After reading some of the comments on somewhat problems I wish to comment on why CAP was organized at the start. CAP personal joined together to help fight the war effort against aggression of our country the USA. They flew their personal planes to protect aggression against our country. Since then CAP has been placed under the USAF of today. I believe we should be doing our job above everything such as protecting our country which is saving lives and not all the other non combattent problems. Presently we spend a great amount of funds doing nothing but teach the young and have not placed great additional funds towards saving lives. We fly many hours doing proposed search and rescue and the cost of fuel and plane maintenance is very high. If we cut back on trips not for search and rescue and taking Cadets up for a ride along with drug observations which is the border patrol job not our job and they get paid to do their job. This way we can save many dollars and buy better safety equipment for saving lives.
All the other problems are small evaluating if you have a loved one lost or injured and can not have CAP start the search due to weather, equipment and proper personnel to handle the situation. We have become a school not a protecting origination more interested in uniforms, meetings, dinners and awards.
When there is an actual need for a SAR I've never heard of the AF restricting our flying budget or anything else. They pay they bill, no matter what it is. So, I don't really accept the premise of your argument.
Where does the money come from for the USAF to pay the bill?? Taxes baby. So you don't care where the money comes from just pay. This is why we are in a financial problem in this nation.
Quote from: RiverAux on December 14, 2007, 02:46:55 PM
They pay they bill, no matter what it is. So, I don't really accept the premise of your argument.
I think that you should check those "facts."
Sounds to me like someone does not like Cadets. :'(
Quote from: Donald on December 14, 2007, 03:38:21 PM
Where does the money come from for the USAF to pay the bill?? Taxes baby. So you don't care where the money comes from just pay. This is why we are in a financial problem in this nation.
You're missing the point. The AF doesn't call down to an active search mission base and say that we've exceeded the budget for the year, close down the base. They pay what needs to be paid to get the job done. Now, if the chances of us finding the target are slim and we've done just about all we can do, they aren't going to waste money and still have us fly, but that is a different deal.
Donald, I don't understand what you're saying. Have you ever heard of a situation where CAP's assistance was asked for, but we could not respond because somebody in the chain said we don't have the funding to fly it?
I also don't think you realize that the vast majority of CAP's funding does support our operations and ES mission. However, we can't place the importance of one of our missions over the other to the practical exclusion of a mission.
Take a look at our 2006 Congressionally Appropriated Funds breakdown, from our 2006 Report to Congress (http://www.cap.gov/documents/2006_CAP_Annual_Report_To_Congress_lorespdf.pdf):
Total Appropriation: $42,779,888
Emergency Services (including AF missions, other missions/training, and communications): $20,275,962
Procuring Aircraft & Vehicles: $7,292,800
Liability Insurance, Maintenance and Administrative Costs: $10,007,326
compared to:
Aerospace Education: $1,846,864
Cadet & Senior Member Activities: $2,939,593
Drug Demand Reduction: $417,343
Do you see the disparity? CAP Operations are not suffering because we're dumping ungodly amounts of money into Cadet Programs or Aerospace Education. The CP is a relatively low-cost, high-impact program where a lot of any cost is borne by the members and local squadrons.
The picture you have in your mind is not how it actually is.
Lest we also forget that at least some SAR and related ES work is client-funded as well...
Quote from: RiverAux on December 14, 2007, 05:01:53 PM
Quote from: Donald on December 14, 2007, 03:38:21 PM
Where does the money come from for the USAF to pay the bill?? Taxes baby. So you don't care where the money comes from just pay. This is why we are in a financial problem in this nation.
You're missing the point. The AF doesn't call down to an active search mission base and say that we've exceeded the budget for the year, close down the base. They pay what needs to be paid to get the job done. Now, if the chances of us finding the target are slim and we've done just about all we can do, they aren't going to waste money and still have us fly, but that is a different deal.
Our SAR money comes from the appropriated funds the AF gives us each year. We decide how much to allot for SAR ops. The AF doesn't get the bill for the ES operations. If we run out of money, we cut funding to other programs to make up the difference. It is our call on what we "waste" money on.
If we assume this take is right, then Donald still hasn't made his point. We are not going to cut out any actual SAR response to avoid taking money from cadet programs -- you basically just said that we'll take money from the cadets and spend it on SAR if need be.
What safety equipment do you plan on buying with the additional funding if we cut out all non-SAR missions? Starting a SAR in poor weather (with associated poor visibility) is probably not a good option regardless of equipment and training.
