Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Military

Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Why can't a CAP cadet do all the things you listed? Why should flying not be part of a cadet's experience? :dunno:

I wasn't talking about discovery flights, or learning to fly. I was talking about scud runs near borders in a 182 with a predator drone camera under the wing.

:laff:
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Yea...


Here's my point, and I have one. An 11-13 year old kid has no business in a 182 or whatever with an adult and a predator drone unit attached to the underside of a wing.

What said 11-13 yr. old should be doing is going camping, learning to march, stay in formation, learning leadership skills, and volunteer his or her time at the CAP airshow booth. Likewise the adult leadership should be far more concerned with facilitating the skill sets that I mentioned than out playing weekend Border Patrol pilot, or PT sub hunter.

You asked me my opinion, and there you have it..

Well I see a few things wrong with your statement. A cadet only participates on a mission if they are rated for that position. Most of which, are not. Therefore they do not participate on missions and most, if not all, of our missions in the 182 are filled by three senior members with the appropriate ratings. The cadets spend most of their time doing exactly the things you mentioned.

I don't know about the southwest squadrons, but up here, there is no border patrol missions, no "sub hunting" missions. Almost all of ours have been SAR and a few transport missions of time critical goods.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Why do 11 year olds need to know how to march???

Not to get too off-topic, but I don't think they should. I've recently registered my brother for cub scouts, as I believe it will benefit him in the end. But I can't help being skeptical about organizations such as these. Former members usually turn out to be great people. But I can't help it but to think of the Hitler Youth and Soviet Pioneers.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Well I see a few things wrong with your statement. A cadet only participates on a mission if they are rated for that position. Most of which, are not. Therefore they do not participate on missions and most, if not all, of our missions in the 182 are filled by three senior members with the appropriate ratings. The cadets spend most of their time doing exactly the things you mentioned.

I don't know about the southwest squadrons, but up here, there is no border patrol missions, no "sub hunting" missions. Almost all of ours have been SAR and a few transport missions of time critical goods.

Perhaps CAP has changed since I was in it as a child, many moons ago. But, what I remember was a military youth based leadership, and volunteer organization akin to say the boy scouts.

We learned leadership skills, and the such and instead of getting merit badges, we got promoted in rank and group standing. Which in turn brough us pride for our accomplishments.

Again, growing up Seventh Day Adventist I couldn't do too much more than meet up once a week for class. So, I didn't get into the other extra cirricular things like camping, taking flight lessons and the such.

Civil Air Patrol, to me sounds like a civil organization. I know that as an organization they look for missing people. But as a civil organization I have to wonder why they need a military grade surveilance camera attached to their plane. Some might answer for search and rescue opts, my answer would be well what did they use before they became "predatoriazed?" Do they even do night sorties?

When I think of a predator drone I think of an unmanned plane that is either used as surveilance tool or an unmanned attack drone, or both. My reference to the border is perhaps thinking that the predator camera on CAP planes could be used to some how aid BP or something. My reference to attack subs was directed toward aloft who frequently likes to mention the CAP's involvement in WWII.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but CAP is an organization akin to the Boy Scouts of America, right? And, well if my thoughts about a 182 performing infra red night missions looking for mexican coyotes or drug runners. Those are not mission the BSA does, and perhaps the adult members of said organization should stick to simply mentoring cadets.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

All youth organizations have ther pros and cons. Having been a cadet in both CAP and the Naval Sea Cadet Corps as well as as being a Boy Scout; I liked the military programs better due to the focus on leadership. The Boy Scouts served as a better program to learn survival skills and being out in nature. I took all the good qualities in each program and sort of intertwined them between the programs.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

All youth organizations have ther pros and cons. Having been a cadet in both CAP and the Naval Sea Cadet Corps as well as as being a Boy Scout; I liked the military programs better due to the focus on leadership. The Boy Scouts served as a better program to learn survival skills and being out in nature. I took all the good qualities in each program and sort of intertwined them between the programs.

Okay, so what you're saying is that CAP is PFJ, or an internship for Border Patrol!

:laff:
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Someone correct me if I'm wrong...but CAP is an organization akin to the Boy Scouts of America, right? And, well if my thoughts about a 182 performing infra red night missions looking for mexican coyotes or drug runners. Those are not mission the BSA does, and perhaps the adult members of said organization should stick to simply mentoring cadets.


Yes they do night sorties. I have been out of a number of them... most crashes into the woods in northern michigan seem to happen right around 3AM. No, we do not have a camera attached to our wing. I wonder if it is even hooked up. However, the GA-8 does have all sorts of cameras, FLIR, whatever. I highly doubt CAP will be called upon to provide BP... counter drug stuff is plenty of that line of work for me.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Okay, so what you're saying is that CAP is PFJ, or an internship for Border Patrol!

