General Ranks

[JC004]

Well if they want to be ridiculous, they might as well go all-out:

National CC - General
Region CCs - Lt Gen
Wing Commanders - Maj Gen
Group Commanders - Brig Gen
Squadron Commanders - Colonel

Wooooo!  Generals for everybody!      

[Trung Si Ma]

Thats not a bad Idea... Maybe something along the lines of Group commanders LTC, Unit Commanders Maj.  The rest of the membership Captains or below...

The more we interact with everyone else, the more I think that we need to go to positional ranks:

Squadron = Captain
Group = Major
IC's (while performing IC duties), Wing/Region SE or IG = LtCol

Deputies, one grade lower and no "special rank" for staff weenies

Since (as has been mentioned on this board many times), CAP rank is a way of "keeping score" on your progression through professional development we could expand the flight officer structure

Level One - Flight Officer - No insignia, plain grey epaulets on uniforms
Level Two - Technical Flight Officer - current FO insignia
Level Three - Senior Flight Officer - current TFO insignia
Level Four - Master Flight Officer - current SFO insignia
Level Five - Chief Flight Officer - current 2ndLt insignia

All insignia is already approved / made. 

National auto promotes you when your award is processed.

No provisions for former ranks (commissioned or otherwise) or "mission related" skills.

Leave the position or go on an activity outside your home wing and revert to the appropriate FO grade.

Yep, it's a pipe dream - but you have to admit I be smoking some fine stuff.

[Chappie]

Frankly, I see this agenda item as a non-issue.  It was tabled from a previous NB...which meant that at sometime it needed to be revisited.   Hence the inclusion in this year's agenda for action to be taken.   IMHO the majority of those currently serving on the are not interested in seeing this agenda item approved.  End of story.

As far as rank is concerned....the silver oak leaf on my epaulet sleeve and $3.55 will get me a Vente Latte everytime at the local Starbucks.

[DrJbdm]

   Well, it appears that the CG Aux way of doing things has some supporters on here. I am not a big fan of the CG aux way of using positional ranks, there is a much simpler solution.


    Make the grade of Major or above much harder to achieve and require officers to screen for those ranks at the Wing or Region level and require Air Force PME courses to promote. For instance:


Major: current time in grade plus be selected for a group or Wing staff position or assistant and have completed the USAF Squadron Officer School


Lt. Col: time in grade plus be selected to serve as a group commander or Wing deputy commander or selected to serve as a senior region staff officer. plus completion of the USAF Air Command and Staff College.


   Air Force PME is not waiver able except for those members who have either completed the course while serving as an active duty military officer or as a senior military NCO and have completed the appropriate senior NCO academy courses. (E-8 or E-9)


   No need to have people revert back to their old grade when they leave those positions, you simply reassign them administratively to a wing reserve squadron where the wing commander or former wing commander is the commander. Sort of like a legislative squadron.


  Units are commanded by Captains or above as needed. Commanders need to be screened first. to be selected for captain you should have to have your promotion package approved by a group or wing level promotion board that meets a minimum of three times each year or more as needed.


Wing or Region level promotion boards should meet once per year but no more than twice per year. This way, most members will top out at Captain if selected, otherwise they will stay 1st Lt. If you want to promote higher then Captain you need to earn those promotions with real education and job positions. No more 1st Lt being the region safety officer or Wing IG, In cases of extreme need they can fill in until another qualified candidate is selected. Easy right?

[Spike]

How about the board decides to end this dream once and for all, instead to be replaced with a proposal to go back to the AF (after a decade and a half!) and ask for our blue rank slides back!

Seriously, we have been punished long enough over stupidity that happened before many members were even members!

I along with a few others here know the individual(s) responsible for the maroon now gray epaulet slides.  They have since left the program.  Time to recover from their stupidity. 

[Eclipse]

Major and Lt. Col. is already "screened" at the Wing and Region Level, respectively.

The flaw in the reasoning above is that you can't force people to participate in a holding or legislative squadron, and doing so would result in most of your higher-speed, involved members becoming non-operational.  Nice reward for a job well done.

The biggest issue with using the military grade model in CAP, is that in a volunteer organization "up and out" / "up or out" is not workable and self-defeating.  When you can't forcibly assign people to drudge work, and you can't afford loss of experienced members, you can't be pushing people out the door just because they did well and attained a high grade and a lot of qualifications.  If they decide they want to go back to a unit, etc., and help out, TA-DA!  We say "thank you, thank you" and welcome them back.

It also doesn't account for term limits, which many states and Regions are now pushing - I'm not going to be inclined to reach for the top if after 3-4 years I wind up being marginalized in a legislative squadron.

Unless we change the current paradigm and buy the attrition that will come with it, changes like these aren't workable.

[Hawk200]

Instead of flushing our rank system down the toilet and coming up with something that no one will recognize, why don't we actually make our ranks worth obtaining?