Quote from: RiverAux on December 14, 2007, 08:55:20 PM
If we assume this take is right, then Donald still hasn't made his point. We are not going to cut out any actual SAR response to avoid taking money from cadet programs -- you basically just said that we'll take money from the cadets and spend it on SAR if need be.
Correct. If the ops goes over budget on their CAP allotment of appropriated funds, they pull from other programs, ie: CP and AE. However, this doesn't happen because they get enough of an allotment.
If inland SAR wasn't assigned to USAF, USAF might no longer an auxiliary. Ultimately, domestic SAR is not a USAF core business-the core business being the killing of people and breaking of things actively inimical to the interests of the United States, via air power.
But for now, even with our SAR training costs, capital equipment expenditures and liability risks, I suspect we're still a lot cheaper than using USAF active, reserve or ANG equipment and manpower. A fleet of prepositioned C-182's/172's with crews, it own management structure and GT's, and not a dime on payroll, not a dime 'growing' pilots from raw students.
We are deployed, ultimately, as a subcontractor-give us the mission and we'll phone in when we're done. The alternative would be dedicated crews and dedicated mission management all over the country for an assignment that won't advance careers, and therefore would accumulate the unenthusiastic, the inept, the slow, the lazy --all the guys you want to get rid of anyway.
Now if FEMA got inland SAR, they'd contract it out to the Red Cross or Nasar or State Police, use mutual aid agreements to send the local FD or PD to the site where the 406 satellite says it is, and pay the per-mission rate.
I think since, at least in our unit, the training and funding (of things like CAP Form 5s, Proficiency flights, ES equipment, Emergency Services, travel to training/SAR and other training) come mostly from members pockets (like some 70-80%); I'd say CAP is a bargain.
Also, I'd say our Congressionally Chartered Mission involves all three missions.
Quote from: jimmydeanno on December 14, 2007, 06:01:44 PM
Quote from: RiverAux on December 14, 2007, 05:01:53 PM
Quote from: Donald on December 14, 2007, 03:38:21 PM
Where does the money come from for the USAF to pay the bill?? Taxes baby. So you don't care where the money comes from just pay. This is why we are in a financial problem in this nation.
You're missing the point. The AF doesn't call down to an active search mission base and say that we've exceeded the budget for the year, close down the base. They pay what needs to be paid to get the job done. Now, if the chances of us finding the target are slim and we've done just about all we can do, they aren't going to waste money and still have us fly, but that is a different deal.
Our SAR money comes from the appropriated funds the AF gives us each year. We decide how much to allot for SAR ops. The AF doesn't get the bill for the ES operations. If we run out of money, we cut funding to other programs to make up the difference. It is our call on what we "waste" money on.
If you're talking about SAR/DR training, yes, that comes out of our budget. A1 missions, however, do not. They come out of the operating budget of AFRCC. They're our customer, and they're the ones paying for it, not us.
And it is absolutely THEIR call on what we waste money on. They hold the checkbook.
Quote from: Donald on December 14, 2007, 02:38:20 PM
All the other problems are small evaluating if you have a loved one lost or injured and can not have CAP start the search due to weather, equipment and proper personnel to handle the situation. We have become a school not a protecting origination more interested in uniforms, meetings, dinners and awards.
I'm going to assume you're rather inexperienced in the CAP ES field; one who had experience would know that's a rather large pile of male bovine fecal matter.
Riddle me this. What good does it do to launch on a visual search for a downed aircraft when you have 300ft ceilings and 2 miles visibility? We may not launch due to weather a lot, because the weather percludes us from effectively completing the mission, speak nothing of safety. Probability of detection drops on hazy but clear days, with bad weather, you have a high work load, and very low possibility of finding anything except your aircraft plowed into some cumulogranite.
Equipment? That';s the member's job to be properly equipped for the job they're doing. It's a FAR violation to be PIC of an aircraft w/o current charts; it's a common sense violation for a GTM/GTL to be out in the field with just a fanny pack.
Personnel? Part of the problem can be traced to people who complain about ES, yet do nothing to step up and help fix the problem. The remainder is that, that's right, we're a volunteer organization. We cannot have people on call 24/7 that don't want to be on call. Otherwise, we'd have to shell out some more $$ to pay our people to be ready to roll. We're NOT a first response organization. PDs, FD's, and EMAs are the front line, we're a support system for local, state, and federal agencies. Rarely are we a lead organization on anything besides ELT hunts. It's a team effort, we're part of a national plan.
You may want to read up and get some more experience before you speak of things you know little about.