perform such a mission on such a schedule, all of which would need to be somewhere in the Turbo 182 RG range or so, to allow for the altitudes and the speed at which you would need to quickly intercept these aircraft if they were to fly high for whatever reason or fast for whatever reason.  We need 3 airplanes since you would want two that are operational at any given time and the other one in a maintenance cycle.  Now, altogether, AFSOC is looking at maybe a $1-2 million dollar purchase in aircraft, to protect tens or even hundreds of very much more expensive Predator and Reaper airplanes.  But they didn't like the buy-in cost.  So they're going the route of ground based observers, which I imagine will work out real great when you leave four guys on a stretch of remote highway in the single-digit degree days in the winter here or days like today where it will be 100 degrees or more, for seven hour shifts.  But that was their call, and that's what they made.  So I really, really hope that these missions work out better for other places, but in our situation, it just didn't.

As you said, maybe CAP could get the chase mission with a national guard unit or something where they don't have full time pilots, but still, you're going to have lots of part time pilots and as such still a pretty swift ops tempo.

I feel bad you got some blame for the UAV tangent we and others had going in the other thread, so for fear of history repeating itself, we'll try to steer this back on topic again.

IF we get UAV chase missions, the current 182's and 172's are not going to be remotely useful in chasing Reapers for sure, and Predators most of the time.  We'd need to use the 206's, but as mentioned before, we need something quick and something that can fly high, like a T182RG.  However, we'd also need to examine the fact that it's easier to spot airplanes when you're below them, and if you're below them, a low wing aircraft makes a better spotting platform given the less restrictive visibility.  So unless CAP starts buying something other than Cessna's, we may be ill-suited for such a mission platform.

[heliodoc]

I would love to see  CAP get an assignment or two but in the reality of budgets and supporting Reaper and Special Ops environment, do you really think 1AF is going to hand this off to the C182 drivers??

Granted a 206 is better but again to keep budgets alive the would probably CONTRACT out before even approaching CAP UNLESS there is really strong support for us, and by reading these posts and reading the Natl website..... well I don't see it in the cards.  CBP has got some 206's for extended mission, Coasties got their Falcons, 130's etc.  Hell, they may even contract USFS ships out of Boise such as the C23 Sherpa or Twin Otters that they have.  It's only a reallocation of money from Agency to Agency.

That MAY happen even before CAP gets an invitation.  Do you folks think that COULD be a REAL possibility??

I think soo.. How about NASA birds.  Before you flame me, I know they are going thru their budgetary issues, but when the shuttle missions die off, they may need to justify an existence........

It's like everthing else in Guv.....primary contractors get the gigs, then the military, and then MAYBE volunteers.  That's how it works with aerial firefighting.  First all the contracts go out... bids come in, acceptance leetrs go out,  The USFS has MOU's drafted for the MAFFS C-130's about the same time anticipating serious usage, and around the same time the Governors are out getting the word out to Army aircrews for bucket work, along with the myriad of support from paid law enforcement for support AND bucket work if need be.

There's a pecking order.  Even in the UAV environment but I am not holding my breath for CAP to get involved due there REAL lack of go to iveness with USAF.  But I have been wrong before....  But CAP NEEDS to get its training act together before we get into UAV chase and "formation flying."

[DNall]

I feel bad you got some blame for the UAV tangent we and others had going in the other thread, so for fear of history repeating itself, we'll try to steer this back on topic again.

No worries.

IF we get UAV chase missions, the current 182's and 172's are not going to be remotely useful in chasing Reapers for sure, and Predators most of the time.  We'd need to use the 206's, but as mentioned before, we need something quick and something that can fly high, like a T182RG.  However, we'd also need to examine the fact that it's easier to spot airplanes when you're below them, and if you're below them, a low wing aircraft makes a better spotting platform given the less restrictive visibility.  So unless CAP starts buying something other than Cessna's, we may be ill-suited for such a mission platform.

I was just going to say that's a special case there at the training center. Three quick low-wing airframes would be appropriate for that. They'd still be useful for other CAP ops, like highbird, but obviously less useful for visual search. It seems like you'd be able to recruit enough pilots to cover the mission, but I guess if you can't you can't. I also got no issue with AF personnel flying out birds, CAP-USAF already does. From what I've heard, they're working to create a new flight training path for UAVs (just like fighters, heavies, and helos are all seperate tracks). Regardless, a lot of the "pilots" there would also be FAA certified pilots & able to help cover the mission. I am surprised FAA is going for ground observers. That seems dangerous at best.

Anyway... my point is really not about UAVs. It's that other platforms (manned & unmanned) are mounted with sensors & blow us out of the water as far as effectiveness. Yes we are cheap per hour, but the competition is pretty comparable when you figure it by how many sorties it takes to get the same POD & how long it takes.

Running a sensor package on a CAP plane still costs pretty much the same as not. Hence, we should be structuring out fleet of the next 20 years (the ongoing purchases) to have the payload we're going to need to stay competitive as the go-to SaR/DR/CD resource nationwide.
examples:
http://specialmissions.cessna.com/single_engine/patrol.htm

[RiverAux]

As I recall, the proposal envisioned buying some planes just for this potential mission anyway.