Or are we just so stuck on mediocrity that we should trade our military rank insignia for something worthless? Then again maybe people would rather have a case of haves and have-nots?

Or maybe it's just a case of people stuck on another organization, that for whatever reason want CAP to be just like that one. What's wrong with being Civil Air Patrol? It would be nice if the folks wanting to turn CAP into something else would actually show the same dedication to making this one better.

[RiverAux]

Well, it appears that the CG Aux way of doing things has some supporters on here. I am not a big fan of the CG aux way of using positional ranks, there is a much simpler solution.

While I've been accused of trying to CG Auxify the CAP, I'm not in favor of using positional ranks in CAP based on squadron/group/wing staff or leadership positions.  If I were to start over it would be with a system based on ES qualifications -  see http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=1425.0 for discussion. 

[James Shaw]

I would not seriously take this as an attempt to "promote" the promotions. I think this was an agenda item that had been open and never closed and needed to be closed. This would help stop some of the speculation and desires around this idea.

Mt .02 worth.

[ZigZag911]

... both flights and groups should be mandatory and get wings off of state boundaries.  Some "wings" today could conceivably be groups commanded by a Maj or Lt Col.

I like both ideas.

Flights should be more activity oriented (for that matter, so should squadrons)....much of the administrative happiness ought to be handled at group level.

Right now with state= wing structure, we have wings smaller than the group I commanded some years back, and other wings (NY, CA, TX, FL) that probably rival the smaller regions in terms of membership....poor span of control.

[jimmydeanno]

Right now with state= wing structure, we have wings smaller than the group I commanded some years back, and other wings (NY, CA, TX, FL) that probably rival the smaller regions in terms of membership....poor span of control.

You also have individual squadrons that are the size, or double the size of some wings.  I think my unit is about 1/2 the size of RIWG...

[Eclipse]

And the SEP's really skew the numbers...

[RiverAux]

I would not seriously take this as an attempt to "promote" the promotions. I think this was an agenda item that had been open and never closed and needed to be closed. This would help stop some of the speculation and desires around this idea.

Mt .02 worth.

It does look like someone had some time on their hands and decided to go back through the old minutes looking for unfinished business. 

[Rotorhead]

How about the board decides to end this dream once and for all, instead to be replaced with a proposal to go back to the AF (after a decade and a half!) and ask for our blue rank slides back!

Seriously, we have been punished long enough over stupidity that happened before many members were even members!

I along with a few others here know the individual(s) responsible for the maroon now gray epaulet slides.  They have since left the program.  Time to recover from their stupidity.

Now this one makes sense.

[heliodoc]

More Generals in CAP?

Yes, they have ENTIRELY TOO much time if they are still even thinking of this issue.

CAP is not moving troops or making Theater Level decisions that require some MORE levels of education and tactical decision making.  They may think they are. The real decisions had better be made on CAP can integrate its mission into the HLS realm, if that is their desire. But this kind of thing does not require a CAP 'Generalship" no matter how the Sr CAP "leadership" thinks so

This type of CAP "decision making" is what makes us look like some Third World dictators

Really time to table that agenda item and BURY it

CAP Generals as a volunteers.....sheeeshhh....look out for those egos

[heliodoc]

Spike

CAP recover from previous stupidity??  CAP has had enough time to recover from it...they choose not to or leadership skills are NOT sharp enough to recover

[SarDragon]

Well, it appears that the CG Aux way of doing things has some supporters on here. I am not a big fan of the CG aux way of using positional ranks, there is a much simpler solution.

While I've been accused of trying to CG Auxify the CAP, I'm not in favor of using positional ranks in CAP based on squadron/group/wing staff or leadership positions.  If I were to start over it would be with a system based on ES qualifications -  see http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=1425.0 for discussion.

What do you do in a cadet squadron that, for whatever reasons, doesn't have an ES presence? What ranks do their senior members hold?

[PHall]

Well, we could go back to the old days, as in 1960's, when the 20-1 had "manning tables".
There were limits to how many 2d Lts, 1st Lts, Capts, Majors and Lt Cols you could have in a unit.
The more members you had in a unit, the more grade authorizations you had.

[arajca]

I would not seriously take this as an attempt to "promote" the promotions. I think this was an agenda item that had been open and never closed and needed to be closed. This would help stop some of the speculation and desires around this idea.

Mt .02 worth.

It does look like someone had some time on their hands and decided to go back through the old minutes looking for unfinished business.

If you read the whole agenda item, you'll see that when it was postponed, it was with the note that it be reviewed at the Summer/Fall 2009 NB meeting. So, by definition, it has to be brought up. IMHO, it will be one of the quicker items to be considered and defeated.

[Strick]

We already have enough people in CAP walking around thinking that they are Generals