CAPblog

ARCHER Circling the Drain?

I've had my concerns...

Word on the street is that 1st Air Force has finally come out and said it...

... they have determined that CAP's ARCHER is not an effective tool in supporting any Air Force missions.

Hey, I'd be much happier if this was incorrect, and that the USAF thought the system was more iPhone, and less Vista.

I would love to post a retraction.

Ultimately, the $10 Million bucks blown on ARCHER is a rounding error in Air Force procurement. Live and learn. It was still cheaper than plowing as single RQ-1 into the dessert.

I would rather have strapped FLIR units to our existing fleet of mighty C-182 Skylanes.

But that's just me.

A USAF Pararescue Blog

It is my duty as a Pararescueman to save life and to aid the injured. I will be prepared at all times to perform my assigned duties quickly and efficiently, placing these duties before personal desires and comforts. These things I do, "That Others May Live."

BLOG: pjcountry - U.S. Air Force Pararescue

:: I have a huge amount of respect for the P.J.'s

They truly are, "The Best of the Best."

Calling CAP SAR Ground Teams "P.J.'s - Lite" is probably bordering on delusions of grandeur... but ultimately, our hearts are in the same place.

I look forward to reading the blog.

Smithsonian Documents CAP's Effort in Fossett Search

It is a crisp and cloudless September morning, and I am serving as a “scanner” on this Civil Air Patrol flight. The job is painful: With my face smushed against the rear starboard window, I squint through the blinding morning sun to scrutinize a jumble of craggy peaks, badlands, arroyos, and withering scrub. Ryan points out Mount Grant, an 11,500-foot-high monolith at 10 o’clock, just as the pilot rolls us sideways to avoid hitting it. “That’s one son-of-a-gun to search because it’s so rugged,” she says.

After millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett and his airplane went missing in Nevada on September 3, 2007, it was the Civil Air Patrol that led the search for him. When I arranged to join the hunt, Ryan, 54, a CAP information officer, insisted I wear one of those motion-sickness medication patches you stick behind your ear. I’ve been jostled in jetliners above South Pacific typhoons and have roller-coastered over Alaska in brittle Beavers, and I have never once been airsick. But I’m glad I took her advice, because the pilot of our turbo-charged Cessna 182, Ryan’s husband Ron, 76, has just made his umpteenth turn 1,000 feet above a cluster of mangy hills that look like crumpled paper grocery bags, and despite my patch, I’m beginning to feel woozy.

Air & Space Magazine: Anatomy of a Search

:: The article's subhead, "Why the U.S. Civil Air Patrol couldn’t find Steve Fossett," struck me as bit inflammatory... but once I dug in a bit, it turns out to be a fair piece.

I'm going to go find myself a print copy of the magazine. It should be a keeper.

Was Crowdsourcing Worth It?

"The value of the contribution is hard to quantify because ultimately we failed to find Steve, but it seems reasonable to imagine that this could work," Chantrill says. "I don't see any downsides to it, so long as people don't pester the professional search-and-rescue teams with poor leads."

Yet that is exactly what happened, much to the exasperation of Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan, who says her e-mail and voicemail boxes were flooded with leads from folks working on the Mechanical Turk. Many times, they mistook search aircraft in the air for Fossett's plane -- even though it's unlikely Fossett's plane would have appeared intact.

"The crowdsourcing thing added a level of complexity that we didn't need, because 99.9999 percent of the people who were doing it didn't have the faintest idea what they're looking for," Ryan says.

"In the early days, it sounded like a good idea," Ryan continues. "In hindsight, I wish it hadn't been there, because it didn't produce a darn thing that was productive except for being a giant black hole for energy, time and resources. There may come a day when this technology is capable of doing what it says it can deliver, but boy, that's not now."

WIRED: Online Fossett Searchers Ask, Was It Worth It? (via Buzzworthy)

:: Major Ryan's exasperation with Mechanical Turk comes across loud and clear.

I guess I was wrong. It could hurt.

