Confusing promotion requirements for FO grades

[ZigZag911]

Let's start all new officers out as FO (after 6 months membership & Level 1); let them training and promote through the FO ranks over about a five year period...then, WOW! CAP 2nd lts. would actually have some background for officer service!

[Hawk200]

Let's start all new officers out as FO (after 6 months membership & Level 1); let them training and promote through the FO ranks over about a five year period...then, WOW! CAP 2nd lts. would actually have some background for officer service!

So you want CAP to pose as an OTS or Academy?

That will fly about as well as you're average pig.

I'm all for upping the ante on O training, but for Pete's sake, be realistic. We are not, will not be, don't need to be military officers. There is no reason to simulate military officer training.

[DNall]

Let's start all new officers out as FO (after 6 months membership & Level 1); let them training and promote through the FO ranks over about a five year period...then, WOW! CAP 2nd lts. would actually have some background for officer service!

I'm all for upping the ante on O training, but for Pete's sake, be realistic. We are not, will not be, don't need to be military officers. There is no reason to simulate military officer training.

There are many aspects of military training that do need to be emulated, and that's not about being more like the military. Mgmt in the corporate world requires a significantly higher level of trng & skill than we have in most CAP units. The same is true in the military. The difference btwn the two is the corp world is cut throat mercenary about it. They just hire someone from outside to bring in the skill set they need, and individuals are motivated by income to seek out the education/trng/experience they need to get those positions. The military has set pay tables & a large personnel need, so they don't have those kinds of tools to work with (nor does CAP). So, the mil to a much greater extent trains up its own people. They have a lot of experience with this, they got it down pretty well, and we got basically free access to their resources in those fields (versus significant costs finding similiar in the commercial world).

There are MANY MANY aspects of that training that we can and should be doing to meet our needs in CAP. We don't need to apply high stress to desensitize leaders so they can make instant confident decisions under direct fire. We don't need to PT the crap out of them. If you knock those elements out of an OTS course, reconfigure what you have left to the quirks of volunteer org & CAP ops, then you're talking about a gentleman's course. But, a very important one that's academically & mentally challenging.

OCS/OTS in the various services ranges from 60 - 100 or so days. The NG has a program to spread that 60 days out over 18mos. The time CAP members spend in mtgs is very similar to NG drilling status. Given the pgm adjustments I just mentioned, you can knock that timetable back to a year of online modules, weekly CAP mtgs, 2 wknds per year... something along those lines.

Not unreasonable, certainly not 4-5 years.

[Hawk200]

There are MANY MANY aspects of that training that we can and should be doing to meet our needs in CAP. We don't need to apply high stress to desensitize leaders so they can make instant confident decisions under direct fire. We don't need to PT the crap out of them. If you knock those elements out of an OTS course, reconfigure what you have left to the quirks of volunteer org & CAP ops, then you're talking about a gentleman's course. But, a very important one that's academically & mentally challenging.

OCS/OTS in the various services ranges from 60 - 100 or so days. The NG has a program to spread that 60 days out over 18mos. The time CAP members spend in mtgs is very similar to NG drilling status. Given the pgm adjustments I just mentioned, you can knock that timetable back to a year of online modules, weekly CAP mtgs, 2 wknds per year... something along those lines.

Not unreasonable, certainly not 4-5 years.

I like the concept. The only training I think we really need to be focusing on is to provide the education to our personnel so that they will behave in the manner of officers. There are far too many people in CAP that you can tell that they're wearing officer clothes, but don't know how to act like one. If we want to be considered officers, then we need to train people to act like them.

As you stated, we don't need the field leadership courses that the military gets. PT isn't necessary to train them. But every CAP officer needs to be more familiar with how chain of command works, how they fit into it, and how they fit once they are in the upper levels. Some of this stuff is natural to prior military members, but it's not to our civilian volunteers. I think we're setting a lot of our members up for failure when it comes to that interaction.