What type of military status is cap?

[RiverAux]

Why can't you guys just accept that both are part of the program?

No rivalry at all.  I was a cadet and though it isn't my main focus, have spent quite a bit of my senior time on cadet issues.

However, it is a plain fact that by any metric you want to use, the cadet program is not the primary focus of CAP.  By saying that, it doesn't mean I dislike the cadet program or want it eliminated or want all the money to go towards the ES program.  That would be like claiming I hated the color red because I recognize that the sky is blue. 

[Flying Pig]

I like it all.  Flying, CD, SAR, Cadet Programs.  In fact in about a year, there will be a 3rd generation cadet joining.  So making sure that a solid CP at my squadron takes on a selfish tone.  When my son comes in I look forward to being a fixture in the cadet programs in my Wing.  Its just hard right now to justify spending encampments and weekend activities with other peoples kids while mine sit at home alone.  Aftet mine grow out of the cadet programs and move on, Ill see what happens with my CAP career.  but at least for now....that gives me a good 6-7 years at the least. 

[Ned]

Most folks in CAP spend the majority of their time participating in and supporting the cadet program, not SAR.

I believe this is wildly inaccurate though impossible to determine specifically.

It's not that hard really.

Using the numbers from the  2007 Report to Congress (which are obviously at least a year old, but easy to get), lets start with the numbers.

There are about 22,000 cadets and 34,000 seniors currently.

We can safely assume that all of the cadets spend all or most of their time participating in the cadet program.  (Some do ES, including cadet MPs and GTLs, but the majority of their time is still spent doing CP stuff.)

We can also safely assume that a significant percentage of the seniors spend most of their time supporting the cadet program.  Eg., all of the seniors assigned to cadet units, at least some of the seniors assigned in composite units, and the cadet program staff officers on group, wing, region, and national staff.

Here, the numbers get admittedly a little fuzzy, but let's conservatively estimate the number of seniors that support the CP most of the time at, say 15%.  (My WAG is that it is more like 25%, but I can't back that up with hard numbers.)

So, if we subtract the 15% of the seniors who primarily support CP from the total of seniors and add them to the cadet side of the equation, it looks like this.

15% of 34,000 is 5,100.

Addiing those folks to the cadet side yields a figure of 27,100; similarly subtracting it from the senior total leaves 28,900 potential SAR supporters on the senior side.

We need to remember that there are a whole lot of seniors that do not actively participate in SAR or spend the majority of their time supporting it.  There are no shortage of staffers who do things like AE, CD, etc., or folks who do administrative stuff that supports both CP and SAR -- folks like PAOs, HSOs, personnel, awards, professional development, etc., etc., etc.

We need to subtract them from our pool of senior SAR doers and supporters.  Again, there aren't hard numbers here, so let's guess conservatively that another 15% of seniors do not primarily engage in SAR or spend the majority of their time supporting that one function.

Subtracting another 5,100 from our running subtotal of "seniors who are potential SAR doers and supporters" takes that total down to (28,900 - 5,100 = 23,800).  (This time, though, we don't add those folks to the CP side of the ledger.)

So without going any further we are at CP folks = 27,100 and potential SAR folks= 23,800.

Remember, we are only talking SAR here - not the members who spend most of their time supporting CD, border missions, or other AF-directed projects, so the "SAR folks" number is obviously inflated, and should be lower -- but again, I don't have the numbers handy.  For the sake of argument, let's be generous and use the inflated figure for the SAR side.

And we can make a pretty good argument that the average CP person puts in more CAP hours each year than the average SAR doer and supporter.  Although I suspect that the average senior attends fewer meetings than the average cadet each year, let's call the weekly meeting thing a wash.

But cadets (and seniors supporting them) have required and optional training that adds a lot of mandays.  Things like encampments.  (Over 35 last year, averaging a week long.)  And NCSAs (over 31 last year involving over 1,200 cadets and another 250 seniors - again, averaging over a week long.)

SAR folks absolutely do mandatory and optional weekend trainings.  A few even go to things like NESA where they can spend a week or more.  And, most importantly they risk their lives and give of their precious time on actual search missions.  The 80 saves in 2007 is a tremendous tribute to their efforts and courage.

But the bottom line is that most folks in the corporation spend most of their time participating in and supporting the cadet program.  

Like I said.

Others have correctly pointed out that one of the strengths of this organization is the diversity of our missions.  And that is absolutely true, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  The ability to train for, and on occasion actively particiapte in ES missions (including SAR) is a signifcant factor in our cadet recruiting and retention.

In my post, I was kidding Robert since I know that in addition to being a tremendous human being that risks his life every day at work, he is also an active and  consistent supporter of the cadet program in CAWG.  He has made a tremendous impact and touched cadets' lives by his actions and example.

But sometimes his enthusiasm for things aviation and SAR leads him to forget his cadet roots.  It is simply inaccurate to describe CAP as a SAR organization.

It would also be inaccurate to call it a "Cadet Program with ES and AE stuff added on".

But it is closer to the truth . . . . .  

[RiverAux]

I wouldn't disagree with a 15% of seniors supporting the cadet program figure.  That would be within my ball park.  But unless you want to start arguing about who "active members" are, I certainly wouldn't buy that there are 15% of senior members out there not doing SAR or the cadet programs.  There certainly aren't 15% of seniors doing nothing but AE.You're also conveniently forgetting that cadets and many seniors supporting cadets are ES assets as well.  Sure, there are cadet units that do no ES, but there are also many that do.  There is no easy way to factor that in, but I'd say it would swing the balance over to 50+% of members being involved in ES activities.   

But, lets look at other metrics:
Flying Time-- unquestionably the overwhelming majority of flying time is going towards ES-related activities rather than supporting the cadet program.