Though I think some of the frustration may have been avoided if there was a clear path for the crowdsourced leads to be reviewed by someone who has some training and experience. (Maybe a module of eServices could offer up the leads for review by CAP aircrew not flying the mission?) The worst thing that could happen, did, which was that deployed mission resources were tied up by all the static.

I've spent time training to know what to look for when it comes to finding missing aircraft. It's not rocket science, but it isn't easy. It's a skill that has to be taught, and practiced.

Satellites, UAVs, whatever...

I don't believe that anything will replace a well trained Mark I Eyeball scanning the landscape from a 1000 feet AGL any time soon.

CAP Finds Downed Piper in Utah

Utah Wing aircraft and crews responding to an alert that a Piper Arrow was overdue on a flight from Bountiful, Utah, to Colorado City, Colo., located the downed plane within six hours.

The alert came from the Air Force Rescue Control Center around 4 a.m. Oct. 27, and crews were dispatched from Ogden and Salt Lake City at first light. They were later joined by a St. George crew.

The crash site was located about 9:55 a.m. north of Zion National Park in Washington County, Utah. Brothers Benjamin and James Timpson, of Centennial Park, Ariz., died in the crash.

CAP News Online: Utah searchers find downed Piper

:: News reports peg low visibility conditions due to forest fires as a possible contributing factor in the crash.

Ironically, it was the fire sparked by the crash, that helped the CAP crew spot the crash site.

CAP Responds to California Wildfires (finally)

Since Friday, CAWG has been performing aerial reconnaissance flights for the State of California, as assigned by 1AF. We have delivered two sets of photographs (over 70 photos total) and I received an email today that quoted MajGen Morrow (the CONUS region NORAD commander) as referring to our product as "amazing". The email also noted that "CalFire is happy with the product".

At the same time, we've received great feedback from OES regarding our support of the REOC. Here's a quote: "[CAP has] done an outstanding job in supporting the REOC.  Everyone is singing their praises. I am sure the need for their support will continue and grow as we continue to use staff...

                -CAWG ICT

:: NHQ published the story as well...

Calif. aircrews helping combat wildfires with reconnaissance flights

...OK, I feel better now... but I'm still flummoxed as to why CAP didn't get into the fight  sooner.

Not everyone agrees with me. That's OK.

Looking back to last week, by Monday (the first day of the mass evacuation) the Red Cross has been candid about being overwhelmed. It does not sit well with me that it took until Friday for CAP to get a real request...and that was just for air assets.

Our Ground Teams make a great force-multiplier for Red Cross disaster responders, but CAP groundpounders were left polishing their boots.

It seems this has not been an isolated issue, and may be on the front burner to being addressed in a broad way.

The great news is that now that CAP has deployed, the CAWG crews are doing a hell of a job.

Fangs Out and Frustrated

The wildfires are the largest natural disaster in the United States since Hurricane Katrina, and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director David Paulison promised "a different type of response than the federal government put together" for the 2005 storm.

CNN: Bush vows speedy federal help for fire victims

:: This feeling feels vaguely familiar. (It's that queasy, "why am I still sitting here on my ass?" feeling in my gut.)

As far as I can tell, there has not been a significant deployment of CAP forces in this fight.

WTF?

California Wing, and the neighboring states, have significant amount of assets available... and if they run low, I've got the solution for you right the hell here.

Word is that after the last batch of fires in the San Diego area a few years back, Northcom was grilled as to why they didn't have assets... that doesn't seem to be the issue this time. CAP should be part of that response package. Hell, we're cheap, and we do good work.

We are not firefighters... but there is plenty putting our boots on the ground, and our airmen in the air can do to help out.

Forgive me for hanging here with my fangs out... but I can't help but want to scream, "put me in the game coach!"

UND Seminole Found

A small plane carrying a flight instructor and a student pilot went missing for several hours before teams undertaking an intensive search found the wreckage and the two bodies Wednesday in a swamp, authorities said.

The plane left St. Paul for Grand Forks, N.D., shortly before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, and air traffic officials' last contact with it was at 10:15 p.m., officials said. The plane did not arrive as scheduled at 11:45 p.m.