:laff:
Boy you sure are feisty tonight!:cwm27:
No CAP is really two different programs that have a few of the same purposes such as SAR and Distaster Relief. The main focus of the cadet program is to teach basic military skils, aerospace education, and Search and Rescue. The adult program is more broader as it entails some duties in direct involvent with the Air Force and the DHS. Since the UAV's are most needed in CENTCOM's theater of operations, they have asked CAP; which is the Air Force Auxilliary, to help with training operations here in CONUS. It also seems the DHS is also entertaining the idea of using CAP to help patrol the boarders which is a novel idea and it gets unmanned aircraft out of the airspace. It's not a PFJ as the all missions are funded by the Air Force. All they're paying for is per diem, hotel and transportation.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

Boy you sure are feisty tonight!:cwm27:
No CAP is really two different programs that have a few of the same purposes such as SAR and Distaster Relief. The main focus of the cadet program is to teach basic military skils, aerospace education, and Search and Rescue. The adult program is more broader as it entails some duties in direct involvent with the Air Force and the DHS. Since the UAV's are most needed in CENTCOM's theater of operations, they have asked CAP; which is the Air Force Auxilliary, to help with training operations here in CONUS. It also seems the DHS is also entertaining the idea of using CAP to help patrol the boarders which is a novel idea and it gets unmanned aircraft out of the airspace. It's not a PFJ as the all missions are funded by the Air Force. All they're paying for is per diem, hotel and transportation.

...well, two things. I was only in CAP for 3 years as a cadet. And I didn't know that they had two different programs, I thought they only had the one!
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

hmm... my bad experience with CAP always seemed to involve them on practice approaches to culpepper va.

That being said I've heard this system was supposed to be a training tool as well, for a mass spectrum analyzer that can apparently pick little bits of aluminium up in dense coverage... not sure if it will ever work out but, i know they were working on one
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

hmm... my bad experience with CAP always seemed to involve them on practice approaches to culpepper va.

That being said I've heard this system was supposed to be a training tool as well, for a mass spectrum analyzer that can apparently pick little bits of aluminium up in dense coverage... not sure if it will ever work out but, i know they were working on one

Hopefully they can create one because finding wreckage can be a PITA.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

:mad::mad::mad:

I do believe the reason for the "camera on the wing" is to provide training for operators on the ground. Unmanned Military predators and other UAV's are scarce outside of the sandbox and can currently only fly under rather strict guidelines even in MOA's. Putting a camera on a manned aircraft gets around the unmanned problem and can still provide training to operators on the ground at far less cost to the taxpayers. It's as simple as that, no nefarious intents at all.

Cadets under 18 years old do not fly on "operational" Missions, EVER, not on SAR, Counter Drug, disaster relief, nothing, it's against the Regs.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

hmm... my bad experience with CAP always seemed to involve them on practice approaches to culpepper va.

That being said I've heard this system was supposed to be a training tool as well, for a mass spectrum analyzer that can apparently pick little bits of aluminium up in dense coverage... not sure if it will ever work out but, i know they were working on one

The system your talking about is ARCHER (Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance). ARCHER is a system mounted in an Gippsland GA-8 Airvan, not on a 182 wing.

ARCHER is being used actively on a Joint US/MEX mission right now along the Mexican border near Mcallen TX searching for a missing plane

The camera on the wing looks to be nothing more than you're standard FLIR type camera you would see on UAVs, police helicopters, CBP Dash 8's and such.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

The system your talking about is ARCHER (Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance). ARCHER is a system mounted in an Gippsland GA-8 Airvan, not on a 182 wing.

ARCHER is being used actively on a Joint US/MEX mission right now along the Mexican border near Mcallen TX searching for a missing plane

The camera on the wing looks to be nothing more than you're standard FLIR type camera you would see on UAVs, police helicopters, CBP Dash 8's and such.
It also has a laser designator.
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

:mad::mad::mad:

I do believe the reason for the "camera on the wing" is to provide training for operators on the ground. Unmanned Military predators and other UAV's are scarce outside of the sandbox and can currently only fly under rather strict guidelines even in MOA's. Putting a camera on a manned aircraft gets around the unmanned problem and can still provide training to operators on the ground at far less cost to the taxpayers. It's as simple as that, no nefarious intents at all.

Cadets under 18 years old do not fly on "operational" Missions, EVER, not on SAR, Counter Drug, disaster relief, nothing, it's against the Regs.

:mad::mad::mad::mad:

...there I can do it too, and I one up ya!!!

Seriously, this forum is an educational tool, right?

I was wrong and ill informed about CAP and thus rightly educated, and that's some how bad? And deserving of an angry emoticon...?

If so, then I'll just carry on with my ill informed impression, totally forgetting the fact that I was corrected and learned otherwise!

:mad:

Bonus points..
 
Re: Civil Air Patrol to fly "Surrogate Predator" for Militar

It also has a laser designator.

I've heard that, but didn't really think about it for this conversation. I guess it would make sense, considering its used by the military.

I think it's a great use of CAP assets, and a heck of a lot cheaper than flying a predator.
 
Back
Top