Budget - The ES budget is almost 4 times the cadet budget at the national level.  I bet if you look at the wing level that ratio is even higher. 

Use of vehicles - Hard to say, but very possible that most ground vehicle use is for cadet rather than ES purposes.  Probably varies a bit.

Senior member PD-- look at the ratio of seniors with CP track ratings.  In my wing there are more seniors with ES specialty tracks than CP.  There is someoverlap, but they're ahead.  Would be interesting to see how that plays out nationwide.

Member Time:  Without a doubt the seniors involved in cadet progams devote more total time to CAP than anyone else.  However, as they only make up a minority of senior members, that is probably more than balanced out by all the activity done by the others.

Membership trends:  CAP cadet membership been declining at twice the rate of senior members since 2003.  Heck, last year senior membership was up by 3% while cadet membership dropped by 2.5%.

And to bring it back to the purpose of this thread - our status....What percentage of AFAM sorties are for cadet purposes vs ES?

[Ned]

I wouldn't disagree with a 15% of seniors supporting the cadet program figure.  That would be within my ball park.  But unless you want to start arguing about who "active members" are, I certainly wouldn't buy that there are 15% of senior members out there not doing SAR or the cadet programs.  There certainly aren't 15% of seniors doing nothing but AE.You're also conveniently forgetting that cadets and many seniors supporting cadets are ES assets as well.  Sure, there are cadet units that do no ES, but there are also many that do.  There is no easy way to factor that in, but I'd say it would swing the balance over to 50+% of members being involved in ES activities. 

Remember, my comments were plainly directed at where folks spend "most" of their time.  While I agree that there probably aren't 15% of the seniors doing mostly AE, I do think there are far more than 15% who spend less than 50% of their time specifically on SAR (as distinguished from ES).

Which was the whole point.

But, lets look at other metrics:
Flying Time-- unquestionably the overwhelming majority of flying time is going towards ES-related activities rather than supporting the cadet program.

True enough.  We logged a little over 110,000 flying hours in 2007 per the RtC.  Of that, a little over 10% were for cadet o-rides.  Undoubtedly there are a lot of AFROTC o-rides and a lot of ferrying time in the mix somewhere as well.  I'm sure someone must have a breakdown, but if we looked not at ES as a whole, but specfically just SAR I'd wager an adult beverage at the NB that the total for SAR is less than 50% of our total flying hours when you back out CD, border missions, and other miscellaneous AF missions like route surveillance and interdiction training.

Budget - The ES budget is almost 4 times the cadet budget at the national level.  I bet if you look at the wing level that ratio is even higher. 

Absolutely true.  We've discussed before how the entire corporate funding for CP does not even equal the amount of dues that cadets actually pay.  In some sense, the cadets are underwriting senior programs when it should be the other way around.

Use of vehicles - Hard to say, but very possible that most ground vehicle use is for cadet rather than ES purposes.  Probably varies a bit.

I agree it is hard to say one way or another.  CP sure does rack up van time.

Senior member PD-- look at the ratio of seniors with CP track ratings.  In my wing there are more seniors with ES specialty tracks than CP.  There is someoverlap, but they're ahead.  Would be interesting to see how that plays out nationwide.

But if you add in the 22,000 cadets who essentiall do CP full time instead of just looking at the seniors, the numbers go the other way.

Member Time:  Without a doubt the seniors involved in cadet progams devote more total time to CAP than anyone else.  However, as they only make up a minority of senior members, that is probably more than balanced out by all the activity done by the others.

News flash:  Cadets are just as much members of CAP as you and me.  Their considerable time and effort count.

Membership trends:  CAP cadet membership been declining at twice the rate of senior members since 2003.  Heck, last year senior membership was up by 3% while cadet membership dropped by 2.5%.

True enough.  Membership trends have gone up and down for both seniors and cadets over the last 60 years or so; and will undoubtedly do the same in the future.

But I can only agree that we should have far more cadets than we do.  Perhaps if CP was funded at the same pro-rata rate as the senior programs, it would be a good start.

And to bring it back to the purpose of this thread - our status....What percentage of AFAM sorties are for cadet purposes vs ES?

Depending on the definitions, probably few to none.  But the requirement for a cadet program is clearly recognized in the AFI and the Statement of Work by our USAF partners.

Not to mention federal law.

So I'm not seeing AFAM mission definitions as very helpful either way.

[Major Carrales]

Once you guys understand that, you will see just how ridiculous this "rivalry" between CP and ES is.

I don't see a rivalry at all. No one is suggesting that cadet programs are not valuable (they are) or a waste (they aren't). I've been a member of a composite squardon, so I know the value of CP.

On the other hand, I don't see anyone on this thread advocating for Aerospace Education, which is one of the Big Three, and thus, as important as either ES or CP.

People tend to emphasize the reasons they joined when they talk about CAP's purpose.

I joined the Civil Air Patrol because I wanted to serve the Civil Air Patrol, not because I wanted to fly or even work with cadets.  I saw it as a "whole" not a part.  The Whole CAP approach, I do for the cadets when they need it, for AE when people need someone to advocate it, for the Ground team when they need a hand and in the Air (but there are few shortages of Scanners, Observers and I am not a Pilot.)

As for AE, I'll advocate for it...is manifested in the Cadet O-Filght, presentations to school and so forth.  This means that you advocate for it as well in your O-Flights.

[RiverAux]

who spend less than 50% of their time specifically on SAR (as distinguished from ES).

I mis-spoke.  I wouldn't argue that SAR is the primary focus of CAP.  It is primarily focused on ES in a broader sense and is probably less focused on the SAR part of ES than it used to be. 

[MIKE]

Ok, now this one has drifted enough.