A ground search of all airports from St. Cloud, Minn., to Grand Forks was conducted early Wednesday, said officials at the University of North Dakota, which owned the plane. The Civil Air Patrol sent five aircraft to continue the search.

More planes joined the search Wednesday afternoon, with volunteer pilots from several cities, said Capt. Al Pabon of the Civil Air Patrol. The wreckage was found around 4 p.m. northwest of Browerville by air searchers and confirmed by ground teams, the patrol said.

Killed were the pilot, Annette Klosterman, 22, a University of North Dakota flight instructor from Seattle, and Adam Ostapenko, 20, a junior aviation student from Duluth, authorities said.

AP: Plane Crash Found After Intensive Search

ANN: CAP Crews Locate Wreckage Of Downed UND Seminole

::

Medical Transport Plane Found Crashed on Colorado Moutain

Three people on a medical plane that took off from Arizona were found dead Friday at a crash site about 25 miles from their Colorado destination.

The twin-engine plane, flying from Chinle to Alamosa, Colo., lost radar and radio contact with flight controllers at about 10:20 p.m. Thursday, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said. After losing contact, the Civil Air Patrol began examining radar tracks to find the airplane's last known location, believed to be in Colorado.

The crash site, about 25 miles southwest of Alamosa in south-central Colorado, was discovered about 1:20 p.m. Friday by the Air National Guard, said Bob Campbell, Archuleta County Sheriff's Office country administrator.

The plane appeared to have crashed at 11,800 feet into Charlies Peak, located near the Continental Divide, he said. The Sheriff's Office sent a Blackhawk helicopter with four rescue workers to search for the victims, Campbell said.

The first victim was found and pronounced dead around 3 p.m. The other two bodies were found about an hour and a half later. It's unclear who was found first.

The Arizona Republic: 3 on medical flight found dead

:: As reported by NHQ, CAP responded with both Aircraft and Ground Teams. It sounds like both weather and terrain made for a tough search.

While it seems like there was nothing that would have made a difference in this case...

I'm reminded that we're in the Search AND Rescue business. It's been my experience that our Teams concentrate so much on the search part of the equation, that the rescue part it becomes something of an afterthought. Some of that is an unfortunate result of the corner that CAP regulations and the Air Force's lack of Medical Direction has painted us into.

Ground Team should be prepared to render real emergency medical assistance when needed.

I have no interest in carrying body bags instead of a trauma kit.

Fosset Search Suspened.. Again

The search for millionaire aviator Steve Fossett, who disappeared a month ago in northern Nevada, was suspended Tuesday after what the Civil Air Patrol described as one of the largest efforts to locate a missing plane in modern history. The decision came after renewed efforts over the weekend proved unsuccessful.

Planes and ground crews scoured a rugged area southeast of where Fossett was last seen taking off Sept. 3 from an airstrip on hotel mogul Barron Hilton's sprawling ranch. With deer-hunting season opening in many parts of the state, officials said they hope a hunter will come across the single-engine plane that Fossett had borrowed from Hilton for what was supposed to have been a brief flight.

"We've exhausted all our leads at this time," Amy Courter, acting national commander of the Civil Air Patrol, said in a phone interview. "We didn't find anything. We don't have any conclusive information to follow — or to say there was a crash and he didn't survive." Courter said that while the search has been officially suspended, it will be revived if new, viable tips come in.

The search, effectively suspended by the Nevada Civil Air Patrol and the Nevada National Guard two weeks ago, had been renewed after Air Force experts thought they detected Fossett's flight path from radar and satellite images.

Associated Press : Search for Steve Fossett Suspended Again

:: I've got to say I'm really proud of the amazing work that went into this search mission. Let's not forget that while we haven't found Steve, CAP crews found 8 previously undocumented crash sites as they scoured the desert from the air, and on the ground.

As this was such a huge operation, I'm looking forward to seeing a detailed After Action Report on  the mission, something like we had after JTF-Katrina, to help us all take back the lessons learned.